John Armstrong

Successful businessman and accomplished fly fisherman

John Armstrong, entrepreneur and fly fisherman. Born: 29 December, 1939, in Glasgow. Died: 21 March, 2017, in Bearsden, aged 77.

JOhnarm strong was a highly-successful and widely-travelled Scots businessman, entrepreneur and investor who spent most of his career at British Leyland, the Mallinson-denny timber group, Wickes plc and ultimately at financial consultants Muir Brown plc. Glasgow-born and always known as Jock, he was known for giving away a significant proportion of his investment profits to good causes. He had long stints as a member of the Forth Valley Health Board and as director of Stirling Enterprise Ltd.

Mr Armstrong was also a near-fanatical fly fishermen – trout, sea trout and salmon – from Castle Grant near Grantown-on-spey to Canada, Alaska, Norway, Iceland and even far-flung Tierra del Fuego, the southernmost point in the Americas. After a threehour battle, he once landed a 44lb salmon on the Kedgwick river in New Brunswick, Canada, one of his proudest achievements.

“Jock’s success as a fisherman stemmed in large part from two of his personal strengths – patience and thoroughness,” Mr Armstrong’s long time friend Tom Brucejones, multi-millionaire chairman of Stella-jones inc, said in a funeral eulogy. “He was always well prepared before leaving home and in reading the conditions on loch or river, and he had infinite patience without which any aspirant fisherman will fail. The West of Scotland Angling Club and Loch Walton Club were his ‘homes’ for trout fishing with his name on many of their trophies; the world was his ‘home’ for sea trout and salmon.”

As a businessman in 1985, Mr Armstrong was involved in what at the time was the biggest management buyout (MBO) in UK history. He was managing-director for Scotland of the Mallinson-denny timber company when the management bought itself out of Brooke Bond (part of Unilever) for a then record £80 million before selling to Wickes plc, where Mr Armstrong continued on the board. Headhunted by his friend Mr Bruce-