George B. (Chip) Reid, Jr., 55, a former chief executive of Bacardi Ltd. in Bermuda died of leukaemia on Friday at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.

Mr. Reid was most recently partner of the Covington & Burling law firm in Washington. He lived in McLean, Virginia.

Mr. Reid was deputy counsel to the Republican National Committee in the 1980s. Since 2001, he had been a financial and strategic adviser to businesses.

Mr. Reid was born in Washington and raised in Alexandria, where he graduated from Hammond High School. He received a bachelor's degree from Yale University and, in 1974, received a law degree and Master's degree in business from Harvard University. He served in the Army Reserve for 11 years.

Mr. Reid clerked at law firms in Boston and San Francisco before joining Covington & Burling in 1974. He became a partner in 1982 and was coordinator of the corporate and securities practice group.

Among his clients was Hiram Walker, which purchased a small interest in Bacardi in 1979. He was Bacardi's legal adviser ten years when it bought back Hiram Walker's investment and then was asked to help orchestrate a Bacardi reorganisation. A year later, he helped negotiate the company's acquisition of Martini & Rossi for $2 billion.

He joined Bacardi as executive vice president in 1996 and became chief executive officer in 1997. The first non-member of the large Bacardi family to lead the company, he left after four years when his plans to take the company public were thwarted by family infighting.

Mr. Reid moved back to the Washington area and co-founded Pitts Bay Partners, an advisory firm.

He was a member of the board of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Aging and Geriatric Medicine.

His marriage to Jeanne Fallon ended in divorce.

Survivors include his wife, Rosi Reid of McLean; two daughters from his first marriage, Elizabeth Miller of Charlotte and Caroline Reid of McLean; two stepdaughters, Emily Reiter and Laura Reiter, both of McLean; a sister, Nancy Cole, of Great Falls; and his mother, Joyce Reid, of Alexandria.