Kenneth Mackey, 76; Third Earl of Inchcape, Executive
Kenneth James William Mackey, the third Earl of Inchcape, who molded his family’s global trading empire into Inchcape & Co. with shipping giant P & O Steam Navigation Co. at its head, has died at age 76, the British media reported Saturday.
No time or cause of death was given.
Descended from a lengthy line of wealthy merchants and traders, the earl by age 31 was a director of 18 companies and a partner in nine others.
He saw P & O through difficult times as chairman in the 1970s and multiplied the family’s wealth many times over during his career.
Inchcape was educated at Eton and at Trinity College, Cambridge University. He became the third Earl of Inchcape when his father died in 1939.
During World War II he commanded an armored car unit in Italy and France.
In 1946, he went to work in the Calcutta offices of the British India Line, where James Mackey, the first earl, had begun his rise to fortune in 1874. The company merged with P & O in 1913.
Inchcape returned to Britain in 1948 to manage family interests in tea, cotton, engineering, shipping and insurance, chiefly in India but also in East Africa, the Persian Gulf and Australia.
