ABSTRACT
Chandler was born in Guyencourt, Delaware on 15 September 1918. His family had been prominent in business in America for several generations. His great-grandfather was the business journalist Henry Varnum Poor, one of the founders of Standard and Poors; there was also, as his second name suggests, a family connection with the du Ponts, originally a family of French emigrés who had founded a successful gunpowder business. This had been taken over by Pierre duPont, who had turned the family firm into one of the world’s largest makers of gunpowder and explosives; following the First World War, du Pont had gone on to acquire a controlling interest in General Motors and had put together the management team and the organisation that would ultimately lead to GM taking over from Ford as the world’s leading car maker. Business, therefore, was, if not exactly in Chandler’s blood, then certainly very prominent in his environment.
