Sir Terry Harrison obituary

My friend Sir Terry Harrison, who has died aged 86, was a man of the north-east and proud to be so. He joined the engineering firm Clarke Chapman in 1957 and became managing director in 1969. Clarke Chapman merged with Reyrolle Parsons to form Northern Engineering Industries (NEI) in 1977, employing 40,000 people.

Terry became chief executive of NEI (1983-86) and was executive chair (1986-89) when it was acquired by Rolls-Royce. He was appointed to the board of Rolls-Royce and in 1992 was made chief executive. Three years later he was knighted. It was said that when Rolls-Royce divested itself of NEI in 1996, it had waited until Terry had safely retired from the board.