SIR OWAIN JENKINS, died at the age of 89, he was an old school East India merchant with a taste for hard work, horses and country sports. For 30 years he worked for Balmer Lawrie, the Calcutta agency house, of which he became managing director in 1948. Agency houses, institutions peculiar to Bengal, provided professional management for a variety of enterprises. Balmer Lawrie managed tea, coal mining, paper making and engineering businesses.

Jenkins's family had strong links with India. His father was a member of the Indian Civil Service and of the Viceroy's Executive Council; his mother was a Trevor, one of the four families described by Kipling as "serving India from generation to generation as dolphins follow in line across the open sea". When Jenkins arrived in India in 1929, railways were still supreme and the horse was a rival of the motor car. Offers of delegated power were still being refused by Congress, and British merchants outnumbered administrators by 20 to one. "India," Jenkins recalled, "was British beyond dispute".

Owain Trevor Jenkins was born on Feb 20 1907 and educated at Charterhouse and Balliol College, Oxford, where he read history. Three of his elder brothers distinguished themselves at Balliol; of the two who survived the First World War, one went on to become Governor of the Punjab, the other a Lord of Appeal. Young Jenkins took a modest degree in 1929 (later he considered attending a degree ceremony at Oxford, but "thought the time and money better spent on a race meeting"), and went out to India to join Balmer Lawrie.

On his first day in Calcutta, Jenkins almost killed a High Court judge while practising golf shots on the Maidan; his ball just missed the judge's head. "He flayed me as I have never been flayed before or since," Jenkins remembered. "He spoke with authority and the breadth and variety of diction that mark the disapproval of an educated man." Jenkins started work in the tea estates department of Balmer Lawrie, at a salary of 500 rupees a month, assisting in the administration of plantations in Assam. He and his fellow mercantile assistants sat at desks around the walls of a large office. Hindu clerks were herded within a teak partition in the middle; Muslim messengers (one for each European) waited about, ready to go on errands about Calcutta by bicycle. To begin with, Jenkins found much of the routine lacking in scope for initiative - it was rather like being the curator of an obelisk, he later said. He did not even have the pleasure of those assistants at the older merchant houses who took a dog to the office for the chance of a rat hunt at lunchtime.

There were, though, occasional excitements. One day Jenkins's filing clerk came in with the news of an attempt on the life of Sir Charles Tegart, in Dalhousie Square. The would-be assassin had tried to throw a bomb into Tegart's open car, but dropped it. "Sir Tegart rose up and pistolled him," the clerk reported. "His guts were all over the road." Outside office hours, Jenkins devoted much of his considerable energy to sport. He trained horses, rode in paperchases and went pig-sticking and snipe shooting.

With other bachelors he shared a house in Dum Dum village, outside Calcutta, where there was room to stable their horses. It was a period on which Jenkins looked back with pleasure, when he led a life of country sport he could not have afforded in England. He joined the Calcutta Light Horse, which had not seen active service since 1857, but provided volunteers for fighting regiments and in peacetime proved a useful resource for equestrian sportsmen. Later, as a member of the Cavalry Reserve, Jenkins enjoyed periods of attachment to two Indian Army cavalry regiments, the Central India Horse and the 18th KEO Cavalry, both of which were still horsed. At Balmer Lawrie, in 1937, Jenkins moved on from the management of tea estates to become personal assistant to the managing director. He got to know experts in the mining and engineering branches of the firm, and became interested in methods of extracting coal. He "perceived that business might be fun".

But growing interest and responsibility were interrupted by the outbreak of the Second World War. In 1940 Jenkins joined the Guides Cavalry at Quetta, and took part in their conversion to motor vehicles. The next year he transferred to the 45th Cavalry, a newly raised regiment which was to be equipped with Stuart tanks. At Meerut he commanded a squadron of Dogras - hill Rajputs ("the sons of kings") - men for whom Jenkins acquired great admiration and affection. In 1944, by then a squadron commander, Jenkins returned to civilian life in Calcutta, where his industrial experience was required by the Directorate General of Munitions Production. His work in procurement left him, he said, "obsessed with the fascination of manufacture - of getting things made".

After the war Jenkins returned to Balmer Lawrie, and when independence came to India in 1947, it did not occur to him to leave. He was too busy and enjoying himself too much. He continued, so far as possible, to lead a country life, leaving Calcutta at weekends for shooting camps or pig-sticking. After independence, businessmen in India engaged in a struggle to convince the socialist government that private enterprise could only flourish with some degree of freedom and some prospect of reward. Jenkins's tolerance and good humour were of great value, and he remained on good terms with many Congress politicians - however much he disagreed with them.

From 1956 to 1957 Jenkins was president of the Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and of the Associated Chambers of Commerce of India. He was knighted in 1958, and the next year retired to Britain. He was a member of the Economic Survey Mission to Basutoland, the Bechuanaland Protectorate and Swaziland in 1959, and held various company directorships.

Witty, urbane and modest, Jenkins was always good company. He was an amusing contributor to Blackwood's Magazine, and supplied his friend Rumer Godden with material for her racing novel The Dark Horse. His own account of his days in India was published as Merchant Prince in 1987. Throughout his life, Jenkins made the best of the hand he was dealt - and thoroughly enjoyed playing it. Owain Jenkins married, in 1940, Sybil Herbert, the daughter of Major-General Lionel Herbert. There were no children
Daily Telegraph