Orr, David Alexander

by Turlough O'Riordan

Orr, David Alexander (1922–2008), businessman, was born 10 May 1922 at 2 Temple Terrace, Dalkey, Co. Dublin, the second eldest of two sons and two daughters of Canon Adrian William Fielder ('Billy') Orr (1888–1964), clergyman, rector (1935–58) of Taney parish (Church of Ireland), Dundrum, Dublin, and treasurer (1955–6) and chancellor (1956–8) of Christ Church cathedral, Dublin, and his wife Grace (née Robinson; d. 1957). Living for a time in Wicklow before his father's transfer to Taney, Orr won a scholarship to the High School, Harcourt Street, Dublin, where he excelled at his studies, and at boxing and rugby. Winning the Thompson exhibition scholarship, he entered TCD in 1940 to read classics.

After two terms, Orr enlisted in the Territorial Army (Royal Ulster Rifles) in 1941, was commissioned into the Royal Engineers and served with Queen Victoria's Own Madras Sappers and Miners during the Burma campaign (1944–5). Orr's unit, the 36th Field Squadron (Madras), was to the fore during the southward advance through Mandalay towards Rangoon in the spring of 1945, aiming to capture the capital before the onset of the monsoon. Tasked with repairing captured airfields and clearing and repairing roads and bridges, Lieutenant Orr supervised the installation of a scissors assault bridge, under close and heavy enemy fire, over a strategic 30-metre gully blocking the advance of British tanks near Kanhla, Yamethin. Promoted to major and awarded the military cross with bar (1945), Orr never spoke about his wartime experiences, even to family and close friends.

Demobbed in 1946, he returned to his studies in TCD, graduating with a first in classics (1947) and an LLB (1948). He captained the TCD boxing team and was twice British Universities cruiserweight champion (1947–8). A powerful centre on the rugby field, he captained the TCD first XV to the final of the Leinster senior cup (1947/8); his try under the posts was disallowed to deny TCD a rare victory in that competition. An Ireland trialist in January 1949, he regarded his failure to gain an Irish cap as his greatest regret. On 25 April 1949 he married Phoebe Rosaleen, daughter of Harold Percival Davis of Lucan, Co. Dublin, at Lucan parish church, Orr's father officiating.

After considering a diplomatic career, Orr joined Unilever (October 1948) as a graduate management trainee. Moving to London, he played rugby with London Irish RFC, whom he captained (1951–4); he was president of the club (1986–8). Training in various Unilever companies in London and the Netherlands before his appointment as a production manager with Lever Bros Ltd, within four years Orr was general advertising manager. Despatched to India as a marketing director with Hindustani Lever, he became vice-chairman and coordinating director there (1955–60). On his return to London he was given charge of overseas territories, including sizeable Unilever concerns in Indonesia and Nigeria. He joined Lever Bros in the USA (1963) as a director and administrative vice-president, and then served as president of Lever Bros in New York (1965–7). Returning to London as coordinating director of Unilever's soap and detergent interests, he was elected to the boards of Unilever Ltd (UK) and Unilever NV (Netherlands) in May 1967. He became vice-chairman of Unilever in 1969 and joined the three-man 'special committee' that ran the company (February 1970). Concluding his seamless rise, he was appointed executive chairman of Unilever Ltd and vice-chairman of Unilever NV in May 1974.

Orr sought to integrate better the disparate structures and fragmented operations of Unilever, then Europe's largest non-oil company and the largest manufacturing concern on the continent, where it undertook two-thirds of its business. Proud of promoting indigenous managerial talent from within the 335,000 staff, Orr was anxious to dispel Unilever's colonial image as a company in which the British and Dutch managed native staff. He sought to develop Unilever's presence in the expanding American market (limited to Lever Bros detergents and Lipton tea and drinks) in response to the slowing of growth in the European market. The acquisition of National Starch and Chemicals Corp. in 1977 – then the biggest acquisition in Unilever history – for $485 million (£250 million) augmented Unilever's presence in the American retail and commercial chemicals' sectors. Orr instituted cost containment and capital investment programmes across Unilever to engender efficiencies and increase productive capacity as the world economy slowed in the late 1970s. He championed Unilever's emerging research in biotechnology; cloned carrots, palm trees and coconut palms produced improved and stabilised yields.

Welcoming the market access and tariff reductions enabled by UK accession to the EEC (1973), Orr decried food labelling regulations (that delimited Unilever's ability to arbitrage prices across various interchangeable oil and fat products) and the impact of the CAP 'butter mountain' on the supply and pricing of oil products, integral to Unilever's operations. Representing centrist British business concerns, Orr served (1972) on the Confederation of British Industry's 'company affairs committee' examining UK industrial relations policy, amongst clamour for greater worker input into management. In January 1977, Prime Minister James Callaghan appointed Orr to a committee, chaired by Harold Wilson, examining the growing role of pension funds and insurance interests in the City of London; its implicit aim was to forestall Labour plans to nationalise major banks and financial services companies. Orr, publicly sceptical of mandatory audit committees for UK PLCs, opposed continuing government intervention that already delimited Unilever dividends to shareholders and restricted international capital transactions. The unique dual-nationality and multinational character of the company (seen as an oil and detergents concern in the Netherlands, and a food combine in the City of London), meant it was particularly prone to currency fluctuations. Orr publicly voiced concerns about the ongoing effect of inflation volatility on private investment in Europe in the early 1980s.

