People: Andrew Dalton

Many in the City and far beyond will mourn the untimely death of Andrew Dalton, former Mayor of Kensington and one of the most successful fund managers of his generation. An active evangelical Christian and student politician in his Oxford days, Dalton, from an already well-heeled background, made a significant fortune at Warburg’s and later as deputy chairman of Mercury Asset Management before setting up his own firm, Dalton Strategic Partnership, which now runs nearly £1.4 billion of funds.

Kind, witty and shrewd, Dalton seemed perhaps to lack in public the ‘fire in his belly’ needed to bowl over constituency selection committees and he never became an MP. But he emerged as an influential figure in local Kensington politics and played a key role in the Kensington and Chelsea Conservative Association, especially during the dramas concerning Alan Clark.

At Oxford, Dalton had proved highly efficient in advancing pet causes. When standing for the presidency of the university’s Conservative Association, he threw a party for numerous undergraduates, many of them far from Tory by persuasion and unaware that membership of the Conservatives had been obtained for them.

Once well refreshed, they were ushered into a waiting coach and driven to the ballot at the Oxford Union, where most voted for Dalton as the only candidate they knew and he was duly elected. One losing candidate, Lord Lewisham (now Lord Dartmouth and a UKIP MEP) protested: ‘you have elected a man to whom politics means weak tea and cucumber sandwiches.’