After the death of his father Evan, who founded Linpac in 1959, Michael Cornish sold a large part of his family’s company to the private-equity firm Montagu in 2003 in a deal worth £860m. Linpac is a packaging and materials company and produces McDonald’s burger boxes, cardboard pizza boxes, plastic containers and dashboards for cars. Sales in 2002, the latest figures available, totalled £1,213m. The company recently sold its corrugated cardboard subsidiary for £170m.