Jack Walker

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Jack Walker bigraphy, stories - British businessman

Jack Walker : biography

19 May 1929 – 17 August 2000

Jack Walker (19 May 1929 – 17 August 2000) was a British industrialist and businessman, from Blackburn, Lancashire. Walker invested tens of millions of pounds in Blackburn Rovers Football Club after amassing a personal fortune of £600 million. He moved to St Helier, Jersey to become a tax exile in 1974. He also funded the Jersey Rugby Club and First Tower Football Club

Business

Walkersteel

The youngest of three children, he was born into a working-class family in Blackburn and left school at 13. After leaving school Walker worked as a sheet metal worker and a conscript craftsman in the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers before taking over the family business with his brother, Fred Walker after the death of their father in 1951. Together, they transformed Walkersteel from a back-street scrap metal business started by their father after the war into a steel stockholding concern. By 1990 they had built up the business so successfully that it had become the largest steel stockholder in Britain, employing 3,400 people at 50 sites. In 1956 the turnover was £46,000. In 1988 the business was making an annual profit of £48m. The Walker brothers bought GKN and then sold it to British Steel for a reported £360m, the highest price ever paid for a private company at the time.

Jersey European Airways

In November 1983 the WalkerSteel group took over Jersey European Airways, already being the parent company to Blackpool based airline Spacegrand. The two airlines were initially run separately until 1985 when they were amalgamated and Exeter became the airline’s headquarters and base for technical services.

The airline grew throughout the 1990s and was recognised in 1993 and 1994 when it won ‘Best UK Regional Airline’. The new millennium saw the airline announce a new brand name at the beginning of May: British European. The rebrand reflected the size and scope of what was now the UK’s third-largest scheduled airline. July 2002 saw the start of a new beginning for the airline, British European was forced to dramatically change its business model to survive in such a highly competitive and aggressive new low cost travel era. Flybe was born and along with changes to commercial, fleet and operational policies that were to transform the airline.

The Walker Trust own 69% of the company with the remaining shares owned by British Airways (15%) and staff through an employee share scheme. At the airlines Head Office in Exeter there are two buildings named in his honour: Jack Walker House and the New Walker Hangar both based on the Exeter International Airport complex.

Death

On 17 August 2000, Walker died from cancer aged 71. Jack Straw, the Home Secretary and Blackburn’s Labour MP, said:

"Jack Walker did more than any other individual in the last century to enhance the self-confidence and the prosperity of his home town. He was completely committed to the town and its people. Blackburn Rovers was in many ways the love of his life. His contribution to the club was enormous but that was based in turn on the prosperity he created through his astonishing development of Walker Steel and of many other investments in the area. I salute a great local hero and shall miss him very badly."

Before his death, Walker had put in place a family trust structure to own his various business interests, including the club.

In November 2004 the Jack Walker Memorial garden was unveiled at the Blackburn End of Ewood Park. Standing in the middle is the Jack Walker Memorial Statue. A road close to Ewood Park was named "Jack Walker Way" in his honour. The Jack Walker Stand at Blackburn rovers is the old Nuttall Street Stand and not as stated the Riverside Stand.

Blackburn Rovers

In 1986, at the invitation of the then chairman Bill Fox, Jack Walker, then a vice president at the club, donated the funds for a new stand at the dilapidated Ewood Park. The WalkerSteel (now known as the Riverside) Stand was built. It is also thought that his money was used to pay for the acquisition and wages of Ossie Ardiles and Steve Archibald in the 1987-88 season.