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Sir David Steel

Sir David Steel, who died on Monday aged 87, was chairman of BP and of the Wellcome Trust; as a young tank commander during the Second World War, he won both a DSO and an MC. He succeeded to the chairmanship of BP in late 1974, to face challenges on several fronts. In the aftermath of the Opec crisis, the Middle Eastern crude oil supplies on which BP traditionally depended were severely disrupted, while soaring barrel prices had provoked a slump in demand for refined products from the industrialised world. Under Steel's predecessor, Sir Eric Drake, the company had begun to exploit new fields in Alaska and the North Sea, but both still required complex high-level negotiations to bring them to fruition. The development at Prudhoe Bay in Alaska, and the pipeline to service it, had been long delayed by environmental objections and machinations in Congress, but came on stream at last during Steel's tenure. In the North Sea, the greatest risk identified by Steel in a speech in 1974 was that a Labour government with Tony Benn in charge of its energy policy would treat the offshore oil bonanza as 'a political football', making it difficult for operating companies to commit to long-term investment. The government decided that half of all North Sea licences should go to its state-owned oil company, BNOC, and that private-sector operators should be taxed to the hilt. By 1979 BP's annual North Sea tax bill was almost half a billion pounds. Relations were made more delicate because the government at that time owned a majority of BP's shares. Nevertheless, Steel steered the company on a steady course, achieving his objectives with ministers, oil sheikhs and boardroom colleagues without ever raising his voice. Courteous and understated, but very determined, his manner of doing business bore the marks both of his legal training and of his years as a soldier. He was tested again in 1979, when the fall of the Shah of Iran provoked another sharp rise in oil prices and an acute shortage of supply for BP, which had also suffered the nationalisation of its Nigerian assets. The need to buy oil wherever it could be found at market prices of $35 a barrel and more pushed BP's 'downstream' operations into temporary losses; Steel responded with cuts in refining capacity, and a diversification into coal, minerals and chemicals. By the time he retired in 1981, stability had been restored and cash flow from the North Sea was underpinning a range of new initiatives; BP was the world's sixth largest company, and under David Steel's calm and resolute leadership, one of its most respected. David Edward Charles Steel was born in London on November 29 1916. He was the second son of Gerald Steel, who was private secretary to the First Lord of the Admiralty throughout the First World War (the incumbent until 1915 being Winston Churchill), and later general manager of the British Aluminium Co. David was the third generation of his family to be educated at Rugby, where he was a keen actor and captained the first eleven, setting records as an opening batsman in the annual match against Marlborough at Lord's. He went on to read Jurisprudence at University College, Oxford, playing cricket and rugby for the university second teams, respectively the Authentics and the Greyhounds. Coming down in 1938, he embarked on solicitor's articles in London and played rugby for Harlequins (he might have reached international level had war not intervened). He also played cricket for Middlesex young amateurs. Steel joined the Inns of Court territorial regiment, and, after the outbreak of war, was commissioned in the 9th Queen's Royal Lancers. He was sent to France, where his brother, also a 9th Lancer, was killed in action, and where David Steel took part in the chaotic rearguard action after Dunkirk, becoming the youngest subaltern to win the DSO. His unit's role was to hinder the German advance towards the Seine at Rouen. Guarding a crossroads in his Crusader tank, Steel found three German tanks coming towards him, preceded by a terrified French peasant on a white horse. He fired all 56 two-pounder shells carried by the Crusader, knocking two of the Germans off the road. Although the Crusader took a hit, he managed to pull back across the Seine before the bridge was blown, and was evacuated from Brest on June 17, the day France capitulated. As an officer, Steel had a reputation for knowing no fear, though he regarded himself as merely lucky, and was reticent about his exploits. His unit fought as part of the 8th Army throughout the North African and Italian campaigns, of which he noted succinctly: 'Tank shot up six times - not wounded.' He was three times mentioned in dispatches, and was awarded the Military Cross for his part in an action in northern Italy in early 1945. After demobilisation, Steel joined a leading City firm of solicitors, Linklaters & Paines, qualifying in 1948. Two years later he was a founder member of the legal department of what was originally the Anglo-Persian Oil Co, then briefly Anglo-Iranian, and would become British Petroleum in 1955. One of his early assignments was the detailed settlement of BP's interests in Iran, which had been abruptly nationalised by the regime of Dr Mossadeq - an event which Steel later said did BP 'a terrific amount of good, forcing it to become more responsive to change'. In due course he moved to the exploration department, and in 1959 he was posted to New York as president of BP's North American operations. He returned to London as 'western hemisphere co-ordinator', before setting off for the Middle East as head of the Kuwait Oil Co. He joined the main board of BP as managing director responsible for exploration in 1965, and became deputy chairman in 1972. After leaving BP, Steel was chairman, from 1982 to 1989, of the Wellcome Trust, the health care research charity founded by Sir Henry Wellcome, which owned a substantial pharmaceutical manufacturing business. Steel decided, despite some internal reluctance, that the best way to maximise the trust's wealth was to float the business on the stock exchange. This took place in 1986, and the company's value in due course grew to £15 billion, making the parent trust the richest charitable body in the world. David Steel was knighted in 1977. He was at various times a member of the Court of the Bank of England; a director of Kleinwort Benson; a trustee of the Economist; president of the London Chamber of Commerce & Industry; and chairman of the governors of Rugby. At the Bank of England's behest, he was also chairman of the Mermaid Theatre, which he helped to rescue from the debts amassed by its profligate director Bernard Miles; theatre people, Steel observed, were 'great fun, but had no idea about money at all'. In 1956 David Steel married Ann Price, a Canadian general's daughter whose lively humour and light touch with everyone she met provided, as he happily acknowledged, a counterbalance to his own gravitas. A devoted couple, they spent part of their retirement years entertaining friends and family at their comfortable holiday house in Brittany, until her death in 1997. They had a son and two daughters
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