Through the 1970s the Laird group, as a widely spread holding company, enjoyed very varied fortunes. Its remaining interest in steel now became a financial embarrassment. The nationalisation in 1977 of shipbuilding and the aircraft industry deprived it of its interest in both Cammell Laird and Scottish Aviation. In compensation for an estimated £5.25 million in these two firms, it had by mid-1980 received only £2.5 million and was owed interest on the rest. Metropolitan–Cammell, which had registered losses at the beginning of the decade, became a major profit-maker, later to be sold to the General Electric Company. Other successes were in high-technology resistance welding, aeroplane-engine parts and new service-sector lines such as air freight and catering. Above all the Laird group became important in components for the motor industry. By 1992, still under the chairmanship of John Gardiner, pre-tax profits were £36 million. The next year it was revealed that more than 80 per cent of its profits came from overseas operations. By now it was diversifying from automotive products into such remote fields as printing and packaging, window security and plastics. Sales in 1991 were £524 million and it employed over 10,000; in sharp contrast, that year Cammell Laird employed only 2,114 and sales were £58 million.

For shipbuilding the immediate aftermath of the reconstruction seemed promising. In 1971 the world order book was 84 million tons, double the level of 1967.