WHAT sort of Frenchman would want to run a British packaging giant? “A very
strange Frenchman who loves you Brits,” laughs Leslie Van de Walle.
You can believe it. Tall and exuberant, with a sweep of greying hair topping
large, square glasses, Paris-born Van de Walle comes with a Belgian name
(pronounced “Vall”) and oddly Dutch manner that makes him quite the European
super-executive.
He has the CV to match, too. He fell in love with us Brits working for
Schweppes in France, then headed United Biscuits, reorganised Shell’s
forecourts worldwide for six years before popping up four months ago in his
second big boss job: chief executive of Rexam, the largest drinks-can
manufacturer in the world.
Rexam is a business-to-business, FTSE 100 giant with a £3 billion market value
and £3.6 billion global sales. It is also – despite a client list that
includes Coca-Cola, Pepsi and Procter & Gamble – one of the biggest
companies that most people have never heard of.
“Yeah, we tend to be a bit understated,” says Van de Walle in his accented
English. “But the people who matter know we exist: our customers know, the
City knows, any employee we want to recruit will know. We just do our
business, and try to make our shareholders, people and customers happy.”
He grins widely. Tie off, white shirted, striding round his office opposite
the Houses of Parliament, Van de Walle, 51, is quite a character. How long
Rexam will remain understated with him at the helm is a moot point.
He certainly moves fast. He had barely got his feet under the chief
executive’s desk before selling off the last of the group’s glass interests
and then, five days ago, agreeing to pay £931m for packaging producer O-I
Plastics in America. “Feeling your way in slowly” clearly isn’t in the Van
de Walle phrase book.
In fairness, the deal had been prepared before Van de Walle was hired. It
moves Rexam from fifth to fourth-biggest plastic-packaging manufacturer in
the world, to add to its market leadership in cans.
And the City’s reaction? Well, there’s the rub. Rexam funded part of the
acquisition with a share issue, and investors weren’t exactly clambering
over each other to get it. It was struck at 4% under the opening price.
Van de Walle, as is his nature, looks on the bright side, and says he is not
taking it personally. “When you do a placing, the share price normally goes
down. And the analysts always look at a business from its past performance,
and they thought the price was more than we would pay. We would argue it is
less than what it is worth to us. And yes, they wanted us to buy cans, not
plastic – well, that’s great, but that’s not available, so we can’t buy it.”
Perhaps many investors struggle just to keep up with what Rexam wants to be.
Born out of the old Bowater conglomerate (paper, pulp, building materials,
carpets, insurance) it has been radically reshaped in the past decade by
chairman Rolf Borjesson, a Swede who appointed another Swede, Lars Emilson,
to run the global group before Van de Walle.
Under Swedish direction, it refocused on packaging – cans, plastic and glass –
and offered steady growth and good dividends, plus a low profile. It also
looked like that odd beast: a London-based, British multinational run rather
well by others.
Now Van de Walle has arrived, and he is promising another shake-up. Faster
growth and more innovation – as you’d expect from a man who has spent most
of his life in FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods) – and a reshaping of the
company to concentrate on plastics and cans. The snapping up of O-I
Plastics, which makes plastic lids and seals for the pharmaceutical
industry, doubles its exposure to the fast-growing plastics sector. O-I also
has a reputation for innovation.
At a time when metal and energy costs are denting Rexam’s profitability
elsewhere, it is a move that makes sense, and had been trailed for a long
time. The only worry is whether Van de Walle paid too much to get there. And
whether he has anything left with which to buy more.
Van de Walle nods. “We have a few hundred million left to do bolt-on
acquisitions, and we have a good pipeline of acquisitions that we would like
to take if and when they materialise.”
And the worries about overpaying have been heard before. “When we bought
American National Can in 2000, everyone thought we had overpaid.” What
observers don’t realise, he says, is that Rexam’s manufacturing techniques
are so efficient they can always improve other companies’ factories.
Former colleagues predict, however, that Van de Walle will want a change in
speed at Rexam. “Leslie has so much energy and dynamism, he is very
change-orientated,” says Mike Wilkinson, Shell’s vice-president of
sustainable development, who worked with Van de Walle at United Biscuits.
“He’s a demanding boss because he’s always trying to make tomorrow better
than today.”
Perhaps the real surprise is that Van de Walle jumped from oil to packaging at
all, especially as he had only made the leap from biscuits six years before.
He was highly regarded at Shell, where he was hired as part of the influx of
new blood to shake up the oil giant, and set for a main-board slot,
according to Wilkinson. Rexam – with its bottle tops and ring-pull cans – is
slightly mundane by comparison. Why does a top marketer want to run it?
“Because Rexam will become a greater company if it can improve its
commerciality in marketing, sales and innovation,” says Van de Walle. “And
that’s where my background is useful. I can see things in a different way.”
