Kenneth Ashcroft obituary

. UK edition

Kenneth Ashcroft in a dark suit and glasses stands at a desk with papers, a telephone, and binders in his office at Ford Europe
Kenneth Ashcroft in his office at Ford Europe, where he became financial manager of sales operations Photograph: family handout

Other lives: Financial manager and director at a number of Britain’s best known companies

My father, Kenneth Ashcroft, who has died aged 91, was a financial manager and director at a number of Britain’s best known companies during the 1970s, 80s and 90s, including Ford, Comet, Next, Dixons and Amstrad.

He was born in Preston, Lancashire, to James, an electrician, and his wife, Winifred, (nee Walker). The Ashcrofts shared a terraced three-bedroomed house with another family, and so for some of his early life Ken slept in the bath. As a youngster he taught himself to build radios and speakers, scouring Preston for electrical parts left behind by departing American forces after the second world war, and his interest in radio hamming lasted for the rest of his life.

On leaving Preston grammar school he worked at a local accountancy firm while studying for his chartered accountancy exams in the evenings. After qualifying he worked as an accountant at the Atomic Energy Authority (1958-60) at Windscale, in Cumbria, and then at Mullards, a firm of accountants in Blackburn (1960-62).

In 1961, aged only 26, he moved to Ford Europe in east London as a senior finance analyst, quickly rising at 29 to become financial manager of Ford Europe’s sales operations and featuring as one of the company’s rising stars in an advert in the Sunday Times.

In 1968 he was lured back north to become finance director at the sanitary ware group Ideal Standard in Hull, and later to the Comet chain of electrical stores (1973-75), helping to save it from bankruptcy. A move followed to the Leeds-based men’s outfitters Hepworth’s, where he was finance director from 1975 to 1983. There he helped to oversee Hepworth’s establishment of the subsidiary company Next, which initially focused on women’s work wear and which later became a highly successful high street chain.

Ken became Hepworth’s deputy chairman in 1982, but after some boardroom manoeuvres he left the company, exchanging his company Jaguar for a bicycle for a time, before being appointed as finance director at Dixons in London in 1984.

After two years there he moved to work for Alan Sugar as Amstrad’s finance director, with Sugar barking orders in colourful language from a raised central desk. After that he worked for Sugar at Betacom and in retirement was a non-executive director for Trinity Lighthouses.

A gifted pianist and organist, Ken also helped to run the St Albans International Organ festival in Hertfordshire and to restore the cinema organ in Hull.

He met Patricia Hothersall while they were studying at Preston library. They married in 1957, and she, too, went on to work at the Atomic Energy Authority, as a scientist. She survives him, along with their two daughters, Jayne and me, and four grandchildren.