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This profile appeared in the Yorkshire Post on Tuesday, 16 March, 2010.

David Dickson, chairman of Garbutt and Elliott

The diagnosis that changed one man’s outlook on life and work

Four years ago, David Dickson, chairman of Garbutt and Elliott was struck with cancer.

He tells Lizzie Murphy of Yorkshire Post News why he is now determined to live life to the full.

David Dickson looks me in the eye across the meeting room table where we are sitting.  “When you go through a process where you think, ‘I could have been dead’, it makes you think very carefully about why you do things”, he says.

In October 2005, the 55-year-old chairman of Yorkshire accountancy firm Garbutt and Elliott was diagnosed with invasive bladder cancer.  He undertook three months of chemotherapy followed by a radical cystectomy operation in 2006, which involved the removal of bladder, prostate and lymph nodes and a bladder recreation.

It’s exactly four years ago today since his operation and he says the illness has made him re-evaluate his life.  “I could have been dead within six months but, luckily, it hadn’t spread and it was restricted to the bladder”, he says.  I saw things in a different light.  What I realised was that I wasn’t going to spend time doing things that were a waste of time.

One of the changes he decided to make was moving his role from managing director to chairman of the company, which has offices in York and Leeds.  “I’d probably done all I could have done at that level.  I think six years is long enough”, he says.  After I was diagnosed with cancer, I thought it was a good time for succession.  If I’d dropped off the perch, it would have hurt the firm”.

He also stepped down from four non-executive roles on various boards in York, although he remains a member of the strategic board of Science City York and York University’s governing body, as well as a governor of St Peter’s School and York Theatre Royal.

One part of his life he hasn’t relinquished, though, is his passion for cycling.  The Father-of-three first started cycling almost 20 years ago for charity and has cycled all over the world, including several trips to South Africa.  In June he will be cycling from Lands End to John O’Groats.  There’s a group of about 20 of us who are really good mates who go out and cycle”, he says.  But it’s all very competitive and we all race one another now”.

Mr Dickson describes himself as having the “perfect” balance between his work and home life.

His present role involves supporting managing director Russell Turner.  “It means I can stand back a bit and spend more time with clients”.  “In many ways, I could have retired a long time ago and people ask me, ‘Why do you keep on doing the things you do?’ and I say ‘Because I enjoy it.  I genuinely love what I do’.”

Mr Dickson decided on a career in accounting after hearing stories from his uncle who was the financial director at Granada Television.  “It sounded really exciting”, he says.

He studied economics at Newcastle University and went on to work at KPMG, in Leeds, until he left to set up the Leeds office of Garbutt and Elliott.

Mr Dickson said the family business division is continuing to grow but the corporate finance side remains stagnant because of the economic climate.  Last year, the firm completed 14 deals with an estimated value of £26m.  Mr Dickson says, “It’s about half what we’d normally do because there isn’t the money around for people to finance deals in the way they did in the past.  It’s a tough market.  A lot of businesses are saying they don’t want to sell on now because the value they are getting at the moment is less than it will be in a couple of years’ time”.

Mr Dickson, who specialises in family businesses, says that division is flourishing because companies need help and advice more than ever now.  “Any family issues shouldn’t be taken back into the business but often they are.  If problems are allowed to develop, they can ruin a business because they lose their focus.  “A lot of the time we need to make people aware of what the potential problems are.  Sometimes, they don’t know what the problem is until it hits them and then they don’t know how to deal with it”.

Mr Dickson has first-hand experience of family businesses after marrying into York’s Shepherd family, which runs the Shepherd Group.  Although not one of his clients, he sits on Shepherd’s family council and has helped to write the constitution.

He believes 2010 will continue to be tough for businesses but the main issue will be what will happen to the public sector after the General Election.  “It won’t directly affect us but there are lots of organisations that we work for that work with the public sector.  It will have a knock-on-effect, and that’s the bit that really hasn’t been thought through.

“At a macro level, I think people are aware of that, and all political parties are saying we can’t afford to cut public spending to the level we should do because there will be a downturn if we do so.

“So it’s a case of how long we are going to leave it.  I think most public-sector organisations will have a zero recruitment policy in the next two years but it may have to be more than that.”