Obituary: Sir Ian Wood, businessman and philanthropist

For all his world standing and decorations showered on him, Wood exuded an air of boyishness. The edge of a Bill Haley kiss-curl topped a ready smile, with a uniform of a pullover casually draped over his shoulders, a ready grin hovering over a tall gangling frame that oozed confidence.

When in 1967 Wood became managing director of flourishing John Wood & Son, servicing fishing fleets of Aberdeen and Peterhead, he like many pondered how to engage with the nascent North Sea. It took a visit to Houston five years later to show him at first hand just how gargantuan were both the actualities and opportunities of the gold mine discovered in Scotland’s back garden. “Everything was mind-blowing” he recalled, “size, scale, technical complexity. This was my ‘international’ moment when we as a business rethought ourselves”.

With the discovery of oilfields Montrose, Forties and Brent east and north-east of Aberdeen, he embraced that adventurous internationalism. When some in Scotland and the UK fretted that oil might harm us, Wood saw it as the greatest commercial opportunity ever to hit the UK, never mind his native city of Aberdeen, developing company strategy with a global end in mind, a business focused on a world which just happened to be centred in Aberdeen. Thus after three decades, the Wood Group – floated in 2002 with a market value of £935 million – had become transformed from a local business into one of the world’s foremost international engineering contractors employing 23,000 around the world.

A committed internationalist, he possessed understanding of how the world works, and how this world could be his customers. Back in 1990 when Russia opened as a market, the question Wood posed was “How do we do business in Russia in the Russian mode?”. The upshot is that there soon became few spots on an oil map of the globe where a Wood Group logo wasn’t seen.

His ardent internationalism was exceeded only in his fervent championing of education and opportunities for the young. As chancellor of Robert Gordon University for 16 years from 2005, he championed leadership and entrepreneurialism, speaking in a can-do manner that echoed the merchant adventuring spirit he so admired.

Ian Clark Wood was born to John Wood and his wife Margaret née Clark, and educated at Robert Gordon’s College and Aberdeen University – where he graduated with honours in psychology. Destined for a business career in the company founded by his grandfather William Wood, Ian showed early promise, always looking to the wider world.

A natural workaholic who once confessed “I’ve always worked too hard – at school university and (now) the business”, he oversaw an expansion of Wood Group into operations in North and South America and the Middle East such that by the end of last century, annual revenues had exceeded a billion dollars. His attention to detail extended throughout the business to the extent of knowing literally hundreds of employees – possibly thousands – by name.

He moved easily socially. When Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister attended a small private dinner in Glasgow in 1982 hosted by industrialist Sir James Goold, she became tetchy over criticism of her economic stance. Wood stepped in, not so much to rescue but to move the conversation forward to the opportunities afforded by the North Sea, and apparently not appreciated in her policies.

The possession by Sir Ian of vision and aspiration was not always shared by local politicians. His offered £50m toward reconstruction of a city-centre park was spurned by Aberdeen City Council, and he regretted that his native city proved slow in planning for a future beyond oil. His idea was the transformative reshaping of Aberdeen, with the city being an educational centre of excellence in oil exploration and production in a manner which would ensure that Aberdeen remained the offshore capital of Europe. In spite of this, local projects funded by his Wood family foundation totalled some £100m, quite apart from opportunities created and funded for young people at home and in sub-Saharan Africa.

A contented individual who in what spare time he had relished family life, he never tired of his schoolboy love of sport, rugby and golf particularly. His favourite golfing partner was his wife Helen, with the ambition of the one-time noted schoolboy golfer “to keep ahead of Helen”. He rightly took pride in the fact that his three sons have all succeeded in business on their own accounts.

Sanguine in the honours that came his way, Aberdeen’s most distinguished citizen would have required extra-wide letterheaded notepaper to accommodate his post-nominals....... KT, GBE, LLD, BSc DBA, DTech, CBIM, FCIB FRSE FRSA, as well as being knighted in the rank of Knight Bachelor. He had been made CBE in 1982, being elevated to Knight Grand Cross of that order in 2016. Appointed to Scotland’s greatest Order of Chivalry as a Knight of the Thistle in 2018, he recorded a coat of arms, with the tellingly simple motto of A Man’s a Man For Aa That.

Sir Ian is survived by Helen, Lady Wood, née Macrae, his wife of 55 years; sons Garreth, Nicholas and Graham; and six grandchildren.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

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