Garth Roger Nicholas (5 Jan 1931 - 6 Jan 2017)

I left England in 1971, to live in New Zealand, and it was with sadness that I now read of Rogers passing, over a year ago. I was his PA for 3 years prior to 1971. Roger was a generous person of his time and understanding. Working for Roger was interesting, especially his knowledge of the Xerox Corporation. May you rest in peace.

Over 50 years ago I met Roger Nicholas through John Chown (a friend of his from Cambridge). I think it was in early 1962; I had just returned to Toronto after living in New York, because my late wife could not get a US work visa as she had been born in Czechoslovakia. John and I were both taking part in an International Tax Conference in Jamaica. When John saw that I was with Watt & Watt, a Canadian member of both the New York and Toronto stock exchanges, he suggested that I needed a contact in London and that, when next there, I should look up Garth Nicholas (as he was then known), whom he described as the brightest mind in the City. I did so later that same year. Since then, we have been good friends and I will very much miss his incisive mind. Over the years, we stayed in touch, mainly by phone, as Roger rarely visited Canada but he paid me a great honor when he sent me as a friend, Richard Harwood.

As I remember it, his successful career resulted from a merger. In 1964, Scott Goff & Company, a small retail stockbroker combined with Lawrence Hancock & Co, a similar firm, which Chris Horner had inherited from an uncle. One of the objectives of the new Scott, Geoff, Hancock & Co. was to establish a statistical department that could develop institutional business; Roger was hired to create the necessary organization which he did in spades, becoming very well known on both sides of the pond.

Richard Harwood has told the story of how Roger became aware of Rank Xerox. I did so when, as a Lehman Brothers analyst in the technology group, I had met Peter McColough, president of Xerox. After sharing information back and forth, in 1967 Roger and I collaborated on a study on Rank for the US market. This generated significant business for the New York office of my then firm (Midland-Osler Securities Limited) and for Roger. In the course of the research, we had an extraordinary lunch at the Connaught with Sir John Davis (Chairman of Rank), two starlets, Roger and I; at that time, Roger was rather embarrassed.

Roger could be extremely generous. On several occasions when I was in London and he abroad, he lent me his Barbican flat. In 1972, at one of the peaks of the New York and London stock markets, we were seeing each other frequently as I was spending a week a month in Europe as the CFO of an international marketing organization, At that time, he surprised me with an extraordinary 38th birthday present – eight days in Crete with a lady I was dating. He had known her at Cambridge and they were close enough that she could call him “Frau Nicolas”. Even though he was then making a great deal of money from the equities market, it was a munificent gesture from a true friend.