Derek Coombs

Derek Michael Coombs (12 August 1931 – 30 December 2014) was a British Conservative politician. He was Member of Parliament for Birmingham Yardley from 1970 to 1974, winning a marginal seat which was later recovered by Labour's Sydney Tierney. Whilst an MP, he supported the UK's joining of the then EEC. Additionally, he introduced a private members bill which relaxed the earnings rule for pensioners, and assisted the peace process in Northern Ireland which led to the Sunningdale Agreement. Derek Coombs was also briefly an officer in the Royal Artillery, a successful businessman, a supporter of the arts, and the founding chairman of Prospect magazine.

Family Derek Coombs was married first in early 1959 in Sutton Coldfield to Patricia (b. Leeds North, late-1930 ) the elder sister of Peter O'Toole; Coombs and Patricia had two children, a daughter Sian (b. early-1967 but when that did not succeed Derek teamed up with former Financial Times journalist David Goodhart, and together founded Prospect, the intellectual monthly magazine in 1995. Coombs invested several hundred thousand into the venture and it became a leading magazine in Westminster. In 2008 when Derek became ill, George Robinson, a director of London-based hedge fund Sloane Robinson Investment Management, and Peter Hall, of boutique fund manager Hunter Hall, each acquired 26% of the title after Coombs’ attorneys, acting for the magazine's chairman and largest shareholder, sold his 40% stake. S&U operates today under the Aspen Bridging and Advantage Finance brands.

Derek was a serial entrepreneur and developer and, amongst other ventures, built several shopping centres under the company Hardanger alongside Nicholas Sciviter.

The Coombs family held stakes in Metalrax, a previous engineering venture