Van de Walle’s chairman confirms it. “Leslie can take the company to the next
level,” says Borjesson. That means working more closely with customers like
Red Bull and the beer giants to develop innovative products for which Rexam,
naturally enough, can charge more.
Van de Walle has also been chief executive of a London-listed multinational
before – he lost the top slot at United Biscuits (just outside the FTSE 100)
after only a year when the company was bought and reorganised by private
equity in 2000. Six years spent lower down the ladder at Shell, finishing as
vice-president of global retail, and a 50th birthday, may have convinced him
that Borjesson’s offer was too good to resist.
Nor is he short of multinational experience. Born the eldest son to a French
father, commercial director of a chemical whole-saler, and a Canadian
Québécois mother – hence the Anglo-Saxon Leslie – he cut his management
teeth at the dairy giant Danone, before jumping into Schweppes in France. He
joined United Biscuits in 1994 and has lived in London ever since.
Those who have worked with him describe him as charismatic, ferociously
competitive and highly numerate. “Leslie’s probably the most numerate chief
executive I have met,” says Shell’s Wilkinson. He is also the least French
of Frenchmen, obsessing about golf, happy to send up the national stereotype
and always ready to play on Brit unease. “I am lucky in that the Brits have
always reported to me,” laughs Van de Walle.
He will need those easy people skills at Rexam. His predecessor but one at the
company was summarily relieved of office after just six months when the
board felt his style was at odds with “the Rexam culture”.
Borjesson states quite plainly that one of the criteria by which Van de Walle
will be judged is “if people really like to work with him”. Imagine that at
most companies. Borjesson also adds that he is happy for his chief executive
to have profile, “so long as he uses it for the benefit of the company, not
to pump up his own ego”.
Van de Walle, a self-confessed extrovert, frowns when I ask if this culture is
Swedish-style, consensus management. “In Rexam we have a lot of
nationalities – Americans and Brits, French, Swedish. And Rolf and his
team have built very strong values: continuous improvement, the recognition
that people make a difference, teamwork and trust . . . but I don’t think
it’s a consensus culture, working as a team.”
Anyway, he says, he is a great believer in letting his divisional bosses get
on with it – his plastics chief was in America addressing O-I workers
as we spoke. O-I will make Rexam “a really serious” plastic-packaging
player. “For those customers looking for an international supplier to help
them grow internationally, we are a credible partner.”
As for concerns over the environmental impact of packaging, his team are ahead
of the game, he says, and primary packaging– which Rexam makes –
is not the problem, it’s actually an efficient solution to containing and
transporting.
It is tertiary packaging that needs to be eliminated. “You don’t need three
types of packaging to carry your beer.”
And that, he says, is the short answer. Do I want the long one? No – Van
de Walle, loquacious at the best of times, could clearly produce a
Castro-length speech on the subject.
He laughs at my aversion. And that’s it. Great to talk, he says, shaking hands
outside his office before bounding off down the corridor. It will be
interesting to see how he and Rexam get on.
LESLIE VAN DE WALLE’S WORKING DAY
THE Rexam chief executive wakes at 6am at his home in London’s South
Kensington. “I work for an hour, breakfast with my family and then take the
tube to Westminster,” says Leslie Van de Walle. He is at his desk by 8.30am.
“My day is balanced between shareholders, employees and meetings with my
team.” He has eight senior executives reporting to him.
He hasn’t changed the structure. “I’m not the sort of guy
who changes things for the sake of it. My style is to fully empower people
within a very clear framework.” He leaves for home at 6.30pm. “I’ll work for
an hour after dinner as well.”
VITAL STATISTICS
Born: March 27, 1956
Marital status: married, with two daughters
School: Lycée St Cloud, Paris
University: Hautes Etudes Commerciales, Paris
First job: product manager, yoghurt with fruits, Danone
Salary package: £750,000 plus bonus
Homes: South Kensington and Biarritz
Car: grey Jaguar XJ
Favourite book: Golf Course Atlas
Favourite music: Chopin
Favourite film: True Lies, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger
Favourite gadget: Blackberry
Last holiday: Biarritz
DOWNTIME
LESLIE VAN DE WALLE is a golf nut. “My hobbies are golf, golf and golf. My
handicap is 5, I have played a long time. I play at Lambourne in
Buckinghamshire, a nice friendly club, every Saturday morning.”
He also loves wine, but doesn’t collect. He just drinks. “My aim is always to
find a really good wine between £10 and £20 a bottle. When I was young I
only drank red bordeaux, then I discovered white burgundy. Now, to be
honest, because I have drunk so much French wine, I quite like having New
World ones: white Australian, red South African, Argentine wines. Because I
have been to all these places for work, too.”
