Sir Richard Greenbury, who has died aged 81, joined Marks & Spencer at the age of 16 and rose to become chief executive and chairman. By the time he stepped down in 1999, he had worked for the company for 46 years.

In the mid 1990s, under his chairmanship, it seemed that M&S could do no wrong. The retailer, founded more than 100 years before by Michael Marks as a market stall in Leeds, dominated the high street; its management was held up as an example to other businesses; Greenbury was offered directorships by companies including ICI and British Gas. He enjoyed the company of other powerful chairmen, particularly Alex Ferguson, manager of Manchester United, and counted the then prime minister, John Major, among his friends.

But Greenbury was an autocratic and abrasive chairman. He led M&S to record success but failed to admit the need for change in a shifting fashion market, which precipitated a dramatic collapse in the company’s fortunes. This would nearly cost M&S its independence in the face of a bid from Sir Philip Green’s Arcadia group in 2004.

Rick Greenbury was born in Carlisle, the son of Richard and Dorothy (nee Lewis). The family spent six years in Leeds before moving to west London, enabling Greenbury, when his short temper was criticised, to claim, improbably, to be just a “blunt Yorkshireman”. His combative temperament showed early: at Ealing county grammar school he boasted of being the most caned boy in the school. His powerful frame made him a formidable competitor at football and tennis and brought a Slazenger sponsorship.

But plans to further his sporting career at university collapsed after his parents split up and his mother was diagnosed with cancer. At 16, he was forced to find work as a packer in the Lillywhites sports store. “All my ambitions were destroyed and I found myself thinking life was very, very hard.”

He quarrelled with his boss but then answered an advertisement for management trainees at M&S and joined the company in 1952 at its Ealing store. He made such enthusiastic use of company sporting facilities that he slipped two discs and had to wear a steel corset, which meant he failed his national service medical. He excelled at tennis but his tantrums during his 12 years representing Middlesex were still remembered when, to his delight, he was later elected a member at Wimbledon.

Greenbury’s liking for an argument marked him out among the ranks of careful M&S staff. He even punched a customer, kept his job and was then promoted. He became a departmental manager in the flagship Marble Arch store, where his 6ft 2in frame caught the eye of the ageing chairman Simon Marks, son of the founder and later Lord Marks of Broughton, whose own aggressive style found an echo in Greenbury.

Marks nicknamed him “big fellow”, took him under his wing and moved him to head office as a trainee merchandiser. Throughout his career Greenbury drew on his experience of Marks’s business acumen and his privileged access to the family. Marks died at his desk in 1964, after 48 years at the helm, but Greenbury’s progress continued under the Sieffs, first Israel, Marks’s brother-in-law, then Israel’s son Marcus, who became chairman in 1972.

Greenbury became an M&S lifer, and met both his wives through the company. He worked in every department but made his name in knitwear. Detecting the trend to more casual dressing, he built up men’s knitwear in close alliance with a supplier, Harry Djanogly, of Nottingham Manufacturing, whose company developed low-cost, machine-washable lambswool sweaters. Greenbury’s success was recognised by appointment to the board at the age of 36. Six years later, in 1978, he became one of three joint managing directors.

He was recognised as having an uncanny understanding of what would sell, but his manner was hard to take. When company Jaguars were regularly breaking down, he pressed the case for a switch to German cars – anathema to the founding families, with their commitment to British-made goods – by flinging down his company car keys and announcing he would buy a BMW on his own account.

A fellow director said: “Rick always had to smash you. If you thought you had won a point, you found it had to be replayed at a later date.” Those lower down were blunter: “Rick ruled by fear.” The same had been said of Simon Marks, although the Sieffs were markedly more emollient.

Greenbury was particularly effective at building relationships with suppliers, which powered the company’s progress by developing new lines. One said: “You might doubt Rick’s judgment but not his integrity.” Appointed to run clothing in 1980, he reduced supplier numbers, encouraging mergers and rationalisations but ensuring there were large contracts for the survivors. By the early 90s, as he put it, “instead of 40 companies making ladies’ blouses, we had six – but six very powerful and capable ones”.

When Lord (Derek) Rayner, the first chairman from outside the family, took over in 1984, Greenbury had already been marked as his successor. But a survey of directors by the meticulous Rayner unearthed concerns about whether he had strategic vision to match his undoubted operating ability. The question would recur. Nonetheless he was appointed chief operating officer in 1986 and chief executive in 1988, becoming chairman and chief executive in 1991.