From 1972 Orr assisted with fundraising for the restoration of St Patrick's cathedral, Dublin, and was awarded an honorary LLD by TCD in November 1978. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in June 1977, declared UK businessman of the year that December, and made a commander of the Order of Orange Nassau by Queen Juliana of the Netherlands in July 1979. Retiring in 1982 aged 60, after thirty-three years with Unilever, Orr had driven significant growth: since 1974 annual profits had increased from £328 million to £572 million, on turnover rising from £6,760 million to £10,152 million.

Orr joined the board of Inchcape PLC in September 1982, assuming the chairmanship on 1 January 1983. He was attracted by Inchcape's international orientation and Asian interests; the company operated almost 650 businesses in fifty countries, principally in the Middle and Far East, centred around transportation, logistics, insurance and financial services. He led a comprehensive rationalisation of the group to address profitability, focusing on insurance and financial services, port management and distribution, and disposing of weak performers. He transformed Inchcape from a blueblood colonial trading concern into a professionally managed services conglomerate which specialised in enabling trade with emerging Asian economies, especially China, where he helped Unilever establish a detergent plant in 1985. Recruiting George Turnbull as group managing director in 1984 and as his eventual successor as chairman, Orr became deputy chairman in June 1986; after Turnbull's retirement owing to ill health, Orr returned as chairman in November 1991. He ensured continuity as a new executive management team was put in place, allowing him to retire fully from Inchcape in September 1992.

As his professional City career ended, Orr became increasingly involved in voluntary, educational, artistic and scientific life. He was president of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (1981–9) and of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists (1992–6), a governor of the London School of Economics (1980–96), and a patron of the British–Irish Association from its establishment in 1972. He held directorships with Bank of Ireland (1982–9), Shell (1982–92), and Rio Tinto Zinc (1981–92), was a member of the Senior Salaries Review Body (1982–5) (adjudicating on pay levels in the UK civil service), chairman of the Leverhulme Trust (1982–92), and chaired the Armed Forces' Pay Review Body (1982–4).

Having sensitively overseen the redevelopment of Unilever's listed, art-deco Blackfriars headquarters (deliberate retention of the original pillared facade overlooking the Thames alone cost £5 million), in 1982 Orr was invited to chair the Shakespeare Globe Theatre Trust. A site at Bankside, Southwark, diagonally opposite the chairman's office in Unilever House, Blackfriars (the theatre's architect targeted Orr on this basis), was identified as the most likely location of the original Globe theatre. Orr worked closely with Sam Wanamaker, the project's progenitor, to raise funds internationally, gain governmental and planning approval, and ensure compliance with the artistic and intellectual facets of Elizabethan theatrical recreation. In 1977 the Shakespeare Globe Theatre opened; a bust of Orr on the premises commemorates his support and tireless fundraising for the project.

With T. K. Whitaker (b. 1916), Orr was appointed co-chairman of Anglo–Irish Encounter, established in July 1983 by the British and Irish governments to inculcate dialogue between British and Irish public and professional audiences. Mandated to avoid focusing on the political problems in Northern Ireland, from April 1984 it convened periodic seminars (held alternately in the UK and Ireland) addressing cultural, economic, religious and social issues. Encounter's impact was most lasting in the support it gave to the establishment of Irish studies courses and degrees in British universities, spurring the establishment of the British Association for Irish studies in 1985, of which Orr was a patron. He was also a council member of Chatham House (the Royal Institute of International Affairs) and the Royal Society of Arts.

Orr was chairman of the British Council (1984–92), the UK government-financed body promoting anglophone educational and cultural initiatives globally. Increasing private sponsorship (which rose sevenfold to £3.8 million (1983–91)) of the council's varied international activities, Orr relished the cultural aspects of this role. He was chancellor of QUB (1992–8), and received an honorary LLD from the NUI (1993).

Orr was a direct and exacting manager, but his considerable charm and powers of persuasion generated great loyalty in those with whom he worked. He was sociable and vivacious, and in his leisure greatly enjoyed poetry and the theatre, and playing golf 'badly'. A member of the Athenaeum Club, London, and the Boys' Brigade in Ireland, he was immensely proud of his Irish heritage and made regular visits to Ireland with his family. After suffering the debilitating effects of a stroke in 1998, he retired from public life. He died 2 February 2008 of cancer of the bladder at his home, Home Farm House, Shackleford, Godalming, Surrey. A thanksgiving service was held 25 November 2008, in Southwark cathedral, London. He was survived by his wife and their three daughters.