David Fortune Landale

David Fortune "Taffy" Landale, JP (; 7 November 1905 – 15 December 1970), was a British-Hong Kong entrepreneur and politician who was chairman and managing director of Jardine Matheson & Co. from 1945 to 1951, during which he was appointed by the Hong Kong government as an unofficial member of the Executive Council from 1946 to 1951, as well as the senior unofficial member of the Legislative Council from 1946 to 1950. Later in his life he settled in the United Kingdom, where he was chairman of the Royal Bank of Scotland between 1955 and 1965. Landale had a close connection with Jardine Matheson. His father, David Landale, was also chairman and managing director of the firm, and the Landales were distantly related to the family of Dr William Jardine, who was the founder of the Jardine trading house. Landale's chairmanship of Jardine Matheson coincided with the outbreak of the Chinese Communist Revolution that followed the end of the Second World War. The turbulence prevented the firm from reviving the profitable China business that it had enjoyed in the past. In 1947, he founded the Hong Kong Airways with a hope of developing the firm's civil aviation business. The attempt, however, was hit by the growing instability of the region. As the senior unofficial member of the Legislative Council, Landale was an active critic of the Hong Kong government who was noted for his unsuccessful attempt to oppose the government's plan of re-introducing income tax after the war in 1947. Besides, he moved a motion in the Council in 1949 to debate the "Young Plan". The plan, which proposed for the idea of setting up a Municipal Council, was highly questioned by him and other unofficial members, who believed that reforming the Legislative Council would be a better alternative. Nevertheless, having considered the regional instability and the lukewarm response from the general public, the British government announced in 1952 that no major constitutional reform would take place in Hong Kong. Biography