Sir Anthony Cleaver, who has died aged 87, was the UK chief of the computer giant IBM and later a prominent figure in the nuclear industry, with a multiplicity of other public roles in the fields of engineering, education and music.
Cleaver built a 32-year career with the New York-headquartered International Business Machines Corporation during an era when its world-leading System/360 mainframe computers and their successors set new technological benchmarks for the corporate world.
It was often said that “no one ever got fired for buying IBM”; at its peak, the company commanded a dominant UK market share and was much admired for a culture summed up by Cleaver as “the pursuit of excellence, service to the customer and respect for the individual” – which became the credo for his own wide-ranging senior career, very often concerned with challenges of organisational change.
Having joined in 1962 as a trainee instructor, Cleaver was one of the first to teach IBM colleagues and customers the capabilities of System/360 after its launch in 1964. He went on as a systems engineer to lead a team which designed the first cash dispenser for Lloyds Bank and installed IBM equipment for the first time at the Bank of England – a decision that had to be endorsed at Cabinet level, the Bank having hitherto been a customer of IBM’s fading British rival, the so-called “national champion” ICL.
Rising steadily through the management hierarchy, Cleaver migrated from engineering towards marketing roles and served in New York and Paris before returning to oversee the UK launch of the IBM PC, the first mass-market desktop computer. Mentored by the then chairman and industry leader Sir Edwin Nixon, Cleaver became general manager for the UK in 1984 and chief executive from 1986 to 1990, when he succeeded Nixon as chairman until 1994.
By then he had also been appointed chairman of the UK Atomic Energy Authority, where he led a reorganisation culminating in the 1996 flotation of its commercial arm, AEA Technology, as the Major government’s last privatisation. Cleaver chaired AEA Technology until 2001 – when it withdrew from nuclear consultancy to focus elsewhere – and later also chaired the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority.
Anthony Brian Cleaver was born in Lambeth, south London, on April 10 1938. His father William was a violinist who built player-pianos and cinema organs before making a career in the travel trade; his mother Dorothea, née Peeks, was a pianist, mathematician and primary-school teacher.
Brought up in Hertfordshire, Anthony was educated at Berkhamsted School and did National Service in the Intelligence Corps at GCHQ and in Cyprus before taking up a scholarship to read Greats at Trinity College, Oxford.
Cleaver addresses the UK Energy Policy Forum in 2007 – Felipe Trueba/Avalon
Towards the end of his time there, a careers adviser reviewed Cleaver’s answers to a multiple-choice questionnaire and told him: “No question, you should go into computers.” Barely knowing what a computer was, he applied to all the companies in the field whose names he could find, and won a graduate place at IBM.
In later years, Cleaver was a non-executive director inter alia of the insurer General Accident, Smith & Nephew in medical technology and the UK arm of the US aerospace manufacturer Lockheed Martin. Among smaller companies, he was involved in start-ups and flotations in fields ranging from cable television to recruitment. His last corporate role, until 2021, was as chairman of Nova Financial, an investment platform.
Describing himself as “a serial chairman”, he led the Industry Development Advisory Board (1993-1999), the Medical Research Council (1998-2006) and the Governors of Birkbeck College (1989-1999). He was an instigator of the Big Bang Fair, which encourages young people towards careers in engineering and technology, and a force behind several bodies concerned with the impact of business on the environment, for which he was named in the UN Environment Programme’s “Global 500 Roll of Honour”.
Beyond the boardroom Cleaver was passionately interested in music, to which he acknowledged that “I owe my very existence”, his parents having first been brought together as youthful duet partners. His chairmanship of the Royal College of Music (1999-2007) was “unquestionably one of the highlights of my life”; he was also deputy chairman of English National Opera and master of the Musicians’ Company.
Anthony Cleaver was knighted in 1992. Amiable and energetic, he began every day whenever he could with a swim, often in the Serpentine in Hyde Park.
He married first, in 1967, Mary Cotter, who died in 1999, and secondly, in 2000, Jennifer Graham, who survives him with a son and daughter from his first marriage.
Sir Anthony Cleaver, born April 10 1938, died July 13 2025
Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.