Sir Adrian Cadbury

Died: 3 September, 2015

Sir Adrian Cadbury, who has died aged 86, was a firm believer in the practice of good business ethics and had a distinguished career managing the family chocolate firm Cadbury Bros. He also held major directorships of the Bank of England, IBM and the CBI. He was an Olympic oarsman who competed in Helsinki in 1952 in the coxless fours and a Cambridge Blue in that year's Boat Race.

Sir Adrian was commissioned to look at better governance in business by the UK Government in 1992 after high profile debacles such as Polly Peck, the Distillers' takeover, the BCCI collapse and the Robert Maxwell affair and the resulting "Cadbury Code" set more exacting controls throughout industry. Despite some business leaders feeling that the rules inhibited entrepreneurial endeavour, Sir Adrian's proposals are now widely accepted and have had enormous effect on worldwide business conduct.

George Adrian Hayhurst Cadbury was a direct descendent of the John Cadbury who had started the business in 1824. The family remained staunchly Quaker and built the model town of Bournville to provide better living conditions for their staff. They had marketed Dairy Milk in 1905 which became the world's best-selling chocolate.

Sir Adrian was educated at Eton and after national service in the Coldstream Guards he read economics at King's College, Cambridge. The Cambridge Eight lost the 1952 Boat Race by a whisker and Sir Adrian narrowly missed out on a medal at Helsinki. But he admitted being an Olympian was "the greatest thing that ever happened to me".

He worked his way through the family firm – from the shop floor to the design – and joined the board in 1958. As managing director, he opened up the management structure and greatly remodelled the food division. Such well-known products as Typhoo Tea, Kenco Coffee and Hartley's Jam were sold and in 1969 Cadburys merged with Schweppes. His Quaker background made the merger not that straightforward – Sir Adrian said "at least we were buying the company that supplied the tonic and not the gin".

He was appointed chairman in 1974 and remained in the role until 1990, successfully fighting off corporate raiders such as the US investor General Cinema. He was unsuccessful when he tried to acquire Rowntree's after the Monopolies Commission ruled against the merger but in 1989 Cadburys bought Trebor Bassetts.

Sir Adrian had expanded the family business and modernised its management structure and was proud to have remained firmly within its Quaker traditions. In 2008 he felt some of those traditions had been ignored when the US giant Kraft Foods acquired Cadbury-Schweppes. Fittingly for the man who set rules for corporate management he commented "A bidder can buy a company. What they cannot acquire is legitimacy over the character, values, experience and traditions on which it was founded and flourished."

Sir Adrian was a pioneer in many fields and was a most active chancellor of Aston University. He admitted that, while he loathed sloppiness in dress, he agreed that students should be allowed some freedom. Sir Adrian, who was knighted in 1977 and made a Companion of Honour this year, was a keen golfer.

His first wife, Gillian whom he married in 1956, died in 1992. They had two sons and a daughter. He married a family friend, Susan Sinclair, in 1994, who died in 2010.

Alasdair Steven