Sir John Coldbrook Hanbury-Williams was a British businessman and courtier. He was director of Courtaulds from 1946 to 1962, served as a director of the Bank of England from 1936 to 1963, and held various positions in the royal household.
In 1926, Hanbury-Williams joined textile company Courtaulds in Coventry before being transferred to the company's headquarters in London. He concentrated on the company's yarn trade overseas and soon oversaw administration of Courtaulds' foreign-affiliated companies. In 1930, he was elected to the company's board of directors. In 1935, he was appointed a managing director, concentrating on the companies international trade. He was directly involved in the founding of British Cellophane. In 1936, Hanbury-Williams was elected to the court of directors of the Bank of England, and served as a director until his retirement in February 1963. From 1940 to his retirement, he also served as a member of the Bank of England's Committee of Treasury. Prior to the Second World War, Hanbury-Williams was responsible for Courtaulds involvement with nylon, invented in 1935 by DuPont. After the War began, he worked full-time as an executive director of the Bank of England in 1940–41. In 1942, he served under the Minister of Economic Warfare, Lord Selborne. In 1943, he returned to Courtaulds and was appointed deputy chairman. In 1946, he succeeded Samuel Courtauld as chairman of the company. Courtaulds had suffered during the wartime years and had been forced to sell off its almost wholly owned American subsidiary, the American Viscose Corporation, for badly needed dollars for Great Britain. Post-war, the company also needed to replenish its staff across the board and underwent a period of major recruitment. A particular achievement for Hanbury-Williams was the return to the United States in 1951 with the establishment of a new American subsidiary, Courtaulds, Inc. Additionally, Hanbury-Williams served as chairman of the Prime Minister's Committee on the ordering procedure for civil aircraft in 1948; honorary treasurer of the Commonwealth Study Conference at Oxford in 1956; president of the International Association for the Protection of Industrial Property in 1959–60; and a vice-president of the National Council for Social Service. Hanbury-Williams was knighted in the 1950 New Year Honours, for public services.
Hanbury-Williams married Princess Zenaida Cantacuzène, daughter of Major-General Prince Mikhail Cantacuzène, 2nd Count Speransky and Julia Dent Grant, granddaughter of US President Ulysses S. Grant, on 1 November 1928 in Washington, D.C. They had one son and two daughters. He died in 1965 at the London Clinic, aged 73.
