SIR CHIPS KESWICK, SCION OF THE JARDINE MATHESON DYNASTY WHO CHAIRED HAMBROS AND ARSENAL – OBITUARY
Sir Chips Keswick, scion of the Jardine Matheson dynasty who chaired Hambros and Arsenal – obituary
Sir Chips Keswick, who has died aged 84, was born into the dynasty that built the Far Eastern trading empire of Jardine Matheson, but made his own path to become chairman of Hambros Bank and Arsenal Football Club.
Keswick’s rise to become, in 1986, the first non-family leader of the 153-year-old merchant banking house of Hambros followed a split between directors led by its fifth-generation chairman Rupert Hambro, who wanted a more nimble, deal-led business, and those who were cautious of change in the “Big Bang” era of City reform.
When Rupert and his brothers Richard and James (with their father Jocelyn, the bank’s elder statesman) left to form their own boutique firm, tensions ran high. But all parties respected the integrity of Keswick: large and forceful but always courteous, he shouldered responsibility and never shied away from difficult decisions.
Hambros sailed on under his leadership, bolstered by estate agency and insurance interests: in 1993, the Telegraph called it “one of the City’s most blue-chip banks… worth £633 million”. But it lacked capital and strategic strength to compete in the cut-throat marketplace of the mid-1990s, in which rivals such as Barings and Warburgs fell.
An entanglement in a speculative takeover bid for the Co-op (for which Keswick issued an unprecedented public apology) was seen as a sign that Hambros was losing its way. In December 1997 the group was broken up, its banking business sold for £300 million to Société Générale of France.
Meanwhile, a close friend of Keswick at Hambros was Peter Hill-Wood, who headed the bank’s investment division and inherited, from his father and grandfather, the chairmanship of Arsenal – where Keswick had been a fan since first seeing the team play in 1949, declaring among his heroes the Compton brothers Denis and Leslie and (as a budding keeper himself) the goalie George Swindin.
In 2005, Hill-Wood persuaded Keswick to join the Arsenal board. If the pair were sometimes depicted as cigar-smoking patricians from an earlier era, they guarded the club’s best interests with high skill and diplomacy, particularly in relation to manouevres for control by the oligarch Alisher Usmanov and the US sports billionaire Sam Kroenke, who eventually gained full ownership.
As the club itself put it, Keswick was “the natural choice” to succeed Hill-Wood as chairman from 2013 – and it was typical that he did not duck the decision to part company with the veteran manager Arsène Wenger when the club’s fortunes were fading in 2018.
Having passed 80, Keswick retired from the chair in 2020 – Arsenal’s FA Cup final victory against Chelsea shortly afterwards marking a fitting end to his tenure.
John Chippendale Lindley Keswick was born in Shanghai on February 2 1940. He was the second of three sons (followed by a daughter) of Sir William “Tony” Keswick and his wife Mary, daughter of Sir Francis Lindley who was British ambassador in Tokyo. Always known as Chips, he liked to attribute his name to the Chinese Chippendale bed in which he was conceived.
The Keswicks descend from a sister of William Jardine, who with James Matheson began trading in tea, silk and opium at Canton in 1832. Tony Keswick combined his role as director of Jardine Matheson in Shanghai with chairmanship of the Municipal Council of the International Settlement – but Chips was still a toddler when the family returned to England after the Japanese seizure of power.
In his own words, Chips was “a late starter”. After Eton, he failed to gain a place at Cambridge and was despatched by his mother in 1959 to the university of Aix-en-Provence – “because my uncle had a vineyard there” – where he spent two years playing bridge and rugby.
His elder brother Henry had already joined Jardine Matheson; his younger brother Simon would follow, both in due course to be taipan (resident head) in Hong Kong. But their father steered Chips into banking with Glyn, Mills & Co, where as a clerk in Child & Co, its private clients arm, he was privy to “what everybody who was anyone was doing in London, who they were having affairs with… what bets they had at the bookies”.
When it became clear he had no future with Glyn, Mills, his mother intervened again: this time with her Essex neighbour Silvia Hambro, whose husband Jocelyn had recently taken Hambros’ helm and who offered Chips a berth in 1965.
Still he thought of himself as no more than “a punctual Hooray Henry”. But a posting to New York when he was 29 was the making of him: “I learned about risk… It showed me I am a hunter.” At 34, back in London, he was running Hambros’ banking division and grappling with the legacy of bad Scandinavian shipping loans that was a long-term blight on the bank’s balance sheet.
Having retired from Hambros’ chair in 1998, he remained an adviser to Société Générale until 2000. From 1993 to 2001 he was a non-executive director (as his father had been) of the Bank of England; he also sat on the boards of the De Beers and Anglo-American mining businesses and the housebuilder Persimmon.
Keswick had a range of private passions besides football. He loved fishing on the Test, taking a serious interest in river improvement as chairman of the Test & Itchen Association. He played competitive bridge at the Portland Club, in laconic style, sometimes four afternoons a week. And he kept horses in training with Jamie Snowden at Lambourn.
When Present View won the Cheltenham Novices’ Handicap Chase for him in 2014, Keswick was with Arsenal in Germany for a match against Bayern Munich – and legend said he stopped the team bus to watch the race. Another Cheltenham winner was You Wear It Well in last year’s Mares’ Novices’ Hurdle. He also owned horses in partnership with the Queen, an old friend of his wife Sarah.
Perhaps most of all he loved the landscape of south-west Scotland, where he spent boyhood summers on his father’s Glenkiln estate. At his own nearby domain, Auchendolly in the Urr valley, he kept a fine shoot, discreetly entertained the King and Queen, and was highly regarded as a benevolent employer and landlord.
He was knighted in 1993 and was a member of the Royal Company of Archers, the sovereign’s bodyguard for Scotland.
He married, in 1966, Lady Sarah Ramsay, daughter of the 16th Earl of Dalhousie, who survives him with their sons David, Tobias and Adam – for whom he was a devoted and generous pater familias. Lady Sarah is one of the Queen’s six appointed Companions; Adam Keswick is an executive director of Jardine Matheson.
Sir Chips Keswick, born February 2 1940, died April 17 2024
Story by Telegraph Obituaries: The Telegraph:
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