Daniel Edmund Williams:Daniel Edmund Williams, who has died aged 79, was the last of three generations of his family involved in the Williams Group of Tullamore, Co Offaly.
At its height in the 1970s, the firm employed upwards of 1,000 people in a business empire which included the Five Star supermarket chain, Irish Mist liqueur, wine and spirit distribution, mineral waters, malting, and with others the production of broiler chickens and one provincial newspaper the Leinster Leader.
Edmund Williams had been managing director since 1965 but his participation in the family business ceased in 1996 with the sale of the remaining agricultural interests in Williams Waller and Midland Malting to Greencore.
He was the son of John (Jack) Williams and Julia Moorhead and was born in 1928. He was one of the grandsons of the founder of the family firm, Daniel E Williams, who was born in Mountmellick in 1848. Mountmellick was then a great manufacturing town and the family is believed to have come from Wales to work in the Roberts foundry in the town.
In the early 1860s Daniel E secured employment when aged 14 to 15 in a mill at Tullamore which soon after became part of Tullamore distillery. The distillery prospered as did Daniel E, such that by the 1890s he was involved in a grocery chain, malting and wine and spirit distribution. It was at this time he developed the well known Tullamore Dew brand of whiskey which was sold to Powers in 1966.
The first Daniel E died in 1921 and was succeeded in the business by his three sons, Edmund, Daniel and Jack - all of whom had been educated at Clongowes. Edmund was a founder director of the Irish Press and its chairman from 1932 until his death in 1949. Daniel died in 1937 leaving his interest in the business to his five sons.
Jack Williams practised as a solicitor in Tullamore before serving in the first World War. In 1918 he returned to the family business taking charge of the Tullamore distillery. He retired in 1957 and died aged 80 in 1965. In the business, Jack Williams was joined by two of his sons Edmund and Michael (died 2005). A third son, Shaun, died during the military preparations for service in France in the course of the second World War. Edmund Williams joined the family firm in the late 1940s. His interest in new management ideas reinvigorated the company in the 1960s and 1970s. The disposal of the assets in the Williams Group after 1979 was a recognition that the company, as a family-owned concern, would never have the capital required to compete in the global marketplace and would have to go public or sell.
This thinking lay behind the decision to sell the Five Star supermarket chain to Quinnsworth in 1979 and the Irish Mist business to Cantrell & Cochrane in 1985. Soon after, the Coca Cola franchise was sold to John Daly while the wine and spirit division was sold to Edward Dillon. The sale of the remaining group assets to Greencore followed in 1996, marking the end of an era for Tullamore people who had looked to the Williams company for employment opportunities for over 100 years.
Aside from Edmund Williams' close involvement in the associated companies within the Williams Group, he was also a director of Algemene Bank Netherland (ABN/AMRO), Hibernian Insurance, Córas Tráchtála - the Irish Export Board, Solus Teoranta and was for a time president of the Confederation of Irish Industry.
He later served as chairman of Córas Tráchtála, 1980-86, and in a similar capacity with Hibernian Life, the Hibernian Group and ABN/AMRO. He was very much a respected member of the Irish commercial establishment and while retiring in his private life, he was considered forceful and direct when required.
A lover of music, especially ballet and opera, he also found time to read and enjoy a varied library; the collecting of which for its own sake gave him much satisfaction. Edmund Williams' life was measured and organised and he was fortunate to possess, until his death, that quick and lively mind that had characterised his entry into the family business almost 60 years earlier.
Curiously, he shared with his grandfather an identical signature in the old copperplate style.
Edmund Williams married Angela Bourke (died 2002) of Kanturk, Co Cork, and had six children: Jack, Jill, Olive, Anne, Daphne and Carol. He is survived by his children and his sisters Jane Williams and Teresa O'Reilly.
Daniel Edmund Williams: Born 1928; died December 15th, 2007.