Profits had grown by only 2% in 12 months, after doubling in the previous five years. He acted quickly. Five thousand staff went in a year, mainly by natural wastage; suppliers were told to cut their margins, and the profitless chain of Canadian stores was sold off. In an “outstanding value” campaign, prices were cut or held and suppliers were encouraged to do more of their own product development. Rayner had been slow to open out-of-town stores but Greenbury accelerated the shift so that by the end of the 90s they accounted for a quarter of sales. Profits almost doubled again, to £1.1bn in 1997. By 1996 M&S’s share had risen to 15% of the UK clothing market. He was knighted in 1992. In 1993 Greenbury was voted retailer of the year, and in 1997 he received the accolade of second most impressive industrialist (after Richard Branson) from 500 of his peers in Mori’s annual survey of business leaders.

Behind the scenes, Greenbury became more autocratic. He enjoyed the traditional chairman’s right to veto or change clothes designs at a twice-yearly fashion parade. But he rarely visited stores of expanding rivals such as Next, while his initial reluctance to buy offshore meant that his staff were markedly less experienced in dealing with foreign manufacturers than their rivals. Outside boards found he had little to say except about M&S. More alarmingly, even in good times, the thin-skinned Greenbury was acutely sensitive to comment by journalists and financial analysts. His favourite verbal retort, “I have never heard such absolute rubbish,” was mild compared to his furious written refutations, nicknamed “Rickograms”.

Although apparently at his peak, he claimed that 1995 and 1996 were the worst years of his life. His second marriage broke up (he blamed his workaholic lifestyle), he suffered from a painful arthritic hip and he faced pillorying from the press as chairman of the CBI’s inquiry into executive pay.

It was a mark of his insularity and surprising unworldiness that he had allowed himself to be persuaded by Major to head the committee following an outcry over “fat cat” increases at British Gas. He was unprepared to be targeted when stories broke about executive excess; unhappy chairing a committee of prominent businessmen whom he could not dominate; embarrassed when the report’s recommendations were attacked by business for red tape and by unions for failing to tackle large increases. He complained of media harassment of his family. Had he been able to read the future, he said, he would never have taken the assignment.

As he reached 60, his reluctance to anoint a successor caused increasing difficulty. Senior executives began to jockey for position. His cautious but controlling management (“I didn’t create anything. I was a caretaker. I believed absolutely in the founding principles”) was producing record results. But lack of strategic vision came back to haunt him. Competitors had learnt from Marks, and there were warning signs. By 1997 M&S clothing was increasingly seen as unexciting while a decision to expand by buying 19 Littlewood stores was made just before an economic downturn.

His downfall was dramatic. Results declared in May 1998 at £1.1m were widely praised but had been boosted by special items and unusual price increases. By September it was clear that there had been a collapse in sales, unforeseen by the management. In November, Greenbury reported a 23% profit fall. A few days later his deputy chairman, Keith Oates, wrote an astonishing letter to board members claiming things were much worse and that they should appoint him as chief executive.

Greenbury flew back from business in India to board meltdown. Oates went but the non-executives insisted that a new chief executive be appointed and Greenbury become non-executive chairman. Their choice, Peter Salsbury, considered a Greenbury supporter, made clear he wanted things done his way and resented Greenbury’s interference. The two clashed repeatedly and six months later Greenbury resigned.

It was a brutally rapid demotion – from hero to zero in 14 months – and Greenbury found it difficult to understand or to admit where he had gone wrong. “It’s painful,” he told an interviewer. “I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t feel frustrated, but the people who count have stood by me.”

After stepping down, his corporate life was limited. He served on the supervisory board of Philips Electronics and was a director of Electronics Boutique, a chain of video game stores. Meanwhile his old company struggled in the fashion market against competition from retailers such as Primark and Next, which it had been slow to anticipate. It narrowly resisted a takeover from Arcadia Group in 2004, but in spite of a series of management reshuffles and attempts at relaunches the company has never regained the commanding position it enjoyed under Greenbury’s chairmanship.

He met his first wife, Sian Hughes, while she was doing a temporary job at the M&S store in Edinburgh. They married in 1959, had two sons and two daughters, divorced and then remarried in 1996 – after his divorce from his second wife, Gabrielle McManus, whom he had met as a buyer in London and married in 1985. He is survived by Sian and his children.

• Richard Greenbury, retailer, born 31 July 1936; died 27 September 2017