JCB billionaire to hand empire to youngest son
JCB billionaire to hand empire to youngest son
Christopher JasperSat, May 16, 2026 at 6:00 AM UTC
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Lord Bamford has said his son, George, will eventually take over his manufacturing business - Andrew Crowley for The Telegraph
The boss of JCB has named his younger son as his heir to end a Succession-style saga about the future of the business.
Lord Bamford, 80, told The Telegraph that his third child, George, would take over from him as head of the digger manufacturer rather than Joseph, his elder son and presumed heir.
It is understood that Joseph, 48, had attempted to persuade his father to give up the reins of the company in what Lord Bamford viewed as an attempted coup.
Since then George, 45, has been installed as deputy chairman of JCB, which has a turnover of £6.5 billion. Alice, Lord Bamford’s eldest child, 50, lives in California, where she is a film producer.
In an interview with The Telegraph, Lord Bamford, who is a major donor to both the Conservatives and Reform UK, confirmed that a succession plan was now in place.
He said: “In terms of us remaining a family business, that is very important, and we do have plans.
“I’m very lucky and highly privileged to be in charge of this business at the moment. I don’t intend to be forever, I am 80, for heaven’s sake.”
Asked who would eventually take over the business, he said: “It will be George.”
George Bamford, Lord Bamford’s third child, is currently deputy chairman of JCB - Mark Sutton/Sutton Images
The succession plan has not yet been formalised at board level, it is understood.
Lord Bamford’s confirmation of his successor ends years of speculation and rumour about what was going on behind the doors of the JCB boardroom.
In 2006, Joseph, known as Jo, was the first sibling to join the board of the firm founded by their grandfather, Joseph Cyril Bamford, in 1945. George and Alice joined the board three years later.
Having worked for a period in the City, Jo started working for the family firm in 2004, managing the JCB Utility Products branch of the company.
From there he worked his way up through more senior roles, gaining experience in different parts of the company, including as head of major contracts, in what appeared to be a classic example of a son being groomed to take over the family firm.
Jo Bamford, Lord Bamford’s eldest son, had been expected to inherit the family firm - Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg
Meanwhile, George, who became fascinated with mechanical watches as a child, started his own company customising luxury watches and now makes his own range of watches under the Bamford brand.
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He still owns and oversees the watch company, but JCB is becoming his full-time job as he prepares to take over the running of the company, which has 22 factories on four continents and employs 19,000 people.
He works at JCB every day and has toured the world visiting the company’s foreign manufacturing plants.
Jo has proved his own ability to be innovative by forming a hydrogen energy company, Ryze, and buying the Northern Ireland-based bus manufacturer Wrightbus, saving it from collapse. He was awarded a CBE in 2025.
Jo has far more experience of running large companies than his brother, but has, ultimately, been passed over by his father.
Jo said in an interview in April that JCB could be forced to relocate to America to escape the inheritance tax crackdown on family firms imposed by Rachel Reeves. He appeared to be speaking without the authority of his father, who remains chairman of the company.
Lord Bamford’s wife Carole, Lady Bamford, founded the Daylesford Organic Farmshops chain, which influenced their eldest child, Alice, to set up her own farm and farm shop in California.
Lord Bamford, pictured with his family, is a major donor to both the Conservatives and Reform UK
Alice is also an author as well as a film producer. She is mourning her partner Ann Eysenring, who lost her life to cancer in March.
There have been feuds within the Bamford family in the past. Lord Bamford and his younger brother Mark spent years arguing in the 1990s about the ownership of a small subsidiary called JCB Research, which was used as a vehicle for making donations to the Conservative Party.
Lord Bamford was its sole shareholder, but Mark argued that he should have owned 50pc of it as part of his inheritance.
In 2004, the Bamford family contested the will of founder Joseph Cyril Bamford, who died in 2001.
He left his 50pc interest in the firm to his mistress Jayne Ellis, a former secretary in his typing pool, leaving nothing to his wife Marjorie, who never agreed to a divorce. The matter was later settled out of court.
Lord Bamford’s cousin Richard also tried unsuccessfully to sue Mark Bamford because of money he said he was owed for consultancy services regarding a proposed sale of the firm which did not go through.
Jo Bamford was contacted for comment.
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Source: “AOL Money”
