Michael Edwardes

Sir Michael Owen Edwardes (11 October 1930 – 15 September 2019)[1] was a British-South African business executive who held chairmanships at several companies - most notably motor manufacturer British Leyland in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

[3] In 1966, he served as the general manager of Alkaline Batteries, one of the group's operating companies at Redditch, Worcestershire, UK.

In 1977, he was appointed as chief executive of British Leyland, and within two weeks he became chairman[4] as the company's board was 'pruned' from 13 to 7 members.

[6] The next year, he attracted criticism for a speech to the CBI Conference in which he said, "If the Cabinet do not have the wit and imagination to reconcile our industrial needs with the fact of North Sea oil, they would do better to leave the bloody stuff in the ground".

[9] From 1984 to 1993, Edwardes was chief executive of Minorco, a Luxembourg based mining company that narrowly failed to take over Consolidated Gold Fields in a bitter and high-profile battle.