IT WAS dubbed “Mission Impossible” when Philippe Varin took on the job of saving Corus, the unhappy amalgam of British Steel and Hoogovens. Conventional wisdom had it that turning round desperately sick businesses in the full glare of the public spotlight could not be done. Fickle short-term investors would make unreasonable demands and threaten to throw the business and its management to the dogs if they were not met. The only hope was to scuttle for the cover of the private sector.

This line of argument can be heard running in connection with Sainsbury’s and it was often rehearsed when Philip Green was circling Marks & Spencer.

Corus seemed in much worse shape than either of those two businesses when M Varin arrived in the spring of last year. The share price had sunk to 4p and morale was even lower. Today, however, it is a different story. The shares stand at more than 50p and the only reason they fell back slightly yesterday was on some profit-taking after a bullish trading statement.

The Frenchman has become something of a hero, not only to those shareholders who demonstrated that not every institutional investor thinks that a month is a long time in the portfolio. On Teesside, M Varin has done more than raise the Corus share price — he has saved jobs.

The announcement yesterday that the Teesside plant had won what amounts to a guaranteed future for the next decade will make an almighty difference to the Christmas celebrations of almost 3,000 people. One of the parting shots of Sir Brian Moffat, the former Corus chairman who had presided over the disastrous merger and its aftermath, was to announce that Teesside did not have a future within the group.

Since Corus was the major customer of the plant and Sir Brian had made clear that it would not continue buying from Teesside, it seemed like the death knell had been sounded. But an innovative deal has secured a market for the plant’s production with a consortium that is prepared to put new cash into Teesside.

M Varin’s efforts would not have met with such success had the market not been so helpful. Because of the extraordinary growth in world demand for steel, Corus has been able to lift its prices to more than compensate for some very nasty increases in its raw materials. Even though China’s voracious appetite will calm a little next year, these benevolent conditions are likely to prevail for a while longer.

But having seen the pitiful state to which the business was reduced under its previous management, it is easy to believe that, even with demand for its products so healthy, Sir Brian might have been so busy warring with his Dutch colleagues and his unions that Corus would not have reaped the benefits.

Instead, the new regime of Jim Leng, the chairman, and M Varin have gone some way to uniting the Dutch/British factions and got on with streamlining the business. Costs have been brought down, the safety record improved and the word “customer” is now part of the company’s vocabulary, which tends to make a difference in any business.

Alisher Usmanov recognised the progress that had been made and tried to clasp Corus in a Russian bear hug but the company held firm and his stake has now been sold. M Varin wants to choose his partner when the time comes for him to try to join in the consolidation of the industry that Lakshmi Mittal has driven so hard. There is further work to be done on Corus but M Varin’s shareholders are content to let him get on with it.

FSA's one size does not fit all

PLAYERS rarely love the referee. So you would not expect glowing praise of the FSA from the Financial Services Practitioner Panel, set up to monitor the City watchdog. Prudential’s Jonathan Bloomer, who chairs the panel, is not one to pick a fight.

The FSA’s new leadership, under Callum McCarthy and John Tiner, has scaled down the endless initiatives that took so much board time, and appears to have lightened the load on professionals dealing with each other.

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