Arthur Keen
Encyclopedia
Arthur Keen was a British
entrepreneur
, the Keen in engineering
firm Guest, Keen and Nettlefolds, later GKN plc.
, perhaps near Northwich
, the son of a farmer
. His early education seems to have been meagre before he joined the London and North Western Railway
, probably in some clerical capacity. Somewhere around 1855, he was appointed a goods agent for the railway and relocated to Smethwick
where his job led to a network of industrial contacts including Thomas Astbury (1810-1862) who introduced him to Francis Watkins. In 1858, Keen married Astbury's daughter, Hannah. The couple were to go on to parent ten children in half a century of family life in Edgbaston
.
nut
-making machine
in England
and Keen saw the potential of the business. The firm of Watkins and Keen was established with capital
from Astbury. The firm prospered and in 1864 was launched as a limited company
, Watkins retiring a few years later. Keen continued to expand the business through a series of astute mergers and acquisitions
. Keen's objective was to establish himself as the market leader
in fastener
s through aggressive pricing
and economies of scale
.
Though he modelled his approach on that of another Birmingham
firm, Nettlefold and Chamberlain, he achieved less success, possibly being less ruthless and embedded in a more complicated market segment
.
In 1899, Keen bought the Dowlais Iron Company for £1.5 million from Ivor Bertie Guest, 1st Baron Wimborne
, forming Guest, Keen & Co. (GK). At this point, Keen's facility for takeover seems to have faltered with a series of aborted mergers, including one proposed with United States Steel Corporation. However, in 1902, he completed a merger with the neighbouring business of Nettlefolds Limited to create Guest, Keen and Nettlefold (GKN).
GKN was an enormously profitable business and Keen was held in high regard. Much of the business's profitability stemmed from a successful policy of price maintenance
through the Birmingham Alliance that he forged with trade union
ist Richard Juggins and which was realised in the midland iron and steel wages board. He became a director of the Birmingham and Midland Bank in 1880 and led the series of mergers that established it as the London, City, and Midland Bank
.
, including twenty-five years on the Smethwick board of health, service as one of Staffordshire County Council's first aldermen and work with Joseph Chamberlain
on the foundation of the University of Birmingham
.
Though a Liberal
, he opposed home rule and was active in the Liberal Unionist cause. He supported Chamberlain's tariff reforms and served as part of the iron and steel commission. Though called upon, he declined to stand for Parliament
.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
entrepreneur
Entrepreneur
An entrepreneur is an owner or manager of a business enterprise who makes money through risk and initiative.The term was originally a loanword from French and was first defined by the Irish-French economist Richard Cantillon. Entrepreneur in English is a term applied to a person who is willing to...
, the Keen in engineering
Engineering
Engineering is the discipline, art, skill and profession of acquiring and applying scientific, mathematical, economic, social, and practical knowledge, in order to design and build structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes that safely realize improvements to the lives of...
firm Guest, Keen and Nettlefolds, later GKN plc.
Early years
His early years are uncertain but he was born in CheshireCheshire
Cheshire is a ceremonial county in North West England. Cheshire's county town is the city of Chester, although its largest town is Warrington. Other major towns include Widnes, Congleton, Crewe, Ellesmere Port, Runcorn, Macclesfield, Winsford, Northwich, and Wilmslow...
, perhaps near Northwich
Northwich
Northwich is a town and civil parish in the unitary authority of Cheshire West and Chester and the ceremonial county of Cheshire, England. It lies in the heart of the Cheshire Plain, at the confluence of the rivers Weaver and Dane...
, the son of a farmer
Farmer
A farmer is a person engaged in agriculture, who raises living organisms for food or raw materials, generally including livestock husbandry and growing crops, such as produce and grain...
. His early education seems to have been meagre before he joined the London and North Western Railway
London and North Western Railway
The London and North Western Railway was a British railway company between 1846 and 1922. It was created by the merger of three companies – the Grand Junction Railway, the London and Birmingham Railway and the Manchester and Birmingham Railway...
, probably in some clerical capacity. Somewhere around 1855, he was appointed a goods agent for the railway and relocated to Smethwick
Smethwick
Smethwick is a town in the Metropolitan Borough of Sandwell, in the West Midlands of England. It is situated on the edge of the city of Birmingham, within the historic boundaries of Staffordshire, Worcestershire and Warwickshire....
where his job led to a network of industrial contacts including Thomas Astbury (1810-1862) who introduced him to Francis Watkins. In 1858, Keen married Astbury's daughter, Hannah. The couple were to go on to parent ten children in half a century of family life in Edgbaston
Edgbaston
Edgbaston is an area in the city of Birmingham in England. It is also a formal district, managed by its own district committee. The constituency includes the smaller Edgbaston ward and the wards of Bartley Green, Harborne and Quinton....
.
Industrialist
Watkins was trying to market his patentPatent
A patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention....
nut
Nut (hardware)
A nut is a type of hardware fastener with a threaded hole. Nuts are almost always used opposite a mating bolt to fasten a stack of parts together. The two partners are kept together by a combination of their threads' friction, a slight stretch of the bolt, and compression of the parts...
-making machine
Machine
A machine manages power to accomplish a task, examples include, a mechanical system, a computing system, an electronic system, and a molecular machine. In common usage, the meaning is that of a device having parts that perform or assist in performing any type of work...
in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
and Keen saw the potential of the business. The firm of Watkins and Keen was established with capital
Financial capital
Financial capital can refer to money used by entrepreneurs and businesses to buy what they need to make their products or provide their services or to that sector of the economy based on its operation, i.e. retail, corporate, investment banking, etc....
from Astbury. The firm prospered and in 1864 was launched as a limited company
Limited company
A limited company is a company in which the liability of the members or subscribers of the company is limited to what they have invested or guaranteed to the company. Limited companies may be limited by shares or by guarantee. And the former of these, a limited company limited by shares, may be...
