David Orr
 David Orr    ( businessman) | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 10 May 1922 Dalkey, County Dublin, Eire |
| Died | 2 February 2008 (Age 85) |
Cause of death | undisclosed |
| Nationality | UK |
| Alma mater | Trinity College (Dublin) |
Sir David Alexander Orr was an Anglo-Irish business executive who attended the 1977 Bilderberg meeting as CEO of Unilever.
Background
Orr was born a few miles from Dublin into the Protestant ascendancy, the third child of Canon A.W.F. Orr, Rector of a Dublin parish and Canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford.[1]
Education
He won a scholarship to the High School in Dublin and studied classics at Trinity College Dublin, then a pillar of Protestantism in an increasingly Catholic environment.[1]
Before the Second World War Orr had joined a Territorial unit of the Royal Ulster Rifles and left university to join the Royal Engineers. In the latter part of the war he fought in British India, and received two Military Crosses for the rapid advance of the Fourteen Army from Mandalay to capture Rangoon in the spring of 1945 before the monsoon set in.[1]
Career
In 1948, after completing a law degree, Orr became a graduate trainee at Unilever. Seven years later he returned to the East to work for Unilever's important Indian subsidiary before returning as a member of the group's "Overseas Committee" supervising Unilever's activities in the developing world. By 1965 he had been promoted to be president of Lever Bros, one of Unilver's American subsidiaries and in 1967 joined the main board.
By 1970, while still only 47, he had risen to vice-chairman and was a member of the three-man Anglo-Dutch "special committee" which controlled the group. As chairman for eight years from 1974, he had to cope with the economic upheavals of the late 1970s as well as the problems inevitable in steering an enormous global business, with its two headquarters, in London and Rotterdam, covering a wide range of products from Lipton's tea to washing powder.[1]
He joined the Inchcape Group in 1983 as chairman after the retirement of the third Lord Inchape, who had built up the company over a quarter of a century into an international trading group, sitting until 1986.[1]
Other positions
Until his final retirement in 1993 at the age of 70, he sat on a number of salary-review boards in the public sector and was a non-executive director of a number of companies including Shell and Rio Tinto Zinc. He also had chairmanships at the British Council and the Globe Theatre Trust. He was Governor at the London School of Economics 1980-96 and President of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine 1981-89.[1]
Event Participated in
| Event | Start | End | Location(s) | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bilderberg/1977 | 22 April 1977 | 24 April 1977 | Imperial Hotel Torquay UK | The 25th Bilderberg, held in Torquay, England. |
