SUCCESSOR TO LORD MELCHETT APPOINTED.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19267, 2 January 1931, Page 1

SUCCESSOR TO LORD MELCHETT APPOINTED.

(United Press Assn.—By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.)

(Received January 2, 10 a.m.) RUGBY, January- 1. A meeting of directors of Imperial Chemical Industries was held this afternoon and unanimously elected Sir Harry M’Gowan to succeed Lord Melchett as chairman and managing director of the company’-. Lord Reading was appointed as president of the company.

*Sir Harry M’Gowan, who was yesterday elected chairman and managing director of Imperial Chemical Industries, Ltd., in succession to the late Lord Melchett, began life as an office boy in one of Nobel’s explosives factories, and earned five shillings a week. Now he is controller of the world’s greatest chemical combine, a company -vith an authorised capital of

£95,000,000. The big merger which resulted in the formation of the combine was negotiated by Sir Harry M’Gowan, as chairman of Nobel’s, and Lord Melchett, who was then head of Brunner, Mond’s.

Sir Harry M’Gowan, who was born in Glasgow fifty-six years ago. is interested directfv in fourteen other companies, including the Midland Bank, of which he is a director, the General Motor Corporation, of New York, and the British Overseas Bank and Finance Company*, of Great Britain and America, Ltd. He is almost as well known in American financial quarters as in London.