Sir David Yule

One of India's wealthiest businessmen at the height of the Raj came from humble Scottish roots. David Yule's grandfather was a linen and wool draper and Yule was educated at Edinburgh's Royal High School. After that he spent three years in Oldham, the Lancashire mill town, learning the cotton trade. This was to prove useful when in 1875, he went out to India to work in Calcutta for his two uncles, Andrew and George Yule who were building what was to become a huge conglomerate based in Calcutta. He initially managed one of their subsidiaries, the Bengal Cotton Mills, but rose to become a partner in the parent firm, Andrew Yule & Co in 1887. His uncles retired back to the UK and Yule acquired the shares of one of them and replaced him as resident partner in India.

David Yule acquired a reputation as a shy and reclusive man, who preferred to live in the mill compound than to move to the fashionable areas of Calcutta favoured by other Europeans. It is said that he never took a holiday, and did not pay a visit to Britain for eighteen years after his arrival in India.

The range of the company's business interests increased dramatically under his direction. He was largely responsible for increasing the firm's involvement in the jute industry. In 1895, he had formed the Bengal Assam Steamship Company. The success of this venture encouraged him, in 1906, to form Port Shipping Ltd, Calcutta's largest lighterage company.

The firm had acquired substantial interest in the Indian coal industry, and in 1908, Yule consolidated its interest in this field when Andrew Yule & Co. became managing agents of Bengal Coal Ltd. Yule was also enthusiastic about the prospects for estate management in India, and in 1902, formed Midnapore Zemindary Company (MZC) to acquire and develop land in Bengal. The MZC estates comprised 2,400 square miles, on which the company promoted agriculture, forestry, fisheries, and other rural industries. He received a knighthood in the Durbar honours list of 1912, and in 1922, he was created a baronet.

By 1917, Andrew Yule & Co. managed more than sixty companies and was one of the leading businesses in Calcutta. Nevertheless, Yule decided to dispose of the firm as he had no son to inherit the business. In 1919, he sold the goodwill and business of the firms for £600,000 to a newly created company Andrew Yule & Co. Ltd, in which the major shareholders were J. P. Morgan & Co. and some of the leading partners in Morgan Grenfell & Co. Yule retired from active participation in the affairs of Andrew Yule & Co. Ltd in 1922, and returned to England to settle at Hanstead House, Bricket Wood, near St Albans, Hertfordshire.

In 1926, with his friend Sir Thomas Catto and the former viceroy of India, Lord Reading, he purchased United Newspapers from David Lloyd George, after giving undertakings that the Daily Chronicle and other titles published by the company would continue to support the policies of progressive Liberalism and that Reading would act as chairman. The following year, Yule acquired two Calcutta newspapers, The Statesman and The Englishman.

On 3 July 1928, Yule died of heart failure. In his obituary in The Times he was described as 'one of the wealthiest men, if not the wealthiest man, in the country'. His fortune in India and Britain was reckoned to be around £15m at his death, or just over £4bn in today's money.