Sunfish - as you say, the Chairman's business experience - as in the direct industry in which he has worked - is indeed irrelevant. It is his entire business experience as a whole that is important - it is irrelevant if "the issue to me is that I cannot think of any less "people oriented" business than the purveying of tobacco."...he is, as you say, not running the company, and the bread and butter of a Chartered Accountant is risk management and corporate governance.
Whether he is any good at it is a totally different matter, but I hardly see it as relevant whether his past experience was in tobacco, or indeed environmental activism...if he has the skills.
BOTH - Can we just kill posts that sully accountants with the "knows the cost of everything but the value of nothing" brush. It is simply an ignorant generalisation that I am tired of rebutting.