Sir Colin Corness obituary: industrialist who went on to lead Glaxo

Times

17-07-2025

Sir Colin Corness took his perks seriously. When he became chairman of Glaxo (now GSK), he took a chauffeur-driven car to the company's Berkeley Square head office even though he lived only a few minutes' walk away. On £200,000 a year for two days a week in the 1990s, he was then one of Britain's highest-paid non-executive directors. 'We believe it is a fair salary for a man of Sir Colin's experience,' said a Glaxo spokesman.
It was nearly double what Corness was paid latterly as chairman of Redland, the brick and tile-making firm he had joined 30 years earlier. Promoted to the board in 1977, he helped to turn it into one of the most successful companies in the European construction industry. 'I would just like to think I have continued with a very good recipe and made the most of it,' he said in 1991. 'Profits were £5 million a year when I joined. Last year they were nearly £250 million. Germany is booming and that is why we have recently been the UK's best-performing construction company. More than 80 per cent of our profits come from outside Britain, and we are the envy of the industry. There have been numerous competitors, of course, but we have always stayed ahead of those who have copied us.'
Redland was founded after the First World War in Reigate, Surrey, to employ ex-servicemen making tiles from sand and cement instead of the traditional clay. That 1920s generation was still in control in the 1960s but Corness realised they would soon be bowing out, so it was 'the chance of a lifetime'. Within five years of his arrival they had all retired.
The year before he joined the company a German, Rudolf Brass, turned up with a plan to introduce the tiles to West Germany, which was in the midst of postwar rebuilding. A joint venture followed, and when he took the reins Corness enthusiastically built more factories throughout Germany and eastern Europe. 'That was the secret of our success above all else,' he said.
His undoing was a deal too far; a 1992 hostile takeover bid for Steetley, which also made bricks and tiles. 'We are bigger and we are rather more skilful at tax management than they are,' Corness said. But he underestimated the resourcefulness of Steetley's chairman, David Donne (obituary June 3, 2011). When they argued over who had the more bricks, Donne sent a helicopter to photograph the Redland brickyards. He squeezed the price up to £615 million, which stretched Redland so far that Corness stepped down and the firm was broken up a few years later.
A barrister who never practised, Corness made a strong case against companies giving money to political parties, something he stopped at Glaxo as soon as he arrived. 'I disagreed with the practice of political donations,' he explained. 'After all, there had never been a poll taken as to what shareholders, employees or customers thought about such contributions.'
Colin Ross Corness was born in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Manchester, in 1931, son of Thomas Corness and Mary (née Lovelace). Thomas owned a distillery that made George IV whisky and was taken over by Distillers Company, now part of Diageo. Colin had a brother, Ian, who became a sales executive. They were evacuated to the West Country during the Second World War.
Growing up in Cheshire, as a Scout, Colin visited Alstonefield in the Peak District, regarded as one of Staffordshire's most attractive villages. He decided to live there when he retired. He attended Uppingham school and Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he read law. Having been denied a tank regiment, he did National Service as a lieutenant in the Royal Scots Dragoons cavalry.
Corness entered the Inner Temple and was called to the Bar. He later obtained an MBA at Harvard Business School. He was engaged to be married but, his nephew Simon says, he remained single to prioritise his career.
He was the first Cambridge graduate to join the Taylor Woodrow building group, at £500 a year. On his first day his boss told him: 'Before you start, as far as I'm concerned you don't know nothing.' Corness said: 'He was quite right, of course, so I immediately set out to remedy this.' He impressed the chairman, Frank (later Lord) Taylor, sufficiently for him to be made managing director of the construction arm aged only 30. But when he was poached by Redland four years later, Taylor was so angry he initially threatened that his firm would never again buy from Redland. 'It proved an empty threat,' said Corness, 'but it was many years before Frank would talk to me.' After he left Redland, he was welcomed back on to the Taylor Woodrow board.
In the 1980s he was appointed to the court of the Bank of England and became a director of the SG Warburg merchant bank, National Westminster, the steel and aluminium firm Unitech, Courtaulds and WH Smith. He was chairman of Nationwide Anglia, the building society.
Corness was also on the National Economic Development Committee for the building industry, the Industrial Development Advisory Board, the British-American Chamber of Commerce, the National Council of Building Materials Products and the Institute of Roofing.
He was active in a number of charities. As chairman of Magdalene's campaign committee, his significant role in construction of the new library was recognised by having the top-floor reading room named after him. He was knighted for services to the construction industry in 1986.
When he retired, he fulfilled his childhood desire to return to Alstonefield. 'I looked at many properties,' he said, 'but knew immediately that Stoneleigh, a Grade II listed Georgian property, was right for me. Its proportions were well suited to my needs and my collection of antiques.'
He furnished Stoneleigh with a Georgian mahogany campaign secretaire, an 18th-century chest of drawers and a George III mahogany serpentine chest of drawers. Works of art included painted decoy ducks, a silver chamberstick, a 19th-century oak linen press, a vintage crocodile skin attaché case, a boot rack and a brass ship's gimbal desk lamp. The walls were decorated with an Edgar Hunt farmyard painting, a 19th-century Highland landscape oil painting and a John Speed map of Rutland. He eventually sold the property to live in London, where he enjoyed travel, music and tennis.
Gerald Corbett, the former Railtrack chief executive who was a colleague on the Redland board, said: 'Colin set exacting standards of behaviour. Although he was quite old-fashioned, dry sherry before lunch and all the rest of it, with him your word was your bond.'
Sir Colin Corness, industrialist, was born on October 9, 1931. He died on June 25, 2025 aged 93