YOU can tell the BT boss is a bit different when you ask him about his annual
summer party.
“Oh yes, I invite 1,000 people around to my home in Surrey,” says Ben
Verwaayen. “Everything is normally for the guys here, yunno? So I want to do
something for the families — and I have a very big garden.”
Not the sort of home invasion that many FTSE bosses tolerate, but Dutch-born
Verwaayen, the surprise choice to head BT five years ago, enjoys doing
things his own way. Last year, he spent much of his spare time writing the
election manifesto for a Dutch political party, the People’s Party for
Freedom and Democracy — a liberal group that backs private enterprise. How
can he do that and run one of our biggest companies?
“Because I don’t play golf or do receptions, and everyone is entitled to a
hobby,” he says, smiling gnomically. “I love public policy.” His only other
hobby, he adds, is playing fantasy football with his chauffeur — the loser
each season has to buy the other dinner, wives included. They just don’t
make them like Verwaayen over here.
In fact, he is a barrage of mixed messages, from his trendy rimless glasses
and brainy asides to his Dutch direct manner and Bobby Charlton comb-over.
He is, however, deadly serious about business, and BT under Verwaayen is
proving quite some turnaround.
Last week it announced a 19th consecutive quarter of growth in earnings per
share, with revenue for the three months up 5% to £5.1 billion, pretax
profit up 13% to £643m, 10m broadband accounts signed up, a rise in
households connecting to its fixed-line service, and a £1 billion boost from
the Inland Revenue after settling a tax dispute.
No wonder Verwaayen, 55, a pixie-sized bundle of spikey, intellectual energy,
has a spring in his step when he returns from the results presentation.
Did it go well? “Don’t ask me, I am not the intended audience,” he responds,
with his usual bluntness. Then he bustles off to his desk, fiddles
impatiently with his computer, checks his e-mails, returns to the meeting
table in his generous panelled office overlooking St Paul’s cathedral, and
smiles. Sometimes it’s hard to tell if he’s being charming or prickly.
“Prickly? Me?” he says, when I put it to him. “I think that must just be a
translation of my sense of humour. You should talk to more people.”
It’s been that way since 2002 when Verwaayen, formerly at the American
technology firm Lucent, arrived to a chorus of “Ben who?” and complaints
about BT’s mammoth debt and disappearing profits. He has battled performance
anxieties ever since.
Now that he’s winning, he is more relaxed, but still intolerant of those who
portray BT as a crusty monolith. “I don’t kiss up, and I don’t kick down,”
he shrugs, explaining his occasionally combative style. “Anyone can punch me
if I can have the privilege of giving them the hon-ours back.”
His revival of BT has been based on three cornerstones: a commitment to
broadband, the success of BT Global Services — the division he championed
that supplies data and voice services for multinationals and big
organisations around the globe — and a groundbreaking deal with regulator
Ofcom. That hived off the company’s British local network access business
into BT Open-reach and allowed rivals in, but it also freed up BT to compete
with fewer restrictions.
Verwaayen nods. “I would add another,” he says. “The confidence of the people
here and their ability to work together — that has also been a massive
change.” Then he launches into an anecdote about how even graduate trainees
have the confidence to criticise the boss.
“I summoned all the trainees into the lecture theatre recently and thought I’d
give them an old-fashioned political rallying speech, ‘do it for BT’. Then I
made the mistake of asking ‘what are your biggest obsta-cles?’ and a hand
went up at the back and a guy said: ‘You are. My boss is always worrying if
he can sell something to you as the judge and jury of everything’.”
Verwaayen widens his eyes. “That was very intelligent. The formulation of
success is made by the boss . . . Now it’s about the art of letting go,
allowing the organisation to do things that even I might not understand.”
His point about obstacles, he says, is that five years ago, nobody at BT would
have dared question a superior. The old BT was “so much focused on defending
the past, that it forgot to look at opportunity”. Now he wants everyone
focused on the future.
