Hanson [antikvár]

Preface and Acknowledgements The first major story this author (Alex Brummer) ever wrote for a national newspaper focused on the proposed merger of James Hanson's emerging industrial group Hanson Trust with Malcolm Horsman's Bowater in the summer of 1973. One knew very little about James Hanson or, for that matter, Malcolm Horsman at that time, except that both the companies they chaired, while independently successful, were viewed by the investment community as being run by a new generation of financially orientated industrialists with strong connections to Jim Slater's investment group: Slater Walker Securities. The Hanson-Bowater link-up never took place because of the intervention of the Monopolies Conmiission but, over the last two decades, one rarely lost sight of the tall, elegant business leader from Huddersfieid. As a financial correspondent in London and later as a foreign correspondent in Washington I never ceased to be curious as to how James Hanson had managed to break away from the Slater stable, build a transatlantic empire and add a Conservative peerage to the controversial knighthood bestowed upon him by a Labour prime minister. So when, in the spring of 1991, James Hanson became embroiled in what would potentially be the biggest takeover in UK financial history, the siege of ICI, I became determined to know more about this very private financier, his political connections and his driving ambitions. When first approached by Giles O'Bryen, then of Fourth Estate, about a possible biography of Hanson I was initially sceptical. Even though, as an incumbent financial editor, I had a useful relationship with Lord Hanson, he had never shown any interest in cooperating on a biography. Nevertheless, the seed of an idea had been planted. With the encouragement of a former colleague and old friend Stewart