James Ogilvy, who has died aged 89, was a popular City stockbroker and asset manager with royal connections; as a partner of Rowe & Pitman – known in the 1970s as “the Queen’s stockbroker”, but also a powerhouse of institutional equity sales – Ogilvy specialised in private-client dealings and was instrumental in creating a range of services for smaller investors under the subsidiary brand of Rowan Investment Management.
Remembered by a colleague as “a lovely man with a wonderful aristo sense of humour, plus great market instincts and energy”, he also formed part of what one City columnist called “a daunting family force in the City”. His eldest brother David, the 13th Earl of Airlie, was chairman of Schroders and later Lord Chamberlain; his second brother Angus, Princess Alexandra’s husband, was a director of the Drayton investment group – and, more controversially, of “Tiny” Rowland’s Lonrho conglomerate.
After Rowe & Pitman was acquired by the merchant bank SG Warburg ahead of the City’s 1986 “Big Bang” ownership reforms, Ogilvy’s Rowan operation was merged into Warburg’s investment arm, Mercury Asset Management. One memoirist there recalled that when Ogilvy arrived at Mercury’s austere offices in King William St, “he was horrified by our excessive preoccupation with work”.
He also exuded a belief, the memoirist wrote, that “all would be well with the world if every one of its institutions were… led by ‘Old Etonians’ like himself – but found few in Mercury’s corridors.” He nevertheless “gave staunch support in the sometimes fragile [merger] process”, and “his companionship and laughter” were missed when he departed in 1988 to become chief executive and chairman of Foreign & Colonial Management, a mid-sized investment house which he led with notable success.
James Donald Diarmid Ogilvy was born in London on June 28 1934, the youngest of six children of David Ogilvy, 12th Earl of Airlie, and his wife Alexandra, née Coke, daughter of the 3rd Earl of Leicester. The 12th Earl was a soldier, courtier and pillar of the Scottish establishment; the family descended from Sir James Ogilvy, ambassador of Scotland to Denmark, who was created Lord Ogilvy of Airlie in 1491.
Jamie, as he was to friends and family, was brought up at Cortachy, the Airlie estate in Angus, and was a page of honour to King George VI from 1947 to 1951. Educated at Eton before National Service as a second lieutenant with 1 Battalion Scots Guards in the Suez Canal Zone, he began his stockbroking career with Panmure Gordon in 1957, moving to Rowe & Pitman in 1959 and joining its partnership in 1964.
Outside the City, he was chairman of the Institute for Obstetrics and Gynaecology, a governor of Queen Charlotte’s and Chelsea Hospital for Women, and Chairman of the Garden Museum in Lambeth. In Scotland he was a Member of the Royal Company of Archers, the monarch’s ceremonial bodyguard. He was also very proud to be a Grand Official of the National Order of the Southern Cross of Brazil, in recognition of Foreign & Colonial’s interest there.
Jamie Ogilvy enjoyed shooting, golf and entertaining at his country home in Lincolnshire. A voracious consumer of news and gossip, and himself the youngest of a large brood, he particularly relished the company of the young. His wisdom was much in demand as a trustee of other landed families’ estates.
He married first, in 1959, June Ducas; the marriage was dissolved in 1978 and June died in 2001. He married secondly, in 1980, Caroline, née Child-Villiers, daughter of the 9th Earl of Jersey, who survives him with two sons and two daughters of his first marriage. His stepson, the 7th Earl of Minto, is a minister of state for defence in the House of Lords.
James Ogilvy, born June 28 1934, died January 3 2024
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