Sir Michael Angus

607PM GMT twenty-one March 2010

Photo BRIAN SMITH

As authority from 1986 to 1992 of Unilever plc the British side of an Anglo-Dutch firm that creates a immeasurable range of consumer products, from ice-cream to antiseptic the passionate Angus favourite to report himself as a "toothpaste salesman". That was in truth how he had started as a immature selling comparison physical education instructor in the 1950s; he had additionally been the code physical education instructor for Sunsilk shampoo.

But his climb to the top row of government followed a successful four-year posting to New York, where he discovered Unilever"s feeble US businesses from a duration of complicated waste and took the quarrel to the old rival, Proctor & Gamble.

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He did so partly by deploying his own bent as a motivator and communicator. Asked at a staff assembly shortly after his attainment what just he had to move to the table, he replied with evil courage "$60 million of equity and me."

He returned in 1984 to turn a vice-chairman and a piece of of the three-man Anglo-Dutch comparison physical education instructor committee. After next Sir Kenneth Durham as UK chairman, he common the care of the organization with his Dutch counterpart, Floris Maljers, in an agreement that Angus called "a sitting together".

Though they were really opposite personalities the Dutchman rarely intellectual, the Englishman bluff, verging on bumptious they got on well. The power-sharing complement devised in 1930 when Lever Brothers joined with Margarine Unie of Holland had led to painfully delayed decision-making in progressing eras "but since we"re so wakeful of the problem," Angus said, "it hasn"t been one."

An early e.g. of quick movement was the takeover in Dec 1986 of Chesebrough-Pond"s, an American organization whose products ranged from Pond"s Cold Cream to Ragu pasta sauces. Belying Unilever"s reputation, Angus"s windstorm $3.1 billion suggest prevailed over a antagonistic bid by American Brands. It was, he said, "a majority beguiling experience".

He went on to buy the Faberg, Elizabeth Arden and Calvin Klein fight paint brands in 1989. He additionally one after an additional a process, started by his predecessor, of rationalising the group"s production genius and neatly refocusing the core commercial operation activities; by the last proviso of his tenure, in the retrogression of the 1990s, Unilever was in strong figure and creation roughly �2 billion a year in profit.

Angus went on in 1992 to take on the presidency of the Confederation of British Industry and the chair of Whitbread, to supplement to his emissary chairmanship of National Westminster Bank and directorships of Thorn EMI and British Airways where he additionally in due march became emissary chairman.

In the latter role, he found himself uncomfortably holding the ring in the issue of the "dirty tricks" row in in between BA and Richard Branson"s Virgin Atlantic. When the High Court motionless a defame movement in foster of Branson and opposite BA authority Lord King (whom Angus after described as "a rascal, but a really friendly rascal"), Angus came underneath vigour as the comparison non-executive to lead a boardroom clean-up.

After lengthened inner wrangling and media pressure, King stepped in reserve to turn "life president" and his arch executive, Sir Colin (later Lord) Marshall, took over the chair. Angus was afterwards indicted by associate nobleman Lord Hanson of creation King"s on all sides illogical by unwell to await him; but Angus vehemently denied carrying wielded the knife, and King spoken that he had brought brazen his early retirement "under no vigour from my colleagues".

Michael Richardson Angus was innate in Kent on May 5 1930, the son of an optician; he outlayed piece of his childhood in Rhodesia prior to his family changed to Gloucestershire during the war. He was prepared at Marling School in Stroud and Bristol University, where he review Mathematics and was authority of the Conservative association. He served in the RAF for 3 years prior to fasten Unilever as a government trainee in 1954.

He became code physical education instructor for SR toothpaste and was posted to Paris as selling executive of a French auxiliary in 1962, returning to head the group"s investigate commercial operation and turn sales executive of Lever Brothers UK in 1967 at the tallness of the "detergent war" in in between Omo (which was Unilever"s) and Daz (Proctor & Gamble).

His betterment to both the British and Dutch play of Unilever came in 1970, along with the critical if awkward pretension of "toilet preparations coordinator". He afterwards changed to the chemicals side of the commercial operation prior to proposing himself for the posting to run Unilever in the United States in 1980.

In his post-Unilever career, Michael Angus was a entire and hugely successful figure in British corporate life. As CBI president, he directed the employers" organization by the mishap of the Black Wednesday withdrawal from the European sell rate resource and a array of alternative rows over British impasse in Europe.

As a piece of of the Greenbury Committee in 1995, he was a distinguished voice in debates about directors" arrangement though his participation on so most play at once gave ammunition to those who often criticised the corporate universe as an old boys" network.

An fervent Thatcherite and long-standing crony of Norman Tebbit and Cecil Parkinson (the 3 of them carrying shaped a Conservative debating organization in the 1960s), Angus infrequently spoken himself a "frustrated politician". Others wondered on his interest because he never perceived the nobility for that he was accepted to have been nominated.

Angus"s multiplicity of directorships and cabinet purposes compulsory challenging energies total with a distinctness of prophesy that enabled him to learn the big issues in each case. He was a hands-on authority at Whitbread until 2000, heading a restructuring of the 250-year-old brewery association that in the future remade it in to a "hotel and leisure" group, carrying strew all the drink interests.

At NatWest, he was a behind-the-scenes force in the bank"s withdrawal from catastrophic ventures in to investment promissory note and bonds trading. And in 1994 he took on nonetheless an additional chairmanship, of Boots the chemists.

He additionally found time to be authority of governors of the Royal Agricultural College at Cirencester and of Ashridge Management College; a executive of the Ditchley Foundation; a administrator of the London School of Economics; and a Deputy Lieutenant of Gloucestershire.

He was knighted in 1990.

Michael Angus and his mother Isabel farmed and (with the assistance of their daughter Barbara) combined a pleasing grassed area at North Cerney in Gloucestershire, where they lived in grand character and marketed their own code of goat"s cheese. An fan for the pleasures of the table, Angus was a unchanging writer to the Good Food Guide and a oenophile who confirmed a attic of a little 3,000 bottles.

He married, in 1952, Isabel Elliott; they had dual sons and a daughter.