That perspective was what persuaded BT’s chairman, Sir Chris-topher Bland, to
recruit Verwaayen. The two are, as another colleague points out, “chalk and
cheese”, but work seamlessly together, much as Bland and Greg Dyke did at
the BBC and LWT. Bland says Verwaayen has real charisma.
“Ben’s a leader. He’s got presence,” says Bland. “He also brought the
international perspective. It’s very valuable that he’s Dutch. Appeals to
tradition don’t work with Ben.”
Others describe Verwaayen’s methodical but instinctive style as vital to BT’s
new success. “He’s unpretentious, smart, full of energy and leads by example
— exactly what a stodgy, hidebound institution like BT needed,” says Tom
Glocer, chief executive of Reuters, now one of BT’s biggest customers.
He cites Verwaayen’s ability to cut through negotiating impasses by just
turning up in your office as typifying the new approach. “It’s very Dutch,
very direct; you want to do this, we want to do this, let’s find a
compromise.”
What frustrates Verwaayen now is how the image of BT outside business circles
lags behind. “If you live in Paris or New York or Bombay, you see BT as an
innovator. I was Businessman of the Year last year in India. But in Britain
everyone has this institutional memory of BT; the black phone on
grandmother’s table.”
He pulls a face. “But the good news is that there are two ways to change
perception. One is to be successful — so today is a pretty good day for us —
and the other is to provide good services.”
So why penalise those who want to pay their bills by cheque? BT announced last
week that customers will now have to pay £6 extra if they don’t make
direct-debit arrangements.
“Look,” he bristles, “either we are a company or an institution. If you want
us to be an institution, then maybe we’ll run the social services. Direct
debit makes life easier, saves us truck loads of money and is better for the
environment — none of that paper trail.”
Verwaayen, you can sense, loves a good argument. He switches from micro to
macro with relish, and is not frightened to throw in the odd jibe just to
surprise you.
His nature, he says, is to be a “change agent”. He was like that at school in
the Netherlands, where he set up the first student parliament, and as a
conscript in the Dutch army, where he organised a union for soldiers. Born
the fifth child to parents who ran a family chemicals firm, he thought
journalism or politics would be his metier. He took a first job at a small
insurance company just because it gave him time to sit on a state committee
to reform the army.
But when that company was bombed, he discovered it was a subsidiary of the
American multi-national ITT — then the target of left-wing anger for its
alleged role in the overthrow of Salvador Allende’s government in Chile.
Verwaayen was so upset about the concealment of ITT’s ownership that he went
to the group’s European head office in Brussels to protest. He was promptly
made PR chief for ITT in the Netherlands. Nobody can accuse him of lacking
an eye for an opportunity.
That kickstarted a career that took him through the Netherlands’s
telecommunications company KPN, and the AT&T spinoff Lucent in America,
while always keeping close to Dutch politics.
Lucent, which sold technology to phone companies, saw its shares collapse from
$90 to $4 in the dotcom crash. That was why some wondered how he could be a
suitable candidate to revive BT.
Verwaayen says he was fascinated by the challenge of turning round BT. He also
knew it wasn’t as damaged as many thought.
Now, after five years at the top, he is locked into the job. Bland steps down
this summer, and Verwaayen will bed in a new chairman. There is also
pressure from customers like Reuters for him to stay. As Glocer pointedly
says: “People like me have confidence in BT because we have confidence in
him.”
As for Verwaayen’s interest in Dutch politics, the BT boss says he has no
desire for a government role. Instead, he ticks off the forthcoming
highlights at BT: the Global Services division will soon contribute more
than 50% of revenues; the huge contract to wire up the NHS will give BT
valuable experience to sell on overseas; BT Vision, its inter-active media
service, will grow to 2m customers in Britain by 2010. A year later,
Britain’s old analogue network will have been completely replaced.
“You will have to choose not to have broadband, rather than choose to have
it,” he says.
