Allied Lyons - FTSE 1

Preface

This is the first of maybe 1 or maybe eventually 100 blogs about the fate of the 100 companies which comprised the first iteration of the FTSE in 1970.

Not many are left, and the geek in me wants to look at what happened to them.

I have recently read my friend Tom Levitt's scholarly book The Business of History which updates an analysis made of 32 prominent businesses made by one Henry Beable in 1925. This was published (obviously!) last year to mark the centenary.

This has inspired me to attempt an alternative, much less scholarly (people who read my regular blogs will not be surprised) and more rambling verion of a similar idea. I have decided to 'publish' it as a partwork. This was a fashionable concept in the 1990s but not one I see now - perhaps it continues online. A friend of mine was editor of one of these back then. They were published as weekly (or monthly?) episodes and he copiled what was largely rubbish provided by the experts who fed him. I remember him telling me they had a reader's correspondence section. He rarely had any feedback from real readers , so he had to invent the questions as well as the answers. I will not name the periodical because I don't want to jeopardise the guilty men.

I am not expecting readers' letters and I will be happy if I have any readers, but it would be nice to hear anecdotes about the companies I skate over to add some colour. I suppose that is an advantage of electronic publishing.

History

The Star Brewery in Romford started as an offshoot of the Star Inn, and was started by Benjamin Wilson in 1708. It was bought by Edward Ind in 1799. It was then part of Ind Smith and became Ind Coope in 1845 when the company was joined by Octavius Coope – later Conservative MP for Great Yarmouth from 1848 – and his brother George.

Octavius didn’t last long in Yarmouth because he was bribing electors. Despite that dodgy start  he was elected as the MP for Middlesex in 1874. Obviously not short of a bob because he started a few churches, a school and became a JP and the Deputy Lieutenant of Essex.

The Middlesex seat was held until it was reorganised in 1885, and then alarmingly he became MP for Brentford. Obviously my home town was too much for him and he joined his maker the next year.

Ind Coope is a name from my youth. It was on the cans of the beer we had in the larder at home and was a bit of a mystery. I had never then, or since, seen the name Ind anywhere else. It suggests something to do with battery chickens like my Uncle John used to keep in what he called the shippon. Another word I have never seen elsewhere and had to look up – apparently means a cattle shed, though Uncle John’s cattle were exclusively two-legged and feathery.

My family beer (we were not much of a beer family actually, at least my parents weren't) was Long Life, apparently 'a staple of dinner parties in the 1970s'. I have never done much in the way of dinner parties, and certainly not in the 1970s and it seems it has not lived up to its name but seems to have met its demise in the 1990s RIP.

The company with this mysterious name expanded to Burton on Trent in 1856 and carried on to buy Samuel Allsopp and Sons in 1934, Benskins in 1957 and Taylor Walker and Friary Meux in 1959.

Obviously liked Taylors because they merged with Tetley Walker and Ansells in 1961 and became Allied Breweries. In 1978 they added Showerings, Gaymer, Whiteway’s, Britvic and John Harvey and Sons.

Next they merged with J.Lyons in 1978 and then became Allied Lyons. It is not recorded whether they inherited a copious stock of Nippys, like these. You don’t get these in Greggs.

Anyway, they became one of the first companies on the FTSE 100. As a bit of a side note, as well as Nippys, Lyons were well known for producing LEO – the Lyon’s Electronic Office, which according to Google Chairman Eric Schmidt was “the world’s first office computer”. It’s not clear it did them a lot of good and they merged it with English Electric and then Marconi to become English Electric Leo Marconi Computers. Apple may have been a snappy name but this verbal diarrhoea did not stop them becoming part of the UK Champion computer company ICL.

I remember when I worked for Honeywell, ICL machines were dominant in the UK public

sector and I remember attending my first Sales ‘Kick Off’ meeting at Gatwick airport in what I suppose was about 1985. In all the doorways there were floor mats which said ‘Lets stamp on ICL in 1985’. I think we managed to do a fair amount of that.

I see Sir Michael Edwardes was one of the executives who contributed to running ICL in the ground, a role he repeated at British Leyland and apparently also at Dunlop. As far as I know he was not a Russian spy, but who knows? ICL were acquired by Fujitsu, and later brought us one of Britain’s most famous software packages – Horizon – still plaguing the Post Office having (allegedly) destroyed numerous sub postmasters’ livelihoods and sometimes lives.

What Happened Next?

Allied Lyons merged with Pedro Domecq in 1994 to become Allied Domecq. The pub business was sold to Punch Taverns in 1999 for £3Bn

In 2005 Pernod Ricard of France took them over in 2005 then sold some of their spirits brands to Fortune Brands of the USA and some to Diageo.

So really, that was that for Allied Lyons. Wikipedia lists lots of brands which were part of all that, some of which survive in various guises and others which have met their makers