Waiting one evening at London Euston station Tony Russell, who was in his eighties, was accidentally knocked over by a woman running for a train. Sprawled on the floor, he soon found himself surrounded by a huddle of anxious onlookers whom he waved away. He also had a train to catch. What no one knew was that Tony’s arm had been broken in the collision, which he was covering up with his jacket. Not wanting to make a fuss, he boarded the train for the three-hour journey to Manchester, before being picked up and taken by his wife to hospital.
A certain resilience combined with an inclination to put others first was a habit that Tony had adopted from his days running a chemical manufacturing company in Eccles, Greater Manchester. The philosophy he followed was “servant leadership”, which meant focusing on the growth of employees. As the chairman of Lankro Chemicals in 1971, the only company he ever worked for, he set about implementing an egalitarian approach: among his changes were the abolition of separate dining rooms for managers and workers and, during a period of particular financial difficulty for Lankro, the scrapping of the chauffeur-driven Daimlers assigned to senior managers. They were replaced with Renaults.
Tony took pride in the selection, treatment and retention of employees, with good results. In 1973, two years after he took over as chairman, company turnover was £24 million; by 1977, when it was acquired by the US chemical company Diamond Shamrock, it had more than quadrupled to £110 million.
When Tony retired at the age of 55, three years after the acquisition, there were the inevitable lucrative offers of work from multinational businesses. He turned them all down. It was time, he felt, to give something back to the community in terms of health provision, commercial development, criminal justice and businesses. He became head of the Stockport NHS Foundation Trust, which now runs one of the largest orthopaedic services in the country, led the regeneration of the Salford Quays area after the closure of the Manchester Docks in 1982, was the chairman on the board of the local truck manufacturer ERF and became a magistrate. In 1993 he was appointed CBE.
Francis Anthony Russell was born Franz Rosen in Berlin in 1925, the son of Fritz Rosen, a prolific graphic designer whose famous white-on-green S-logo for Berlin’s S-Bahn, the city’s rail network, remains in use today. Rosen was known for his boldness, not only in his artistic style but also in the politically provocative nature of his 1930s German modernist posters. Tony’s mother, Serena (née Simon), was an accomplished pianist. In September 1933, eight months after Hitler became chancellor, the family foresaw the need to flee the country. Or, as they put it: “Living meant leaving.”
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Tony and his younger sister Maya were sent ahead to a children’s home in Rapallo, Italy. Their parents followed them a few months later, travelling first to Switzerland then on to France.
In 1937 the whole family regrouped in Hendon, northwest London. There Fritz continued to work in graphic design and was commissioned by the Ministry of Home Security to produce posters designed to reassure a nervous public about the bombing of the Blitz. A child-friendly “Firebomb Fritz” cartoon character, shaped like a German incendiary bomb, was used above the words: “Britain Shall Not Burn.” Tony signed up to the British Army at the age of 17 in 1943, and with the army’s backing changed his name to Francis — although he always used his middle name, Tony — and his surname to Russell. He joined the 1st battalion of the Royal Tank Regiment, was on the Normandy beaches on D-Day Plus One and fought on into Belgium. When his tank was blown up he was given a replacement and eventually reached Warendorf, west Germany.
After the war Tony’s language skills were used for translating by the army for a couple of years and in 1947 he joined Lankro as a trainee. It was humble work. He started out in wooden clogs rolling the drums of chemicals and monitoring the loading and unloading of lorries. He enrolled into night school at Manchester’s College of Technology, now known as Umist, and was awarded an associate certificate in business. Lankro, sensing his potential, advised him to try for an MBA at Harvard Business School and he was awarded a Fulbright scholarship.
On returning to Britain in 1954 Tony loyally rejoined Lankro on its management team. Over time he would rise to managing director and chairman.
In 1955 Tony met Yvonne (née Helbrunn), who was in an au pair role learning English while looking after the child of Lankro’s founder. They married two years later, raising three children: Alan, who is the head of a department in a US biotechnology company; Audrey, who is a GP; and Karen, who works in a school with special needs children. Yvonne also survives him.
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Tony remained an essentially big-hearted figure. Once, waiting to board a plane before taking a cruise with his wife, he noticed a distressed woman in the queue who had lost her ticket. Discovering that she was the pianist on the forthcoming cruise, he bought her a new one. During the trip she fell in love with the captain and they later married, a happenstance that owed not a little to Tony’s earlier, generous airport gesture.