My parents John and Millicent Bowen came from Oxford families. My father's grandfather and his father and uncles worked for the Oxford University Press (OUP). My father and his two brothers got scholarships to Oxford.

I went up to Corpus Christi College in 1964 reading Geography but switched to Politics, Philosophy and Economics and graduated in 1968.

Merton Street and CCC

On graduation I joined J&P Coats (Coats Patons) as a Management Trainee and received manufacturing management training in USA 1969 and Perú 1970 and then became Manufacturing Director in Venezuela. In 1973 I was sent as Acting General Manager to Chile where I arrived 10 days before the coup d'etat of General Pinochet. I left Coats in 1975 to go on a Sloan Fellowship Programme at London Business School.

Ute with Petra