Sir Duncan Oppenheim

Duncan Morris Oppenheim, businessman, artist and arts administrator: born St Helens, Lancashire 6 August 1904; assistant solicitor, Linklakers & Paines 1929-34; solicitor, British American Tobacco 1934-35, head of legal department 1935-49, director 1943-66, vice-chairman 1949-53, chairman 1953-66, president 1966-72, adviser 1972-74; Chairman of Council, Royal College of Art 1956-72; Chairman, Council of Industrial Design 1960-72; Kt 1960; married 1932 Joyce Mitcheson (died 1933), 1936 Susan Macnaghten (died 1964; one son, one daughter); died London 5 January 2003.

Duncan Oppenheim combined an extremely successful business career with a lifelong interest in the arts. While chairman of British American Tobacco (1953-66), he was also Chairman of the Council of the Royal College of Art (1956-72), as well as exhibiting his own work in the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibitions.

For a man who achieved so much, he was relentlessly modest, possibly as a result of his mother's strongly held Presbyterian views. He also seemed to have a permanent twinkle in his eye, although small talk did not come easily to such a dashing figure until he became more relaxed during his long retirement.

Oppenheim joined British American Tobacco as a solicitor in 1934 from Linklaters & Paines, having been educated at Repton School. His first wife, Joyce, had just died and the opportunity to go to China as head of the legal department must have represented the complete change of scene that perhaps he felt he needed. The posting was to have been for at least four years, if not longer, but after only five months in Shanghai he was asked to return to the number two position in the legal department in London. Within a year, he had become head of the department, the position he was to hold almost up to the time when he became chairman.

As head of the legal department, he was also secretary to the chairman's committee, the body consisting of the four deputy chairmen, who effectively ran British American Tobacco on a day-to-day basis. This was, as he put it, "a tremendous advantage from my point of view because I was right in the middle of things". It also brought him into direct contact with Sir Hugo Cunliffe-Owen, the group's dictatorial chairman, who had succeeded "Buck" Duke, the man who had founded the whole business in 1902.

Becoming Cunliffe-Owen's right-hand man gave Oppenheim an unrivalled insight into the group, as well as ensuring that he was present at some of the turning points in its fortunes. He took part in the wartime meeting in the Treasury when Cunliffe-Owen was told to sell Brown & Williamson (the group's US subsidiary) and hand over the proceeds to relieve the UK's chronic shortage of dollars for the purchase of supplies. Fortunately, a creative solution was found that raised dollars for the Government and retained the business for the group, but it must have been a sombre moment.

During the Second World War, tobacco manufacturing was designated a reserved occupation for men over 30 but, nevertheless, more than 250 from British American Tobacco promptly joined up. The Government requisitioned the group's London headquarters, causing an exodus to Egham in Surrey. Oppenheim combined his day job with travelling back to London for four night-time stints a week as a part-time air-raid warden. He also found time to paint some civil- defence pictures, which were exhibited and are now in the archives of the Imperial War Museum.

Oppenheim became a director of British American Tobacco in 1943. When, in 1949, he became vice-chairman and therefore effectively chairman-elect, he gave up his legal job and concentrated on getting to know the business and the people running it in all the countries where British American Tobacco operated.

The post-war period saw "probably the most traumatic experience I had during my time in British American Tobacco", said Oppenheim. The Communist takeover of the group's business in China accounted for about one-third of its worldwide sales. Moreover, a number of Oppenheim's personal friends were being threatened with imprisonment. Even after an agreement was signed, in which British American Tobacco ceded the whole of its business in China, six people were denied exit visas for over two years.

When Oppenheim became chairman in 1953, his style was immediately different to that of the authoritarian Cunliffe-Owen, whose mark was still very much on the group, the three intervening chairmen having only served very short terms. Oppenheim recalled,

I felt my function was to arbitrate and make final decisions brought up at our daily meeting. I could leave the day-to-day running of the business to my more expert colleagues. I rather concentrated on representing the group and developing contacts outside the business.

He became involved with the Federation of British Industries (the forerunner of the CBI), the International Chamber of Commerce and the Royal Institute of International Affairs. As a result, an important part of his legacy as chairman at BAT was putting the group on the map in the UK. This mattered because most directors and senior employees effectively spent their time overseas and had few, if any, contacts in British official circles.

Another significant contribution was expanding the business, particularly in Central and South America and the United States, as well as re-establishing it in the parts of the Far East that had been occupied by the Japanese in the war. This policy of development elsewhere did enable the group to recover quite quickly from the loss of its Chinese business. Oppenheim established a pioneering management training centre at Chelwood in Sussex, which was founded in 1956 and lasted until 1993.

His chairmanship naturally led to other commercial directorships, such as Lloyds Bank and Equity & Law, but it was his work in the arts that probably gave him the greatest additional pleasure. As well as the Royal College of Art, he became involved with the Design Council and the Victoria & Albert Museum. He recalled how Stanley Spencer came to the Royal College of Art on a hot June day wearing a heavy overcoat and carrying a battered despatch case tied up with string, while David Hockney turned up to receive a gold medal suitably attired in a gold lamé jacket with his hair dyed gold too. In addition, Oppenheim's chairmanship of the Design Council led to him joining the Advisory Council of the Victoria & Albert Museum. He was also chairman of the council of St John's, Smith Square.

British American Tobacco was very lucky that Oppenheim's first choice of career, the Navy, didn't come off (though he maintained a love of sailing that did not exclude "Spartan sorties on the Thames"), that his wish to become an artist was deemed to be impractical and that he decided to leave Linklaters. As he put it, "If I had opted to remain with Linklaters, which probably I should have done and, in fact, very nearly did, my life might have been interesting, and even prosperous, but it would have been very much more limited and certainly very different and, under pressure of work, perhaps shorter."

Michael Prideaux