, Watkins retiring a few years later. Keen continued to expand the business through a series of astute mergers and acquisitions
Mergers and acquisitions
Mergers and acquisitions refers to the aspect of corporate strategy, corporate finance and management dealing with the buying, selling, dividing and combining of different companies and similar entities that can help an enterprise grow rapidly in its sector or location of origin, or a new field or...
. Keen's objective was to establish himself as the market leader
Market share
Market share is the percentage of a market accounted for by a specific entity. In a survey of nearly 200 senior marketing managers, 67 percent responded that they found the "dollar market share" metric very useful, while 61% found "unit market share" very useful.Marketers need to be able to...
in fastener
Fastener
A fastener is a hardware device that mechanically joins or affixes two or more objects together.Fasteners can also be used to close a container such as a bag, a box, or an envelope; or they may involve keeping together the sides of an opening of flexible material, attaching a lid to a container,...
s through aggressive pricing
Pricing
Pricing is the process of determining what a company will receive in exchange for its products. Pricing factors are manufacturing cost, market place, competition, market condition, and quality of product. Pricing is also a key variable in microeconomic price allocation theory. Pricing is a...
and economies of scale
Economies of scale
Economies of scale, in microeconomics, refers to the cost advantages that an enterprise obtains due to expansion. There are factors that cause a producer’s average cost per unit to fall as the scale of output is increased. "Economies of scale" is a long run concept and refers to reductions in unit...
.
Though he modelled his approach on that of another Birmingham
Birmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...
firm, Nettlefold and Chamberlain, he achieved less success, possibly being less ruthless and embedded in a more complicated market segment
Market segment
Market segmentation is a concept in economics and marketing. A market segment is a sub-set of a market made up of people or organizations with one or more characteristics that cause them to demand similar product and/or services based on qualities of those products such as price or function...
.
In 1899, Keen bought the Dowlais Iron Company for £1.5 million from Ivor Bertie Guest, 1st Baron Wimborne
Ivor Bertie Guest, 1st Baron Wimborne
Ivor Bertie Guest, 1st Baron Wimborne was a Welsh industrialist.Sir Ivor Bertie Guest was born at Dowlais, near Merthyr Tydfil, the son of Lady Charlotte Guest, translator of the Mabinogion, and Sir John Josiah Guest, owner of the world's largest iron foundry:Dowlais Ironworks...
, forming Guest, Keen & Co. (GK). At this point, Keen's facility for takeover seems to have faltered with a series of aborted mergers, including one proposed with United States Steel Corporation. However, in 1902, he completed a merger with the neighbouring business of Nettlefolds Limited to create Guest, Keen and Nettlefold (GKN).
GKN was an enormously profitable business and Keen was held in high regard. Much of the business's profitability stemmed from a successful policy of price maintenance
Production, costs, and pricing
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to industrial organization:Industrial organization – describes the behavior of firms in the marketplace with regard to production, pricing, employment and other decisions...
through the Birmingham Alliance that he forged with trade union
Trade union
A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...
ist Richard Juggins and which was realised in the midland iron and steel wages board. He became a director of the Birmingham and Midland Bank in 1880 and led the series of mergers that established it as the London, City, and Midland Bank
Midland Bank
Midland Bank Plc was one of the Big Four banking groups in the United Kingdom for most of the 20th century. It is now part of HSBC. The bank was founded as the Birmingham and Midland Bank in Union Street, Birmingham, England in August 1836...
.
Public life
Keen made extensive contributions to civil societyCivil society
Civil society is composed of the totality of many voluntary social relationships, civic and social organizations, and institutions that form the basis of a functioning society, as distinct from the force-backed structures of a state , the commercial institutions of the market, and private criminal...
, including twenty-five years on the Smethwick board of health, service as one of Staffordshire County Council's first aldermen and work with Joseph Chamberlain
Joseph Chamberlain
Joseph Chamberlain was an influential British politician and statesman. Unlike most major politicians of the time, he was a self-made businessman and had not attended Oxford or Cambridge University....
on the foundation of the University of Birmingham
University of Birmingham
The University of Birmingham is a British Redbrick university located in the city of Birmingham, England. It received its royal charter in 1900 as a successor to Birmingham Medical School and Mason Science College . Birmingham was the first Redbrick university to gain a charter and thus...
.
Though a Liberal
Liberal Party (UK)
The Liberal Party was one of the two major political parties of the United Kingdom during the 19th and early 20th centuries. It was a third party of negligible importance throughout the latter half of the 20th Century, before merging with the Social Democratic Party in 1988 to form the present day...
, he opposed home rule and was active in the Liberal Unionist cause. He supported Chamberlain's tariff reforms and served as part of the iron and steel commission. Though called upon, he declined to stand for Parliament
Parliament of the United Kingdom
The Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the supreme legislative body in the United Kingdom, British Crown dependencies and British overseas territories, located in London...
.
Honours
- Vice-president Iron and Steel Institute, (1895-1915);
- Vice-president Institution of Mechanical EngineersInstitution of Mechanical EngineersThe Institution of Mechanical Engineers is the British engineering society based in central London, representing mechanical engineering. It is licensed by the Engineering Council UK to assess candidates for inclusion on ECUK's Register of professional Engineers...
, (1897-1911).