Louis Sherwood
Businessman and entrepreneur, Louis Sherwood, who died on 26 March aged 67, was a past Master of Bristol’s Society of Merchant Venturers and had a career that spanned financial services, retailing in the UK and US, and commercial television at the highest level.
Louis Sherwood was born in Hammersmith, London in 1941. He attended Westminster School where he was a Queen’s Scholar and ultimately became Captain of the School. He obtained an open major scholarship to New College, Oxford, where he read Classics and graduated with a Double First, gaining a Master of Arts the following year.
Having been awarded a prestigious Harkness Fellowship, he travelled to the West Coast of America to study for two years at Stanford Business School, becoming one of only a handful of international students there at that time.
While many of his Stanford contemporaries went on to set up small businesses, Louis Sherwood returned to London and, in 1965, took up employment with the merchant bank Morgan Grenfell, so beginning an association with financial services – one of the two mainstream business activities with which he was connected throughout his career.
His contemporaries must have thought he was set for a high-flying career in the City, but after three successful years he turned instead to a career in retail business management.
Working with the entrepreneur Jim Gulliver of Associated British Foods, he rapidly learned the skills of supermarket trading, first with Associated’s Fine Fare chain and later with its Melias convenience store business.
Within four years he had joined Cavenham Foods, led by the high profile entrepreneur, James Goldsmith. He later described this as the best thing he ever did in his business life, finding Goldsmith as an inspirational person and an exciting, if demanding, individual to work for. Louis Sherwood rapidly became a director of various companies within Goldsmith’s Anglo-Continental Group and grew both the insurance broking and property development arms of the business.
When Goldsmith acquired the Grand Union Group in America in the mid 1970s, Louis Sherwood was sent to be senior Vice-President in charge of development. He was to spend 10 very successful business years in the US, his final four with the Great Atlantic and Pacific group, which had a nationwide chain of 1,200 stores and sales of more than £10 billion. He was appointed group president in 1985.
By this time, Louis Sherwood and his French wife Nicole, who he had married while still in London, had a young family. He was keen to move back to England to give his children the benefit of an English education and as a result the family settled in Bristol in 1988 where he had been headhunted to run Gateway, the Bristol-based supermarket chain and forerunner of the current Somerfield group. Within a year Gateway had been taken over and Louis Sherwood found himself looking for a new job. It was at this point in his life that his career took a fresh turn – one which was to benefit the city which he had made his home.
Deciding to move on from executive roles and directly managing businesses, he began a 20-year career as a non-executive director, using his skills and expertise in businesses as varied as Clerical Medical Insurance, Wessex Water and maintenance and construction group ROK.
Perhaps his most significant non-executive role was with commercial television broadcaster HTV, where he was group chairman between 1991 and 1997.
He is widely credited with overseeing its rescue from bankruptcy and establishing it as a hugely-successful media organisation. It was the last of the independent regional TV groups to be absorbed into a national operator. When it was acquired by United News & Media in July 1997, he became chairman of HTV West, the HTV Regional Advisory Board for the West of England, a role he continued until November 1999.
In his 20 years in Bristol, Louis Sherwood’s work for the city and wider region demonstrated a commitment to improvement and lasting change for the better for his adopted home and its citizens. This began with significant time devoted to education; as a governor and member of Council at Clifton College from 1992, and later as a member of the governing body of the University of the West of England of which he remained until his death. He was also a trustee and deputy Chairman of the Merchants’ Academy and a trustee of the Hanover Foundation.
He also served as a non-executive director of the United Bristol Hospitals Trust (now University Hospitals Bristol) and through that role became involved with the Bristol Urological Institute. He was closely involved with the Saint Monica Trust, where he was a trustee, and worked to assist in the rapid expansion of healthcare for elderly people in Bristol. He was also a trustee of the ss Great Britain Trust and Bristol Cultural Development Partnership.
But perhaps his most enduring legacy is his commitment to cultural development and improvement. Early on, he became a leading figure in the then Bristol Chamber of Commerce (now GWE Business West). He was the main instigator of cultural initiatives such as @Bristol, which he helped launch in 1995/96, and the Bristol Cultural Development Partnership, where he was a director. He was also a leading proponent of the bid to develop a new showpiece concert hall for the city and it was not for want of trying that the scheme did not ultimately succeed.
As a member of Bristol’s Society of Merchant Venturers, he became the Master in 2003. The energy that he had demonstrated in so many other areas of activity was visible in his period of office, as significant reorganisations were made. The partnership between the Society and the establishment of the Merchants’ Academy at Withywood, where he made a substantial financial as well as personal commitment, were ventures in which he played a central part.
In 2004 he was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Business Administration by University of the West of England and this year Bristol University made him Doctor of Laws in recognition of his outstanding personal achievements and his contribution to the advancement of the cultural, educational and business interests of Bristol and its region.
A keen mountain walker and linguist, he enjoyed collecting fine wine and was the past Maître of the Commanderie de Bordeaux in Bristol. He will be remembered as a remarkably generous man, of enormous energy, and incisive judgement. He is survived by his wife, a son and two daughters.
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