Derek Hathaway, British industrial services executive, Died at 71

Derek Hathaway was born on May 11, 1944, in Birmingham, England and died on October 22, 2015.

He was a British industrial services executive, CEO and Chairman of Harsco from 1994–2007.

Derek Hathaway attended Moseley Grammar School at 16 yrs old, and started work as a junior draftsman at a heating and engineering company.

Hathaway founded Combat Engineering in 1966 and built the UK based company into a sizeable group of engineering businesses, which went public in the 1980s when it was renamed Dartmouth Investments.

He stayed with the company after it was acquired by Harsco in 1979.

In 1991, he was named President and Chief Operating Officer and elected to the Board of Directors, and in that same year, he also became a U.S. citizen.

In 1994, Hathaway was elected Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer of the company.

Because his leadership, Harsco significantly expanded its role as a market-leading provider of multi-industry, industrial services on an international scale, growing operations in more than 45 countries worldwide. Derek retired from the company at the end of 2007 and from the Board of Directors in early 2008.

He was promoted to chairman and chief executive and was later instrumental in the acquisition of SGB and the group’s entry into the access market in 1994.

Derek Hathaway was a lifelong Christian and a man of faith.

Derek Hathaway was married to Margaret, both he and his wife worked together and their philanthropy extended from support of education, preservation of history, the arts, and medical research, both in the US and the UK.