Frits Philips, the former head of Royal Philips Electronics who died on Monday at the age of 100, not only played a key part in turning the Dutch-based group into Europe's biggest producer of consumer electronics but also gave industry a social face.

A deeply religious man, he helped save the lives of hundreds of Dutch Jews during the second world war after the Nazis forced him to open a factory in a concentration camp near the group's main headquarters at Eindhoven. In a Schindler-style operation, 382 out of the 469 Jewish workers there survived. Later Frits Philips was awarded the Yad Vashem medal by Israel.