Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Anthony Thank you for coming down to Bristol Pleasure
Just a few questions. You've had a distinguished career as a management consultant, Chief executive,
Executive Chairman of Bunzal, Chairman of Whitbread and Reed Elsevier. To what extent
do you think generic management skills are transferable across different businesses?
I think without question there are alot of skills that are transferable, across different
businesses. But I think there are some barriers which are more difficult to cross than others;
for example if you are an executive in a distribution business, to transfer to a company which is
building nuclear power stations would be a very considerable gap to reach because the
decision making processes of the company is really quite different.
That leads me onto my next question, how important is specific industry experience in your view
to successful management? I think it depends alot on the situation that
your in. In this period of particular economic turbulence that we've been in. Some industry
experience has proven very useful to people. Because when your in a very, very difficult
economic position your immediate reaction is, you can't take a time to learn about business,
you have to act, you have to act quickly. And so industry experience can be very helpful
to that. You're credited to helping Bunzel which is
nicknamed Bungl by the city in to a highly successful business. You the chairman of a
company that has successfully turned around, thats Whitbread and you're in the middle of
turnaround or midst of turnaround. What are the Key lessons for a newly appointed chief
executive in charge of turning around a company? Well the important thing for a new chief executive
is to really get on top of the business, so you have to spend a lot of time in the beginning
listening to people. But you mustn't spend too much time doing that because you've got
to be bold and I think there are three times you can make important decisions.
You can be too early, just at the right time or too late. Well you'll never be just at
the right time and it's better to be too early than too late, so be bold.
Reed Elsevier is a Anglo-Dutch company. Does this duality add management complexity and
if yes how is it added? Well inevitably a little bit because we have
two boards we are two separate companies that own the operating company. So we have two
boards of directors, so we have two AGM's. We have different codes of governments in
the different places, and we have to comply with both. Both companies are listed in New
York so we have two parallel ADR listings as well. So are added complexities.
We have to have several board meetings a year in the Netherlands. We have a number of Dutch
directors. Well we have, we have a big majority of international directors anyway so that's
not a hardship but it restricts the pool so you are; just having Dutch ones rather than
perhaps German or French or whatever else you might have.
On the other hand the restrictions that, the complexity that is added there is I would
guess probably less than the complexity that is being added to for example the WPP by having
a trying to move its Domus isle to Ireland. Turning into acquisitions, What factors contribute
to success for acquisitions in your view? We as you know probably better than I 70%
of acquisitions over the whole of my career have been by academic standards always said
to be not successful or too of failed or whatever the definition exactly is.
So the way to be successful is to mitigate that risk more than anything else and in my
view the way you mitigate that risk is by really knowing the company you're going to
buy or really knowing the industry it's in. The more you know the greater amount you mitigate
the risk and if you can get rid of the risk, falling 30% that's good.