The Chronicle 2022

and shed a layer of senior management after the Guinness share scandal. He accepted on condition that Morgan Grenfell bought Phoenix Securities, but found challenges awaiting him on several fronts, not least in the coolness of his reception when he took command. A low moment came in December 1988 when he took the decision – the most difficult of his life, he said later - to close Morgan Grenfell Securities, formed at Big Bang from the brokers Pember & Boyle and jobbers Pinchin Denny, which was losing £1million a week. Some 770 jobs had to be axed and emotions ran high: “We had one or j two young chaps bashing down computer screens, and one joker before he left phoned the weather announcement in Sydney and left the phone hanging. We found it 24 hours later:’ When a sale of Morgan Grenfell itself looked inevitable, Craven’s deal making instinct came into play to secure £950 million from Deutsche Bank at the end of 1989. Again, some colleagues were disgruntied: “Somebody said this is a terrible defeat; Craven observed. “I think it is a tremendous achievement: In fact the relationship with the new German owners worked well, at least in the initial years.” With Craven now chairman, Morgan Grenfell was able to expand in Europe and further afield and, as Euromoney magazine put it, “prove its critics wrong’’. John Anthony Craven was born at Leominster on October 23, 1940, the son of William Craven, an engineer, and his wife Hilda, nee Magness. When William’s work took the family to South Africa, John was educated at Michaelhouse near Pietermaritzburg, returning to England in 1958 to read Law at Jesus College, Cambridge. After graduating he took off - like many bright young men of his generation - for Canada, where he trained as an accountant in Toronto and worked for the leading investment bank Wood Gundy. In 1967 he returned to London, having been talent spotted to join the fast-rising firm of S G Warburg & Co, specialising in eurobond insurance and becoming a director two years later - reputedly the youngest in any City merchant bank at that time. The hothouse pressure of working for

the bank’s founder Siegmund Warburg eventually wore Craven down, and he left in 1973 to join Credit Suisse White Weld, an American Swiss venture that was also making a name in the City under another euromarket pioneer, Stanislas Yassukovich. After a stint in Tokyo, Craven succeeded Yassukovich as chief executive but departed in 1978, having opposed a merger which created the new firm of Credit Suisse First Boston. Driven and determined, formidable in his grasp of detail and capacity to dictate flawless deal documents at speed, Craven was at his best working with small, hand-picked teams in advisory roles and negotiations. But he did not relish the limelight - “the cult of the personality in finance has gone much too far;’ he once observed - or the boardroom politics of larger organisations. He rejoined Warburgs in 1979 in the expectation of becoming chairman, but when that role went to another Siegmund protege, David Scholey, he moved to become head of European investment banking at the US giant Merrill Lynch – where he found his autonomy constrained and his surroundings uncongenial. He and another senior recruit, the City grandee David Montagu (Lord Swaythling), famously refused to use Merrill’s in house lunch facilities, declaring: “The Savoy Grill is our canteen:’ Craven swiftly moved on, gathering an able group of friends and former colleagues around him at Phoenix. He retired in 1997 from what was by then Deutsche Morgan Grenfell and which soon afterwards would drop Morgan Grenfell’s name altogether. He was also at various times chairman of Patagonia Gold, Lonmin (formerly Lonrho) and Tootal, a director of Rothmans and Reuters, and a board member of the Royal Marsden NHS Trust. He was chairman from 2003 to 2007 of Fleming Family & Partners, having helped the family in 2000 to negotiate the £4 billion sale of their bank, Robert Fleming, to Chase Manhattan, while at the same time rescuing its celebrated Scottish art collection. John Craven was knighted in 1996.

found relaxation in playing the piano. He married first, in 1961, Gill Murray, with whom he had a son and a daughter, and secondly, in 1970, Jane Stiles-Allen, with whom he had three sons. Both marriages were dissolved, and he married thirdly, in 2005, Ning Chang, who died in 2009. He is survived by his five children.

ENTHOVEN, DICK Born 1937, Died 2022 Michaelhouse, 1951-1954

Billionaire South African businessman Dick Enthoven, who played a key role in building businesses like Nando’s, Hollard Insurance, Auto and General, Direct Axis, and the Spier Wine Farm, has died at the age of 85 after a battle with cancer. His father, Robert, a Dutch immigrant, founded a small insurance broker in the 1950s. Hollard emerged as the largest privately-owned insurer in South Africa, and has businesses on four continents, under the management of Dick and his brother Patrick. Enthoven was a member of parliament for the Unity Party in the 1970s. Known for his anti-apartheid position, he was expelled for “disloyalty” in 1975. In the 1980s, Enthoven invested in insurance start-up, Auto & General and then provided financial backing for Nando’s, when it had just three restaurants in Johannesburg. Following fast growth in South Africa, Enthoven opened the Nando’s franchise in the UK, and his family held a majority stake in the international businesses. In 1993, he purchased Spier Wine Farm, which then saw a hotel development, and emerged as a centre for the arts Enthoven was a great supporter of fine arts, especially of emerging and young South African artists. Nando’s owns the world’s largest collection of South African art. In 2015, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index estimated Enthoven’s fortune at $1.1 billion.

He was a keen skier, and in later years, encouraged by his third wife Ning, he

According to a Wits citation, Enthoven’s favourite quote was “the gratification of

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