DOANLD REGAN: Donald Regan, who has died of cancer aged 84, was a jovial but combative and driven man who rose from working-class, Irish South Boston to be the boss of the world's biggest firm of stockbrokers, Merrill Lynch (known to Wall Street as the Thundering Herd). He served as President Reagan's treasury secretary and then, in a bizarre move, swapped jobs with James Baker and took over as chief of staff at the White House.
His time at the White House was less successful and far less happy than his years at the treasury next door. He clashed with the formidable Nancy Reagan, in part over the first lady's habit of consulting an astrologer before agreeing to the president's travel schedule and even to propitious days for surgery. In the end he was forced out of his job, and both he and Mrs Reagan published angry accounts of the bitter and unseemly fight.
Regan's whole life was one of struggle.
His father, a Boston policeman, was fired for taking part in a police strike by Calvin Coolidge, then governor of Massachusetts, later president of the United States. William Regan had to find poorly-paid and less-dignified work as a security officer with the New Haven railroad. Then Donald's older brother Billy died, and the family transferred its ambitions to him.
Regan rose to his parents' expectations with great intellectual gifts and formidable determination. He won a scholarship to Harvard, where he was in the same graduating class as John F. Kennedy.
Regan won a scholarship to the Harvard Law School, but before qualifying as a lawyer he enlisted in the Marines and served in combat in the South Pacific. He was a lieutenant colonel by the end of the war. Demobbed, he had the choice of several good business careers and more or less at random decided to join Merrill Lynch. He rose quickly and caught the eye of one of the firm's founders, Charlie Merrill, who lent him the $10,000 he needed to become a partner. He headed the office in Philadelphia and was then put in charge of sales promotion. By 1968 he was president of the company, the youngest to hold the post, and in 1973 chief executive.
It was not long before Regan found himself involved in Republican politics and fundraising. When Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980, he chose Regan to be his treasury secretary.Overall, Regan proved effective, but when he was persuaded by Baker, who had political ambitions, to swap jobs for Reagan's second term, life was much more difficult. Regan was horrified when he discovered that Mrs Reagan had a colour-coded calendar showing which days her astrologer thought suitable for various presidential activities.
The absurd row over the first lady's faith in astrology was not the only problem Regan had to face. The White House soon slipped out of his control. ON his watch Col Oliver North and a group of other administration officials started the illegal operation known as the Iran-Contra affair. In February 1987, Regan was forced out. He went angrily, complaining that the president had treated him "like a shoe clerk", which is what President Reagan's father had been.
He is survived by his wife, Ann Buchanan, two daughters, two sons and nine grandchildren.
Donald T. Regan, born December 21st, 1918; died June 10th, 2003.