Call it international aid.
Mark C. Pigott, 54, isn’t British, but the millionaire trucking industry executive who lives in Washington state has made it his mission to help English institutions flourish.
His latest cause is the renovation of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London.
Without naming the sum, The New York Times reported last week that Pigott, the chairman and CEO of PACCAR, Inc., was most the generous of the many Americans who have contributed a total $3 million toward the $60 million cost of renovating St. Paul’s.
Pigott previously helped fund England’s Royal Shakespeare Company, the British Library and London’s National Gallery.
In the U.S., Pigott has been a benefactor of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. He’s also given away millions to other causes, many in Washington state.
Politically, he’s generally donated to Republican candidates or committees, including $72,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee since 2004.
For his English efforts, Pigott was made an officer of the British Empire in 2003.
His donations reflect his own connection to England - he lived and worked there for several years in the 1980s - but they make business sense, as well.
PACCAR, the world’s second-largest maker of big trucks, has owned Leyland Trucks, a British concern, since 1998. The company also owns DAF Trucks, N.V., a truck manufacturer in the Netherlands and in Belgium.
In North America, PACCAR owns the Kenworth Truck Company, headquartered in suburban Seattle, as well as Peterbilt, a Texas-based truck manufacturer.
Pigott represents the fourth generation of his family to lead a company started by his great-grandfather, William Pigott Sr., in 1905.
A Stanford University graduate like many other members of his family, Mark Pigott started full-time at PACCAR in 1977 as an internal auditor,
He went on to work in a variety of positions in this country and abroad and became the company’s chairman and CEO in 1997. His total annual compensation as reported by Forbes magazine in 2008 was $14.5 million.
PACCAR which employs move than 20,000 workers worldwide, has done well over the years, but is facing diminished demand for its heavy-duty trucks because of the global economic crisis.
The company plans to lay off 430 workers at its Kenworth plant in Renton, Wash., in January, The Seattle Times reported.
Leyland Trucks in England is going to cut 250 jobs because of the slump of truck sales in Europe, according to reports.
The troubled economy was on the minds of the worshippers from the U.S. who attended the annual Thanksgiving Day service at St. Paul’s Thursday, John Burns wrote in the Times.
Some of them, especially those working in London’s financial district, have lost or could lose their jobs.
But the renovated church gave some relief from the economic gloom, the Times reported. Most of Pigott’s contribution to St. Paul’s went toward the restoration of the crypt containing the marble funeral bier of the Duke of Wellington.
“Like most of the rest of the restoration, the work in the crypt gave light and color back to what had become a gloom recess,” Burns wrote.
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