Dudley Docker

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Dudley Docker was a midlands industrialist and early lobbyist for business power.

Dudley Docker (1862-1944) was one of the most powerful European businessmen of his era, through his secretiveness and taste for intrigue served to obscure his importance. This book is a feat of detection and historical reconstruction which establishes him as a figure of substantial influence.[1]

Docker on the rise

1906 was a decisive year for BSA, Sir Hallewell Rogers became Chairman and Docker joined the board. Rogers was a well established Birmingham businessman and a former Lord Mayor of the city. He had joined the BSA board in 1904 and was rapidly elevated to the chairmanship. Rogers brought to the company an expertise in finance (and no doubt was familiar with secret reserves), having been a director of the Birmingham and District Banking Company [see Davenport-Hines, 1984, p.48; 1985, pp.109-112], and it was under his leadership that BSA embarked on a determined diversification strategy. Rogers was a personal friend of Docker [see Midland Advertiser, 29 October 1911], and according to Sir Patrick Hannon, who was to become a BSA director and a Tory Member of Parliament, Docker "was responsible for making him chairman of BSA" Cite error: Closing </ref> missing for <ref> tag

Affiliations

Notes

  1. from the blurb on the back cover of R. P. T. Davenport-Hines Dudley Docker The Life and Times of a Trade Warrior Cambridge University Press. (ISBN-13: 9780521894005 | ISBN-10: 052189400X)