My father, John Gardiner, who has died aged 87, was a financial journalist and businessman who forged a remarkable career in British industry over 40 years, culminating in his role as chairman of Tesco (1997-2004).
In 1970, aged just 34 and with no experience of running a business, he became chief executive of the engineering company Cammell Laird, then on the brink of bankruptcy, and transformed what became the Laird Group into a profitable business. Early recognition for the remarkable turnaround came in 1981, when he was made Guardian Young Businessman of the Year.
John’s forthright and uncompromising approach had been honed as a journalist on the Financial Times, between 1960 and 1968. He was a Lex columnist with James Joll, and together they gained a reputation for holding bosses of publicly quoted companies to account.
In 1968, he joined the Industrial Reorganisation Corporation, set up by the Labour government to improve industrial performance through mergers. He was in charge of a number of investigations, including on Rolls-Royce and a plan to save Cammell Laird, then drowning under £20m of losses. He took on Laird, he said, because nobody else would.
Born in Lancing, Sussex, John was the son of Irene (nee Richardson) and Charlie Gardiner, who left school at 14 but worked his way up to be a manager of Hannington’s department store in Brighton.
John went to Shoreham grammar school in Sussex, then to Brighton Technical College to study an outreach economics degree run by the London School of Economics. He finished the course at LSE, and on graduating joined the Prudential insurance company in 1957 as an economist, then the FT, where he started by answering tax and investment queries.
He was at Laird for nearly 30 years. During this time he was recruited on to many company boards and took on public appointments including chair of Brunel University council (1980-84), where he was instrumental in setting up the science park.
A true iconoclast, John tilted at the world from his own very particular point of view. He always challenged those with power – civil servants, fellow board directors and City folk. This did not always make him popular but he did not mind; he saw it as a badge of honour that he never took the path of least resistance.
Dad loved drinking espressos and eating croissants, reading the newspapers and going to the cinema and theatre.
In 1961 he married Celia Adams. She died in 2016, and he is survived by their three children, Britt, Anna and me, and two grandsons.
