Peter Mills (1953)

George Peter Mills 6 February 1933 – 25 December 2024
Queens’ 1953

Peter was born in Bury on February 6, 1933, just three weeks after his mother and sister arrived in Liverpool by ship from Buenos Aires. As Italian Fascism spread in Argentina in the late 1920s and early 1930s, his mother and father, who was a British citizen, had become increasingly concerned about the implications of a future male child being conscripted into the Argentinian army.

Rather than growing up on the campo, Peter found himself in Edgware during World War Two, climbing trees in Mill Hill park to watch Doodle Bug explosions over London. After his mother died when he was 12, Peter threw himself into sports, becoming Captains of Rugby and Cricket at St Albans School and playing for Hertfordshire’s Under 18 eleven.

Towards the end of his National Service in Egypt, where he served as an engineer with the Royal Artillery who supported the Parachute Regiment, he was invited to try jumping. He loved it. He joined the Parachute Regiment as an officer in the Territorial Army, and later parachuted into Cyprus in 1956, seeing further active service over the next few years.

In 1953, Peter came up to Queens’ to read Law. While still playing some cricket and rugby, he took up rowing, winning an oar in the Queens’ First Boat and competing at Marlow and Henley in 1954 as part of a successful Queens’ crew.

On graduation, Peter initially played for the Wasps’ University side. He played cricket well into his early seventies. Joining the Royal Sun Alliance Insurance Company as an investment analyst, he qualified as an actuary and joined the stockbroking firm Capel Cure Cardon. One of the earliest investors to understand the potential of the Australian mining industry, he went down the mining shaft at Kalgoorlie on a six-week visit to the continent in 1968.  

In 1970 he set up the equity department at Gilbert Eliott & Co, the fixed interest stockbroker. Peter built up the firm’s expertise in North Sea Oil stocks, helping several companies including London and Scottish Marine finance exploration.  

Shortly before Big Bang – financial deregulation –in 1986, Girozentrale Vienna (now Erste Bank) acquired Gilbert Eliott. Peter became joint Managing Director of the joint venture, and a frequent and enthusiastic visitor to Austria. As the traditional advisory relationship between stockbroker and client came under pressure, he decided to retire relatively early in 1990.

Peter was a founding director of the Golf Fund, which invested in golf course development in the U.K. and was Senior Treasurer Ashridge Golf Club where he played until his mid – eighties.  

A childhood illness, probably rheumatic fever, led to aortic valve problems which accelerated, if not caused, Alzheimer’s Disease which he craftily concealed for several years in his eighties.  Despite this, he remained agile and relatively fit and derived considerable joy from the younger members of his family and retained his dry sense of humour and kindness and courtesy.

Peter married Anne Larsson in 1959 and is survived by his children Heather and Stephen, five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

Obituary by Heather Farmbrough, Peter's daughter