Built the family brewing firm into the largest in the country
DAVID THOMPSON, who has died of cancer aged 67, was the dynamic fifth-generation head of a family business that grew as Wolverhampton & Dudley Breweries and later as Marston’s to be the UK’S largest brewer and pub owner.
Thompson’s habitual tweed suit and professorial glasses disguised a bold, high-energy and often contrarian approach to business. While other British brewers became pure pub-chain owners or were absorbed into international conglomerates, Thompson embarked on building Wolverhampton & Dudley (known to investors as Wolves) from a provincial operation to a national beer-and-pubs group on a traditional model.
His acquisitions campaign began with Camerons’ Hartlepool brewery in 1992. The biggest purchase was Marston, Thompson & Evershed in Burton-on-trent in 1999, followed by the Mansfield brewery, Jennings of Cockermouth, in 2005, and Ringwood brewery in Hampshire in 2007.
The group’s finances were at times stretched but Thompson was proud to have beaten off a hostile bid in 2001 from the Pubmaster group, which would have broken up the company, sold off many properties and outsourced its brewing.
Marston’s, as a major beer brand, later became the parent-company name. At its peak the group employed 12,000 people and held more than 2,000 pubs – of which Thompson treasured not only the beer and the ambience but also the individual histories and architectural quirks.
David George Fossett Thompson was born on July 4 1954 to Edwin “Teddy” Thompson and his wife Helen. David’s great-greatgrandfather George Thompson, owner of the Dudley & Victoria brewery, had taken over Banks’s brewery in Wolverhampton – which owed him money – in 1890 to lay the foundations of the larger group. David observed that his own forebears were “low church, hard-working and lent money”, whereas most brewers were “harddrinking, squirearchical and borrowers”.
David was educated at Winchester and as a scholar of Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he read History. After an interlude of mission teaching in Malawi he joined the Conservative Research Department in 1975 under Chris Patten – working on agriculture policies, including the party’s position on badgers.
A political career might have beckoned but brewing was his natural inheritance. After a spell of training with Whitbread he joined the family firm in 1977, following his father as managing director in 1986. He was chairman from 2001 to 2013.
Among many other company interests, he was also a director of the breadmaker Warburtons, the Cleverley group of newspapers, Caledonia Investments and the housebuilder Persimmon.
He encountered some flak in 2001 when it emerged that the disposal of Camerons to Castle Eden brewery would entail the development of the latter’s own site by Persimmon, though Thompson called the issue a coincidence rather than a conflict of interest. In later years he was chairman of Smiths Flour Mills and chief executive of Anglia Maltings, which he founded.
Thompson farmed at Albrighton in Shropshire, collected old Jaguars, and enjoyed shooting and fishing; for the latter, his preferred outfit was a blue boiler-suit and a beret. He was president of the Dudley Book Society, Britain’s oldest book club, dating from 1732.
Stricken by cancer, he remained positive, ebullient and active in business for as long as his condition allowed – “still hopping on a plane to Japan and Korea to sell malt,” one associate recalled. His death notice in the Telegraph summed him up as “Maltster, soi-disant Farmer, one-time Brewer of Wolverhampton, Stakhanovite” – the latter generally meaning, in a non-soviet context, an exceptionally hard-working or zealous person.
David Thompson married Marika Davis in 1980. She survives him with their son and three daughters.
David Thompson, born July 4 1954, died July 4 2021