I knew Robert Beale for about 50 years.
First as a competitor, then as a colleague and finally as a good friend.
We were competitors when he was an Executive Director of Samuel Montagu in charge of its bullion activities: a fellow member of the old London Gold Market.
We were colleagues when, with others, we worked first to modernise the old market and then to create the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA). If you needed someone to chair a LBMA committee, draft an agreement, talk to the lawyers and, further, understand them, Robert was your man.
Robert was truly a man of the City and knew its ways. It was in his blood. His father had been a Chief Cashier of the Bank of England.
Prior to Montagu, Robert spent some time at S G Warburg and his later years were with the Dresdner Bank. He was multilingual and proud to be a member of the Worshipful Company of International Bankers.
All his friends and colleagues would agree that Robert was an honourable man. A gentleman. A man of integrity and principle. He didn’t need a Human Resources Department to tell him how to behave. Compliance did not need to keep an eye on him. Regulators could remain untroubled; he knew what was right and what was wrong. That may make him sound rather austere, but many friends and colleagues have testified to his personal kindness: ready to advise and help a sometime competitor who was out of a job, encouraging a younger man – again, at another company – about to take on a new role, visiting an old colleague seriously ill in hospital. Robert was kindness personified.
He was a competitor, a colleague, but also a very good friend. My condolences to his wife of nearly fifty years Clodagh, his son Andrew, daughter Rachel, and seven grandchildren.
This is an edited version of the tribute given by Robert Guy at the Thanksgiving Service held at Chelsea Old Church, 12th February 2024.