And by then, the changes in mentality and motivation that he’s instilled into
senior management should be pushing downwards. The key question Verwaayen
faces is not whether his top team are good — others acknowledge they are —
but whether he can make the talent stretch right the way down the
100,000strong organisation.
Verwaayen knows there is quite a way to go yet.
BEN VERWAAYEN’S WORKING DAY
THE BT chief executive wakes at his home in Surrey at 5.07am. “It’s the time
I’ve calculated that gets me into the office by 7am,” says Ben Verwaayen. “I
have a great time on the way in discussing football with Paul, my driver.”
Verwaayen will run regular management boards — “no more than two hours” — and
host meetings with staff, as well as with the 12 senior executives who
report directly to him.
He never lunches out, and likes to finish by 7.15pm. If he is entertaining, he
will take contacts to dinner at Amaya or Tom Aikens.
“I am a foodie, and I love food cooked by creative young people,” he says.
VITAL STATISTICS
Born:February 11, 1952
Marital status:married, with two children
School:Schoonoord, Zeist
University:Utrecht
First job:PR manager at ITT
Salary package: £750,000 plus bonuses
Home:Haslemere, Surrey
Car:green BMW 5 series
Favourite book:Wild Swans, by Jung Chang
Favourite music:“I don’t listen to music”
Favourite film:“I don’t go to films”
Gadget:Blackberry
Last holiday:Provence
DOWNTIME
BEN VERWAAYEN likes to relax by watching football on television and by
cooking. “My wife is one of the best cooks around and I am a good sous
chef,” he says.
He also loves politics and public policy, and is actively involved with the
Peoples’ Party for Freedom and Democracy in the Netherlands. “I’m interested
in the way society chooses its policies and in the way that choices have
consequences. There is a feeling in Europe today that you can ignore the
consequences. Well, you can’t.”
His favourite days are the ones when he can invite friends round to his home.
“My hobby is just sharing fun,” he says.
I, being a much troubled customer of BT, I think that Mr Verwaayen has a long way to go before he can sit back and be saisfied with his five years at the helm.
During his stewardship I, for one, believe that his eye has totally been on international development of the company.(good for shareholders) This has been achieved by taking his eye off the national development and indeed, quality of service within BT.
Whoever one speaks to will have their own 'saga' to relate, when it comes to BT. More often than not, this saga will be based around customer service. This is a distinct area where BT has not improved at all, in any one, of the last five years. The attitude they portray to the humble customer is one of, BT is always correct. They have totally ignored the old addage that was, 'the customer is always right'!
If this attitude is percieved by Mr Verwaayen as progress, then so be it, but I, for one, believe he would do well to remember and look after, BT's humble subscribers.
MR. R. P. Dixon, Bracknell,
I completely agree with the article written about Ben. I work for Openreach a division of the BT Group. I know that it is easy to perceive Ben as a chairman who is almost inaccessible and someone who will criticise everything you say until you concied defeat. But in the 2 years I've been an apprentice for the company, the opportunities open to me have been fantastic and I have recently been in touch with Ben for various things from trying to speak with fellow senior managers to informing him of recent campaigns we have run.
He has been 100% supportive and shown a willingness to change the shape of BT from the old culture into a modern, sophisticated and proud company.
Ben is not only a chairman for the company but an ambassador in telecoms in the world. More people need to see that BT are changing their image and its all thanks to the support of Ben.
Nimesh Chauhan, Coventry,
It's no ATT or VERIZON its a ahell of its former self if the deal went through for MCI they would have transformed the telecom industry, now the clock is ticking on a takeout in two years we won't be talking about BT, but probably ATT (UK), Ltd.
Carlos L Bell, Washington, DC, USA
First of all I see its Bens birthday today, so "Happy Birthday Ben".
For a long time BT seems to have been in the doldrums with sharks scavenging and hoping to destroy the company's lfe blood.
With with perserverance, tenacity and believable leadership the liner which is now gaining speed has been steered clear of the iceberg.
I hope the success continues
Frank Maginn, Belfast , N Ireland