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A tax expert by background and a master of financial detail, Frost helped streamline the management of ICI by providing a central finance function for a group whose operational structure in the postwar decades still reflected its origins in the merger of four companies in 1926.
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As finance director from 1968, he faced the challenge of accounting for high levels of inflation – and took a firm stance against new accounting standards that he did not feel reflected ICI's position fairly. He also established the group's first
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Frost briefed himself meticulously before board meetings, set clear objectives for himself and others, and managed his time so that none of his commitments fell by the wayside. By 1980 the restructuring of BL (boosted by a joint venture with
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He accepted the challenge in 1977, as part of a complete change of top management at BL, only on condition that "my role as chairman of the funding committee must be meaningful, and no Friday meetings". He went on to press the
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In his nineties, though no longer able to play the violin, Albert Frost remained uncomplaining and keenly interested in current affairs. He married, in 1942, to Eugénie Maude Barlow, who died in 2008. They had no children.
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Throughout his senior career, Frost always found time for music. A keen violinist who particularly enjoyed string quartets, he had been known to announce that a meeting must end promptly because he had "an appointment with
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He was also a driving force in establishing the Loan Fund for
Musical Instruments to encourage young British string players. He assisted with the British contribution to the 1987 exhibition of
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athletics club in
Wimbledon, he was remembered for a battling run in deep snow in the 1947 English National Cross Country Championship, in which the club secured second place.
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Having retired from ICI in 1976, Frost took on a remarkable portfolio of non-executive appointments. He was one of the first outsiders from industry to be invited on to the
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to train as a tax inspector, and in 1949 was recruited to be deputy head of ICI's tax department. He became treasurer of the group in 1960 before being promoted to
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33:(7 March 1914 – 13 August 2010) was a British businessman who was an influential and respected figure in the corporate world as finance director of
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government, rather forcefully, to inject £450 million of new capital into the group. BL's chief executive, Sir
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instruments in
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of Japan) was on track, and Frost moved on to apply similar treatment to another state-owned business,
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and radically improved its financial communications, using films to explain year-end results to staff.
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Albert Edward Frost was born on 7 March 1914 and educated at Oulton School in
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over the shape of BL's balance sheet were "meat and drink to him".
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City of London Carl Flesch international violin competition
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industries, and took more persuading to lend his skills to
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214:In his later years he was a member of the
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20:. For the South African musician, see
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