Sir Richard Greenbury: Marks & Spencer chief executive who rose from trainee

He remained with the company for his entire career and oversaw its rise to fortune

‘He had 40 years of unmitigated success, followed by one poor one’: the Greenbury legacy is long and somewhat varied (PA)

Sir Richard Greenbury, who has died aged 81, was a rare breed in industry in that he remained with one company, M&S, his entire working life. He rose from a 16-year-old management trainee to become the company’s chief executive, and later chairman.

At his height, he could do no wrong, turning M&S’s fortunes around and making it the second most profitable retailer in the world after US giant Walmart, and the ninth largest company in Britain; for two years it posted profits of £1bn-plus. He rubbed shoulders with the great and the good of the time, including the then-Prime Minister, John Major, and Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson.

However, boardroom battles, bitter infighting, his sensitivity to criticism, his intransigence to change for the provision for a successor, coupled with a disastrous set of financial results which saw M&S’s shares fall by a tenth in a day, and an attempted coup by deputy chairman Keith Oates, all contrived to eventually see Greenbury step down in 1999, after 46 years at the company.

Born in working-class Carlisle in 1936, Richard Greenbury was the son of Richard, a travelling salesman, and Dorothy, a shop assistant. After six years in Leeds, the family moved to west London, where young Richard attended Ealing County Grammar School. A keen sportsman, his large 6ft 2in frame helped him to excel at tennis and football – though his abrasive manner and combative temperament surfaced early; he often boasted he had been the most caned boy in the school’s history.

He later reflected, “I think of myself as a northerner. It’s that mixture of Scottish, Geordie and Yorkshire that makes me so competitive – there’s nothing more competitive than a Scot … But they were the happiest times I can remember in my life. I loved being at school, fantastic, did nothing but play tennis and football.”

His athleticism brought Slazenger sponsorship and he competed in junior Wimbledon, which earned him a coveted membership to the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, plus his own locker. Greenbury had university aspirations, but shortly after his parents divorced, his mother was diagnosed with cancer. Aged 16, he left school to earn money, working briefly at sports retailer Lillywhite’s in Piccadilly Circus as a packer.

Upon arriving at M&S, Greenbury rose rapidly through the ranks, proving a success in men’s knitwear, where the company sold low-cost, machine-washable lambswool sweaters, before becoming the youngest director, at 36, in the company’s history.

He found an early ally in Simon Marks, son of the store’s founder, before then chairman Marcus Sieff promoted him to managing director in 1977. Greenbury had the thankless job of bridging the gap between M&S’s family business origins and its conversion into a modern food, clothing and home furnishings retailer, when firms such as Habitat already offered excellent furniture and furnishings and Next covered young women affordable fashions. Marks and Sparks was where their mothers shopped.

He was seen as having an uncanny understanding of what would sell – though his manner left a nasty taste. When company Jaguars regularly broke down, Greenbury pressed the case to switch to German cars, an abhorrence to the founding Jewish families with their commitment to British-made goods. He, however, flung down his company car keys and announced he would buy a BMW on his own account.

Nonetheless, despite these spats and abandoning the M&S policy of only buying British, further success followed with Greenbury putting in long hours, including regular weekend store visits. By the 1990s, he had built effective supplier relationships and rationalised the supplier numbers, meaning that instead of 40 companies making ladies’ blouses, there were six, but six very powerful and capable ones. Greenbury was suitably rewarded in 1988 when he was appointed chief executive, and three years later the chairmanship.

He was knighted in 1992, and a year later named Retailer of the Year, having pulled M&S through the early 1990s recession and sacking over 600 staff. Despite his autocratic style and – as one director later said, “Rick ruled by fear”, Greenbury continued to oversee growth and accelerated the opening of out-of-town stores. By the end of the Nineties, they accounted for a quarter of sales. Profits almost doubled again, to £1.1bn in 1997.

By 1996, M&S’s share had risen to 15 per cent of the UK clothing market, but Greenbury lacked strategic vision, with competitors copying and learning from M&S. By 1997, M&S clothing was increasingly seen as “unexciting”, while a decision to expand and purchase 19 Littlewood stores was made just before an economic downturn.

Greenbury’s decline was rapid. By September 1998, sales had collapsed, which management had not foreseen, and by November, he reported a 23 per cent fall in profits. Almost concurrently, deputy chairman Oates attempted his coup, and was fired. Greenbury returned from overseas business and was forced to name a successor. Peter Salsbury got the job, but he and Greenbury (captured vividly by a Channel 4 documentary at the time) clashed repeatedly until Greenbury’s departure six months later.

Yet despite derision from the media and shareholders, the City loved him. “Life has been unfair to Sir Richard. He had 40 years of unmitigated success followed by one poor one; and that’s the one he’ll be remembered for,” one supporter wrote.

His legacy, however, is varied, with some claiming he weakened M&S through lack of innovation in the face of competition from Next and Primark, and leaving it open to a takeover bid by Arcadia Group owner, Sir Philip Green, in 2004. “Rick was a brilliant operator, but he couldn’t innovate his way out of a paper bag,” a former director said at the time.

Post-resignation, Greenbury admitted avoiding M&S stores for a couple of years thereafter. He served on the supervisory board of Philips Electronics and was a director of Electronics Boutique, a chain of video game stores.

Greenbury married his first wife, Sian Hughes, in 1959, while he was a supervisor at M&S in Edinburgh. She abandoned her degree and headed south with him, having four children. They separated amicably in 1985 and he married Gabrielle McManus, a senior M&S executive. They parted company in 1996, whereupon he remarried Sian. He died of kidney failure, aged 81.

Richard Greenbury, retailer, born 31 July 1936, died 27 September 2017