Hanson, James Edward (1922- )

English entrepreneur. He founded Hanson Trust in 1964 with his partner, English executive Gordon White, who developed the group's strong US focus. Hanson transformed a small agricultural supplier into one of the largest Anglo-American conglomerates, with interests including chemicals, energy, building materials, and tobacco. He stepped down from Hanson following its demergers and reorganization in 1997.

Hanson's aggressive acquisition strategy, with often contested bids, embodied the corporate style of the 1980s. When White died in 1995, Hanson's stock was under-performing the FTSE 100 by almost 50% and the company was under severe shareholder pressure to deliver more value. The US industries were demerged in 1995 and in 1997 the original Hanson group was broken up into four parts: Imperial Tobacco, the Energy Group, Millennium Chemicals, and the building materials group (which was the only part of the company to retain the Hanson name). Hanson remains chairman emeritus and consultant to what is known unofficially as ‘new Hanson’. A close associate of former UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher, he is a Conservative Party supporter and an anti-euro (single currency) campaigner, participating in the launch of Business for Sterling in 1998. He was knighted in 1976 and became a life peer in 1983.

Hanson was born in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, the son of a local haulier and owner of the Hanson Transport Group. He served in the Army from 1939 to 1946.

He floated Hanson Trust in 1964 out of the former Wiles Group, a fertilizer and sack-hire company, and developed it into an industrial management company in the 1970s. His strategy was to buy into struggling companies, then sell off the under-performing elements and squeeze more value out of the remaining assets. In the 1980s he started bidding for established names and took the company into the FTSE 100 with a series of takeovers. These included Ever Ready (1982), United Drapery Stores (1983), Imperial Tobacco (1986), Consolidated Goldfields (1989), and Beazer (1991) in the UK; and, in the USA, SCM, for its speciality chemical interests, (1986); Kidde Peabody and Cavenham Forest Industries, the latter being an asset swap with Anglo-French industrialist James Goldsmith for his 85% interest (1990). An estimated two-thirds of the billions Hanson spent on these takeovers were recovered from disposals, such as the sale of Imperial Tobacco's non-tobacco assets in the UK and SCM's non-peripheral interests in the USA.

In 1991 Hanson attempted to bid for ICI; on a single day in May that year, he acquired a 2.8% stake at a cost of about £240 million. However, after a bitter battle, Hanson emerged the worse; ICI won, later demerging its pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals businesses as Zeneca.