Sir Alec Edward Reed, CBE, FCMA, FCIPD (born 16 February 1934) is the founder of Reed Executive Ltd, one of the UK's largest private businesses. Knighted for services to business and charity in 2011, Reed is a high-profile charity donor and organiser. His various charitable initiatives have given away over £240m, mostly in support of women, addiction, overseas development, education and the arts. Reed has founded seven charities, several companies, two schools and is the author of four business books. His current job title at Reed is Founder at Large. In 2023, The Times newspaper described him as "...the man who revolutionised philanthropy".
Early life
Reed was born in 1934 in Hounslow, Middlesex. His 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. Reed's mother Nancy was a housewife and former employee of the Prudential Insurance firm. In his autobiography, Reed writes that his earliest memory is listening with his family to Neville Chamberlain's 1939 speech declaring war on Germany, a speech that so alarmed his parents that they fled London in a neighbour's car the same day, thinking invasion imminent, only to return "...before teatime" after concluding that nowhere in the country would be safe.
A child of The Blitz, Reed has described his childhood as generally "secure", though he has also said that much of his early motivation came from feeling overshadowed by his older brother. Along with a milk round, Reed's first business venture was started alongside his brother while both were still children: the pair made and sold toy soldiers forged from lead that had been salvaged from local bombed-out houses.
Reed attended Drayton Manor Grammar School. At the end of his first year his school report said: "Conduct very unsatisfactory. He is lazy, inattentive and exerts himself to prevent his neighbours from working. He could do much better if he were more ambitious". Reed failed his 11-Plus exam; he left school aged 16 to work for a motor vehicle exporter in London's Fenchurch Street, having also failed to get the grades to enter agricultural college and pursue his ambition of becoming a farmer. Reed's mother encouraged him to study a Chartered Secretary's course in the evenings during his day job at the exporters.
He was called up to National Service in 1952. He tried for a commission with the Royal Engineers but was rejected after his Brigadier deemed him to be a "...muddled thinker". 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, 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. Reed also began working evenings and weekends in an estate agency in Hounslow, again while still at Gillette. The agency’s premises was split into two businesses, with one side selling property and the other side selling carpets. Noticing that the carpet business was struggling, Reed approached the owner (who was the father of Reed's then-girlfriend) and offered to rent the carpet portion of the premises for his fledgling employment agency, funding the launch with £75 taken from his Gillette pension fund. On 7 May 1960, the 26-year-old Reed opened the first branch of Reed Employment. It went on to become one of Britain's largest privately owned businesses, with 441 business units in 163 locations worldwide, employing over 3,000 people.
Career at Reed
Reed has held the positions of Chief Executive, Executive Chairman, non-executive Chairman and Founder at Large during his career at the 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, Reed presented his son with a conductor's baton in a glass case. 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.
Reed remains a significant minority shareholder, through both his personal holding and that of the Reed Foundation, to which he donated 18% of all shares in the company.