Sir Richard Greenbury’s business model is worth recalling when capitalism’s critics are on the rampage

Sir Richard Greenbury, the former Marks & Spencer chairman who died last week aged 81, was one of those choleric but thin-skinned corporate chiefs (Sir Alastair Morton of Eurotunnel was another) who never learned to handle journalists. The Telegraph reporter Kate Rankine famously caused him to blow his top at a 1997 press conference by asking when he intended to retire; he made matters worse by describing her later as ‘a silly little girl’. Editors who criticised the retail chain’s performance and his own perceived failure to reinvigorate it received blazing letters known as ‘Rickograms’, of which one to the female editor of Investors Chronicle began: ‘Dear Sir, What a load of old tosh…’

Most popular

Gavin Mortimer

When will Britain wake up to the Islamist threat?

A suitably blunt answer to the retirement question finally came in 1999, when Greenbury was forced out after an undignified boardroom tussle and a farewell salvo from his City-page antagonists.