Obituary - Tony Steele
Professor Tony Steele, 1951 – 2003
Died Easter Monday, 21 April 2003, aged 51
Tony Steele died on Easter Monday night in Myton Hospice, Warwick. As many colleagues will know Tony had been through a very long illness and had shown great courage and determination in continuing to be active in School affairs, most recently in taking on the organisation of the Critical Issues in Management third year core course this academic year.
We will miss both his commitment to the School and also his enthusiasm for the often idiosyncratic but always challenging question. Of course, he played an active role also outside the School, most recently as a member of the Competition Commission, where he found a new forum in which to apply his substantial analytical skills.
All our sympathies are with his wife Judy and their four children, Ben, Amy and twins Kate and Hannah.
Prof. Howard Thomas, Dean, Warwick Business School
Education and Qualifications:
St Peter’s School, Southbourne, 1967
Dogmeresfield Theological College, 1970
BA Cambridge (Mathematics and Engineering), 1974
MA Lancaster (Accounting and Finance), 1979
FCA (Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants), 1977
Career:
Computer Programmer, Tube Investments, 1970-71
Investigation Senior and Computer Auditor, Price Waterhouse & Co, 1974-78
Lecturer in Accounting and Finance, Management School, University of Lancaster, 1978-85
Professor of Accounting, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, 1985-2003
In addition to these full-time posts, Tony also had part-time and visiting appointments at the University of Lethbridge, Alberta; the Hong Kong Polytechnic University; the University of Boston; the LETI-Louvanium, St Petersburg; and the Catholic University at Leuven, Belgium.
His other professional duties and service included in the early 1980s time as an examiner for the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, where he devised the methods for case study assessment, and was Chief Examiner for the Society of Investment Analysts, London, in the mid-80s. In 1988 he became a member of the ICAEW Student Education Advisory Group until 1990, and from 1991-92 he was Chairman of the British Accounting Association.
Tony conducted commissioned research for the Institute of Chartered Accountants into accounting for inflation, for the Chartered Institute of Certified Accountants into audit risk management, for the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants into management control in service organisations, and for the Office of Fair Trading into the assessment of super normal profitability.
As an executive teacher, he worked with ICI, British Steel, Reed International, GPT, Severn Trent, Jones Lang LaSalle and the Securities Institute. As a consultant, his clients included Datastream, 3i, Barclays Bank, Coopers Deloitte Corporate Finance, BBC Television, the Office of Fair Trading, London Economics, International Federation of Accountants, Britax, Office of Director Telecommunications Regulation (Ireland), and Telstra (Australia).
Tony was one of the youngest academics to be awarded a professorship when he came to WBS in 1985, where he continued to establish his career as a leading UK academic accountant. In 1997 he was invited to membership of the Monopolies & Mergers Commission, maintaining this service as the Commission evolved into the Competition Commission.