N. American Regional Director For Wool

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30808, 21 July 1965, Page 22

N. American Regional Director For Wool

Mr W. J. Vines, the managing director of the International Wool Secretariat, has announced the appointment of the secretariat's world headquarters staff of Mr Derek V. Damerell as regional director for America.

The responsibilities of this post have hitherto been undertaken by Mr Vines, in addition to his duties as managing director and director of the far eastern region. This new appointment is a further move in the strengthening of the senior management structure of the I.W.S. Mr Damerell, a 44-year-old Englishman with a wide experience of the North American continent, will join the I.W.S. staff on August 1. He will be responsible to the managing director for the secretariat's branches in the United States, Canada and Mexico.

Mr Damerell, whose father was an American citizen, relinquished the post of deputy chairman and managing director of a leading British manufacturing firm of tufted carpets to join the I.W>S. After studying economics at Edinburgh University, he began his career with the tobacco firm of W. D. and H. O. Wills, where he held a number of appointments over a period of 11 years. In 1951 he joined the British Plaster Board (Holdings) Ltd. as general manager of aj group of subsidiary compan-l ies, and in 1953 became a di-1

rector of the parent board. Four years later Mr Damerell was appointed president of the group’s subsidiarycompanies in Canada and moved to that country. He travelled extensively throughout Canada and the United States and returned to England in 1961, when he was given executive responsibility for a group of companies in Great Britain in addition to those he had managed in Canada. In 1963 he decided to enter the textile field and joined the board of Rivington Carpets, Ltd., whose activities have since expanded considerably.