41 Facts About Alec Reed

Sir Alec Edward Reed was born on 16 February 1934 and is the founder of Reed Executive Ltd, one of the UK's largest private businesses.

Alec Reed has founded seven charities, several companies, two schools and is the author of four business books.

Alec Reed's father Leonard was a lithographic artist for the UK's Ministry of Information during WWII, supervising the production of a number of government information posters, including the original version of the Ministry's "Keep Calm and Carry On" poster.

Alec Reed's mother Nancy was a housewife and former employee of the Prudential Insurance firm.

Alec Reed is lazy, inattentive and exerts himself to prevent his neighbours from working.

Alec Reed failed his 11-Plus exam; he left school aged 16 to work for a motor vehicle exporter in London's Fenchurch Street, having failed to get the grades to enter agricultural college and pursue his ambition of becoming a farmer.

Alec Reed's mother encouraged him to study a Chartered Secretary's course in the evenings during his day job at the exporters.

Alec Reed was called up to National Service in 1952.

Alec Reed left the army in 1954 to work as a trainee accountant for Gillette in Osterley, having passed his Chartered Secretary qualification the year before, at the third attempt.

Keen to be self-employed, Alec Reed pursued a number of sideline businesses while still at Gillette, including making his own brand of aftershave that he brewed in his mother's kitchen and sold door-to-door.

Alec Reed began working evenings and weekends in an estate agency in Hounslow, again while still at Gillette.

On 7 May 1960, the 26-year-old Alec Reed opened the first branch of Alec Reed Employment.

Alec Reed has held the positions of Chief Executive, Executive Chairman, non-executive Chairman and Founder at Large during his career at the Alec Reed group of companies.

In 1997, he stepped down as chief executive to become chairman, handing control of the company to his son James; to mark the handover, Alec Reed presented his son with a conductor's baton in a glass case.

Alec Reed became non-executive chairman in 2000 and Founder at Large in 2004, a position he still holds and which he assumed after his son James succeeded him as chairman in the same year.

In 1970, Alec Reed founded Inter-Company Comparisons, now ICC PLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of a Swedish business group.

From 1985 to 1989, Alec Reed was the honorary chairman and chief exec of Andrews and Partners Estate Agency.

Alec Reed is the founder of seven charities, including Womankind Worldwide, Ethiopiaid, Reed Restart at Holloway Prison, Women at Risk, and the Alec Reed Academy.

The Alec Reed Foundation is the main vehicle for Alec Reed's philanthropic activities.

Alec Reed founded the site in response to receiving an unmanageable number of appeals from charities seeking donations from high-profile philanthropists.

In forming The Big Give, Alec Reed created an advisory Board of Philanthropists including Lord Bell, Lord Gavron CBE, Lord Haskins, Sir Adrian Cadbury, Sir Charles Dunstone, Baroness Lane-Fox of Soho, Jon Snow and Michael Spencer.

Alec Reed initially planned on promoting entrepreneurship in the area, but upon arrival was struck by Addis Ababa's poor public sanitation, especially in the "kebeles".

Alec Reed writes of incurring criticism for his ideas on education, notably his view that the school did not need a significant library in the internet age, nor should it teach foreign languages, owing to the multilingual composition of the school's intake and the primacy of the English language in global business.

Alec Reed Business School is a not-for-profit residential and day accountancy college specialising in qualifications ACCA, CIMA, ICAEW and more recently AAT.

From 1989 to 1992, Alec Reed served on Oxfam's fundraising committee.

Alec Reed described his approach to philanthropy in a 2013 interview with Coutts:.

Alec Reed has personally supported a range of smaller UK charities, such as The Passage and The Branch Trust.

Alec Reed is currently serving as an Enterprise Fellow for The Prince's Trust.

Alec Reed is a ballet enthusiast and a noted donor to the Royal Ballet.

Alec Reed invested in noted English choreographer Matthew Bourne's original ballets Dorian Gray and Cinderella, with profits on the former production enabling a large investment in the latter.

Alec Reed is an amateur painter, with a focus on portraits.

Alec Reed studied with portrait painter Ken Payne and at the Heatherley School of Fine Art.

Alec Reed won a national prize for those over sixty years old for his self-portrait Nice Hat, in which he is portrayed wearing a trilby.

Alec Reed became a member of the governing council of Royal Holloway, University of London, in 1979, subsequently becoming the chairman of the college's finance committee.

Alec Reed taught an interactive entrepreneurship course for undergraduates at the school called LIES.

In 1999 Alec Reed was asked by Tony Blair to investigate a decline in teacher training enrolment.

Alec Reed has a lifelong interest in farming and equestrianism, having joined the Young Farmers aged 14.

In 2009 he purchased at auction nine lots of land comprising 1600 acres of the estate of Kiddington Hall in the Cotswolds, Oxfordshire; Alec Reed has written of plans to turn the land into a residential equestrian estate.

Alec Reed has said that his early charity work was informed by his conversion to Christianity in his 20s.

Alec Reed is an atheist and a member of Humanists UK.

Alec Reed has twice recovered from cancer, after receiving a diagnosis of colon cancer in 1986 and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in 2003.