Gordon White; Led Hanson Industries
Gordon White, a British peer and the colorful chairman and acknowledged deal-maker of Hanson Industries, the American arm of the British-U.S. conglomerate Hanson PLC, has died. He was 72.
White, who had homes in Bel-Air, Bermuda and elsewhere in the world, died Wednesday at UCLA Medical Center of a rare fungal lung disease.
Lord James Hanson, the British chairman and White’s friend for 35 years, called his partner “the architect of the success of Hanson PLC” and said his death was an “indescribable” loss.
“His unlimited creative ideas and his persistence drove us all forward,” Hanson said in a statement issued from London announcing White’s death. “He was the leading ‘takeover’ expert in the world, and I met no businessman, in the U.S.A. or U.K., with his instinct for opportunity.”
Knighted in 1979 for services to British commercial and community interests in the United States, Lord White was granted a life peerage on the 1991 honors list of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who was said to adore him.
Often described as a swashbuckling, latter-day buccaneer, White was born in Hull, England, on May 11, 1923, and left boarding school at the age of 16. The restless youth got a job with a timber company but resigned when he was denied a raise six months later.
He joined the British Army and in India was assigned to Force 136, a secret organization conducting clandestine warfare in the Far East.
“I liked clandestine operations because you were more independent, more able to make your own decisions,” he said years later. “Blowing up bridges and railway lines was quite fun really.”
Many observers saw that comment as a description of his future business career. White was particularly successful after moving to the United States in 1973 and while acquiring companies throughout the takeover-crazed 1980s.
White and Hanson, introduced by Hanson’s brother, were both known as society playboys in the 1950s. Besides business, they shared interests in fast cars, horses, gambling, snappy clothes and beautiful women.
White dated internationally known actresses such as Ava Gardner, Grace Kelly, Liz Taylor, Kay Kendall, Jean Simmons, Susan Hayward, Mary Tyler Moore and Joan Collins.
The lean, 6-foot-4-inch “Gordy” was married and divorced from Ann Elisabeth Kalen, a Swedish diplomat’s daughter, with whom he had two daughters, and American actress Virginia Northrop, with whom he had a son. In 1992 he married his present wife, model Victoria Tucker, 40 years his junior.
In 1984, White became the first Briton to receive the U.S. National Voluntary Leadership Award, for his work as chairman of the International Committee of the U.S. Congressional Award.
White, who had already handed over power at Hanson Industries to a younger team of managers, had planned to retire in 1997.
