Graham Hearne
British solicitor and finance director (born 1937)
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Sir Graham James Hearne CBE (born 23 November 1937)[1] is a British solicitor and finance director[2] who was chairman of Enterprise Oil from 1991 until 2002, having joined Enterprise as chief executive officer[3] in 1984.[4]
Career
He practiced as a solicitor at Pinsent & Co., now Pinsent Masons, and at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson in New York City, during 1963-66.[4]
He joined the executive of the Industrial Reorganisation Congress in 1967, before moving on to N M Rothschild & Sons merchant bankers, in 1970,[4] where he remained a non-executive director until June 2010.
In 1977, he began a four-year term as director of finance at textile company Courtaulds.[4]
Hearne became CEO of Tricentrol P.L.C. in 1981. Disagreements with its board of directors resulted in his 1983 resignation, at which time he joined a smaller oil company, Carless, Capel & Leonard, now Haltermann Carless, in London.[4]
He was appointed the first CEO of the newly formed Enterprise Oil, when it was spun-out from the former state-owned British Gas[5] in December 1983, assuming the role the following March.[4] Before the company was acquired by Shell in 2002;[6] Hearne became known as "the driving force behind Enterprise", leading the fledgling company as it scaled daily oil production.[5] There, future Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby also served, as the treasurer of its oil exploitation group.[7]
He was High Sheriff of Greater London in 1995-96. He was awarded the CBE in 1990, and knighted in 1998.[1]
In 2002, he became the chair of Consort Resources, founded by Lord Colin Moynihan in 2000.[5]
He was a non-executive director at Rothschilds, Novar and Invensys.[5]
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