Frank Barlow, former Pearson chief executive, 1930-2019

Frank Barlow, who has died at the age of 89, played a pivotal role in the commercial and international development of the Financial Times.

In 1983 a disastrous two-month printers’ strike kept the FT off the streets throughout a general election and cost its former owner Pearson millions of pounds. It was then that Barlow, a tough but fair Lancastrian who went on to become Pearson’s chief executive, began building his reputation as one of the finest newspaper managers of his generation.

As the strike dragged on the late Michael Blakenham, Pearson’s chairman, had come to rely increasingly on advice from Barlow who was running the company’s Westminster Press regional newspaper division.

Newly installed as the head of the FT, Barlow eschewed direct confrontation with the print unions, whose power had reached its zenith in the early 1980s. Instead, he seized the opportunity to capitalise on the fallout from Rupert Murdoch’s victory at Wapping in east London. He approved the purchase of a new direct input editorial system, which was honed out of sight in Frankfurt and became a cornerstone of the FT. In 1986, citing a worldwide “toe-to-toe slugging match” with the Wall Street Journal, he unveiled a dramatic, and successful, plan to build a new print plant, halve the number of printers and sweep away many of the old print union restrictions.

Beyond solving the FT’s printing issues, Barlow also strove to harness the considerable journalistic and commercial talent in the paper which had already launched the FT’s international strategy.

Between 1983 and 1990, when he moved to become chief executive of Pearson, profits recovered dramatically, the international expansion of the paper was accelerated, the company acquired sister papers in France and Spain and with others he successfully preserved the FT’s position in the all-important FTSE family of indices.

Richard Lambert, who edited the paper for part of this time, remembers Barlow as a very good manager: shrewd, clear-sighted, tough when necessary, with an unshakeable commitment to editorial independence. He had a former accountant’s forensic focus on costs but also created a buzz whenever he entered the room.

At Pearson, the contrast between the mostly patrician senior management of the company and Barlow, a grammar schoolboy from Barrow-in-Furness, was stark, but he and Blakenham worked very well together. Faced with a company that was a federation of high quality, but disparate, assets he adopted a two-track strategy.

First, he began selling some of Pearson’s noncore businesses in oil services, fine china, wine and even Westminster Press. Then he began building Pearson Television, buying businesses including Thames TV Television and a stake in Channel 5. To run it he chose Greg Dyke, an experienced television executive who later became director-general of the BBC. Ironically the two had met decades before when Mr Dyke was a trainee journalist and Barlow was MD of the Westminster Press paper on which he worked. Mr Dyke recalls him approvingly as a manager even though he led protests against Barlow’s decision to pay tele-advertising staff — a new departure at that time — more than journalists like him.

His colleagues remember Barlow as a consummate negotiator no more so than in the tense negotiations between British Satellite Broadcasting, in which Pearson was a major partner, and Mr Murdoch, whose British Sky Broadcasting was increasingly in the ascendant. Barlow and Blakenham played a weak hand brilliantly and won Pearson a large stake in the combined business.

Pearson mostly prospered under his leadership, but as the tide turned increasingly against conglomerates Barlow stepped down in favour of Marjorie Scardino, whom he knew well, and who accelerated the process of rationalisation which he had begun, focusing on education, consumer publishing and information.

Barlow went on to chair Logica, the IT and management consultancy. He was knighted in 1998 for services to the newspaper industry and played a very important role in the Printers Charitable Trust. He retired in 2004.

Barlow was a rugby fan and an avid golfer. After grammar school and national service in the Navy he trained as an accountant and in 1952 left for Nigeria before running newspapers in Ghana and the Caribbean. He returned to the UK in 1965 and in 1967 joined the Westminster Press.

He was married for 50 years to Pat who died in 2000. They had three children one of whom died in 1997, five grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. He married briefly for a second time and died after a long illness.

The writer is a former managing editor, chief executive and chairman of the Financial Times