THE new chairman of Sports Direct, the soon-to-float retail group, loves a
good joke. I tell him that he doesn’t look like a big sportswear buyer.
“I do go to the gym twice a week,” responds David Richardson, pretending to
look hurt, “but only to look at the leotards.” Then he laughs hugely. “And
that’s just the men. Ha, ha, ha.”
Richardson, 55, big and jowly and carrying the sort of figure you probably
wouldn’t want to see in a tracksuit, is a man of surprises. He cracks so
many jokes that you would never think he used to be finance director and
chief troubleshooter at Whitbread, the very serious FTSE 100 leisure group,
where a decade ago he had a reputation as its toughest negotiator.
Nor would you expect him to pop up fronting Sports Direct, the
cheap-and-cheerful high-street empire founded by press-shy entrepreneur Mike
Ashley. That now owns Lillywhites and Sports World, and leisure brands
Donnay, Dunlop, Kangol, Lonsdale and Slazenger, and announced its flotation
— and Richardson’s appointment — last week.
But what does Richardson know about shops? Not a lot, though he does have
experience with entrepreneurs. After all, he was the man who persuaded
tennis star David Lloyd to sell Whitbread his eponymous health clubs in the
mid1990s. Lloyd quickly regretted the deal, and railed against the Whitbread
suits before being pushed out.
“It took me six days to buy the business and six months to negotiate him out
of it,” remembers Richardson. “But if you read his autobiography, he does
say I was the only decent person there.”
No doubt Ashley is ordering a copy as we speak. But at least the City will be
reassured that Porsche-driving Richardson, a jovial flesh-presser to meet,
is a far tougher proposition round the boardroom table.
He may need to be, as some still think that the Sports Direct flotation looks
a distinctly rum business.
For starters, why is it happening at all? Ashley, 43, who is selling 40% of
his 100% ownership in the flotation, doesn’t need the £810m it will raise,
and doesn’t want the attention. Yet he aims to make Sports Direct the
biggest sports retailer in the world, and he believes his group needs the
stamp of approval a public quotation will bring, even though retail
entrepreneurs do not have a good track record in the City.
So a deal has been concocted that promotes Ashley to executive deputy
chairman, his managing director, Dave Forsey, to chief executive, and brings
in Richardson, an accountant by training, as the experienced hand to helm
the flotation. In short, it looks as if Ashley will still be running Sports
Direct, with its 465 outlets, but not taking questions from the press or the
City. Is that a good way to operate a public company?
“Look,” says Richardson, “the board will be a proper board or I won’t chair
it.” He cites nonexecutive directors Simon Bentley, former boss of Blacks,
and Chris Bulmer, another ex-Whitbread colleague. “These are not executives
who just say yes sir, no sir. They have a job to do.”
Their priorities will be twofold, he adds. To make sure Sports Direct, which
has grown at a ferocious pace, keeps producing “numbers that the City likes”
and doesn’t do anything “the City doesn’t like”. It’s that simple.
As for Ashley’s role: “If you have got a 60% shareholder, it doesn’t matter if
he is on the board or off it, he is going to have a lot of influence. He
won’t be involved all the time, but I’d rather have him round the table,
expressing his views, than outside.”
In other words, better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside
the tent pissing in?
“I wasn’t going to say tents and pissing but now you mention it ... ha, ha,
ha.”
He gurgles with laughter again. Richardson, born in Essex but brought up
outside Manchester, combines the bluff chattiness of a northerner with a
hard streak that becomes apparent only when pleasantries cease. Right now,
sitting in the City offices of Sport Direct’s PR firm, he’s making the best
of both: hoping to launch a charm offensive, while also showing he won’t
take any nonsense.
He’s already charmed the Sports Direct team, according to Forsey. “We bonded
with him — he’s got the experience and the skill set that we think are
ideal,” says the Sports Direct chief executive.
And Richardson says the press have got it wrong about Ashley. He’s not a moody
recluse, he’s a “charismatic, witty, lovely guy”. He met him first at the
headhunters who approached him to be a nonexecutive director. Ashley, in his
trademark jeans and bulky shirt, turned up unexpectedly with his finance
director. “He said ‘I’m Mike’ to the girl at reception and she said ‘Mike
who?’ ” Cue more laughter. Richardson says the original plan was for Ashley
to chair the flotation. “I told them if they were going to float, they would
need an independent chairman. A week later they rang back and offered it to
me. My wife said I’d better go to a shop and see what it’s like!”
And did he like what he saw? Ashley’s chaotic retail floorspace, with sports
clothing piled high, and trainers racked to the ceiling, is idiosyncratic,
to say the least.
“Yeah, it’s got a designer chaos feel to it,” says Richardson. “But remember,
Whitbread ran some very rough pubs, and one of the things you did was go and
see them because that’s often where we made a lot of money. You get used to
giving customers what they want at different levels. Do you know why Mike
keeps his tills at the back of the store?”
To stop customers running off with them? “No, so the queue doesn’t prevent
people coming in the door. Very clever.”
