Busi­ness­man Wil­fred Sid­ney Knox who had been the face of the Neal and Massy con­glom­er­ate for over 30 years passed away yes­ter­day.

“Mr Knox worked un­der the tute­lage of Charles Massy, one of the founders of the Neal and Massy group and held var­i­ous po­si­tions ris­ing through the ranks, from a sales rep­re­sen­ta­tive to joint man­ag­ing di­rec­tor and lat­er to Chair­man and Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the Group,” a re­lease from Massy stat­ed yes­ter­day.

Ac­cord­ing to Massy, Knox was “in­cred­i­bly proud” of the con­glom­er­ate cel­e­brat­ing its cen­te­nary re­cent­ly and viewed the cel­e­bra­tions with en­joy­ment and pride.

“In its for­ma­tive years, Mr Knox al­so served as Deputy Chair­man at the UWI In­sti­tute of Busi­ness (now Arthur Lok Jack Glob­al School of Busi­ness) bring­ing con­sid­er­able depth of ex­pe­ri­ence to the in­sti­tu­tion. He will be re­mem­bered as one of the out­stand­ing busi­ness lead­ers of his time,” it stat­ed.

Un­der Knox’s, lead­er­ship and vi­sion, Neal and Massy was trans­formed in­to a Caribbean con­glom­er­ate the re­lease stat­ed.

“It was Mr Knox’s lead­er­ship and per­sis­tence that led to the Group’s sus­tained in­vest­ment in Guyana over 50 years ago. He was al­so re­spon­si­ble for ex­pand­ing Neal and Massy’s foot­print across the Caribbean re­gion and strong­ly sup­port­ed the cre­ation of the Caribbean Com­mon Mar­ket (Cari­com),” it stat­ed,

Ger­vase Warn­er, Pres­i­dent and Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer, Massy Group stat­ed “Sid­ney was in­stru­men­tal in the growth and ex­pan­sion of the Group. He was the longest-serv­ing CEO and Chair­man of the Group. There’s a lot of what we have in­her­it­ed for which we are eter­nal­ly grate­ful to Sid­ney. May his gi­ant soul Rest in Peace.”

Knox was in­duct­ed in­to the T&T Cham­ber’s Busi­ness Hall of Fame in 2006.

The T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce said “Knox, fa­mil­iar­ly known as ‘Bull­moose’’ was a pow­er­house of T&T’s busi­ness land­scape; one who played a trans­for­ma­tion­al role par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing the re­ces­sion years of the 1980s.”

The Cham­ber al­so not­ed that as a vol­un­teer for World War II, “Mr Knox was the last T&T sur­viv­ing vet­er­an of the Al­lied Forces who bat­tled against Nazi Ger­many. He worked dili­gent­ly from the bot­tom up, ‘from scratch’ as he would have de­scribed it, to many promi­nent roles.”

T&T Cham­ber Pres­i­dent Charles Pash­ley said, “Our thoughts and sym­pa­thies are with the be­reaved at this time of sor­row fol­low­ing this trag­ic loss of a stal­wart who has helped shape not on­ly the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty but con­tributed to the holis­tic de­vel­op­ment of T&T.”