But what about the risk to Richardson’s reputation? Entrepreneurs who are used
to total control often find the demands of investors hard to take. Isn’t he
worried he could get caught in the middle?
“Look, I read the press, I understand what the downsides are, but if you go
and see the Sports Direct operation in its head office in Shirebrook,
Nottinghamshire, you don’t get the impression that Mike is unapproachable —
he answers questions, he’s got dedicated staff. And the one thing I know
from Whitbread, you only get happy customers if you have happy staff.”
Richardson carved out a 23-year career at Whitbread, following stints at
Touche Ross and ICL. He left Whitbread two years ago, shortly after the
appointment of chief executive Alan Parker. There was no falling-out, he
says, just a feeling that, at 53, he should go. “My father had died of a
heart attack when he was 53. I didn’t want to do another five years and be
carried out in a box.” He has taken on five nonexecutive directorships in
the FTSE 250 since then.
Colleagues at Whitbread remember Richardson, who headed strategy and
acquisitions before finance, as a burly Mr Fixit. “He sorted out the
messes,” says David Reid, Whitbread’s former communications chief. “He’s
very direct and very determined.”
David Thomas, Whitbread's former chief executive, also warns that Richardson’s
joviality covers a meaner streak. “He doesn’t suffer fools gladly, he’s very
patient and he thrives in difficult situations.”
Thomas remembers Richardson deliberately stringing out negotiations with
Allied Domecq boss Tony Hales one Cup Final day when he heard Hales had
tickets and his team was playing. Hales had to miss the match.
The surprise is that Richardson never made the final push to the top slot.
Richardson shrugs when it’s put to him. “I don’t feel finance directors make
good chief executives and I didn’t want to do it.”
Others felt he lacked the confidence to be number one. Richardson was born the
second son to two teachers, behind an elder brother who was prodigiously
academic and went on to be a civil-service high flyer. Richardson had to
retake his O-levels and plumped for accountancy because maths was his one
good subject. Some of that insecurity stayed with him, but it also gave hima
point to prove.
He was a key player in the team that transformed Whitbread from a stuffy
brewer to a highly disciplined leisure group, buying hotels, restaurants,
coffee bars, health clubs and more. He will be drawing on that, and his
experience under a variety of chairmen. At Whitbread he worked with Sir
Charles Tidbury, Sam Whitbread, Sir Michael Angus and Sir John Banham. “I’ll
be offering the best bits of all of them”, he laughs, with a wink. He has
already chaired the De Vere hotel group, so he is not a novice.
At Sports Direct he wants to keep driving the business forward. “My worst
nightmare as chairman is that the business goes off the boil. It needs to
keep growing at 20% compound to keep the City excited. And you’ll see in the
prospectus that the long-term incentive plans for executives demand that
kind of performance. It needs rapid growth.”
Where will it come from? “We think we can get to 600 stores in the UK, then
there is Europe, I am sure, and America. If you want to be the biggest
sports retailer in the world, you have to go to the biggest country.”
Everything will hinge on his relationship with Sports Direct’s founder — but,
as others point out, Ashley also needs Richardson. “David has experience in
an area where Mike Ashley is ignorant: dealing with the City,” says Thomas.
“He can’t second-guess him. David adds a very clear chunk of added-value to
the operation.”
And if that doesn’t impress Ashley, Richardson may have another trick up his
sleeve. “I want to get Lonsdale tattooed across my chest,” he laughs, when
quizzed about his sportswear wardrobe.
I think he’s joking, but you never know.
DAVID RICHARDSON’S WORKING DAY
THE Sports Direct chairman wakes at his flat in St John’s Wood, London, at
7am. David Richardson drives himself to one of the companies where he is a
nonexecutive director for a day of meetings.
“I will attend an audit committee, other meetings and a board meeting, all on
the same day. Then I will drive myself back. There are no long lunches: Big
Bang stopped all that. And I never drink and drive. It’s one of the
Whitbread things — that’s why we had chauffeurs, ha ha ha.”
If he is taking contacts out to dinner, he will use The Square restaurant in
Mayfair. He returns to his home in Bedford at weekends.
VITAL STATISTICS
Born: June 2, 1951
Marital status: married, two children
School: Bolton School, Bolton
University: Bristol
First job: trainee accountant at Touche Ross
Salary package: £350,000, including all directorships
Home: Bedford
Car: silver Porsche 911
Favourite book: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, by John le Carré
Favourite music: Beatles and Beethoven
Favourite film: The French Lieutenant’s Woman
Gadget: Blackberry Pearl
Last holiday: skiing in France
DOWNTIME
DAVID RICHARDSON loves playing at The Bedford Golf Club course, but has made
only slow progress since he stepped down at Whitbread - he has reduced his
handicap from 21 to 20. Otherwise, he watches all sport, particularly
cricket, and supports Manchester United. He also attends a gym. “The problem
with having a flat in London is that it makes you unfit. At night you get a
takeaway curry, a bottle of wine and you watch TV.” And he has just ordered
a new Porsche, as his five-year-old one broke down last week. “I used to
have Jaguars, but thought I should get something smaller,” he laughs.
