Rather like a cringe-making scene from The Office, John Pluthero’s debut speech at Cable & Wireless was a toe-curler. Indeed, The David Brent-style address, which exhorted “timid” staff in a “crappy industry” to “step off the bus”, could have been a career-killer.

Yet 15 months on, the UK chairman’s forthright management style has paid off, with a set of forecast-busting full-year results and an indication that tough transformation targets could be met early. Now bets are on that C&W’s long days as the underdog of the telecoms sector are nearing a close.

The 44-year-old whose tough guy image is reinforced by his shaven head and narrow eyes, prides himself on his lack of subtlety.

Brutal honesty – to staff, shareholders and himself – is, he says, the linchpin of a business philosophy refined over a decade-long career in the sector. “My pet hate is when business people stand up and complain about it being a ‘tough year’,” he says.

“It’s like a football manager moaning about the pitch being a bit wet or the weather being drizzly. It’s just excuses and it’s ridiculous, get on with it.”

Aloof “old school” bosses also meet with short shrift. “You ask yourself: are you an old-fashioned, command-and-control manager who stays aloof from the interface with the customer – those guys on the frontline earning £30k a year – and has a big team just to make you look good in meetings?” he says.

“No. A manager is there to support that front team, blast bureaucracy out the way and make it easier for them to do a great job.”

One can only imagine the water-cooler conversations in C&W’s Bracknell head office, but Pluthero insists that the group’s remaining 12,000 employees – its troubles have seen thousands of jobs cut from the business in recent years – thank him for this approach.

“It makes people feel engaged.” he says. “People prefer straightforwardness and honesty.”

In return, staff under the Pluthero regime must adopt the same, fearless approach: “I don’t let people adopt a victim culture. I want them to speak up and tell us what’s wrong with the business. It’s this tone we are trying to get into the organisation.”

Like Richard Lapthorne, the C&W chairman who placed his reputation in Mr Pluthero when he recruited him to run the British operations, doubters need only look at his track record.

Mr Pluthero was in his thirties when he helped to build, and then float, Freeserve, the pioneering internet group. He was a manager at Dixons, the electricals retailer, when he dreamt up the idea. The high street chain has earned a name as a corporate crèche – other talents churned out by it include Ian Livingston, the BT retail head – and, like other alumni, Mr Pluthero names Sir Stanley Kalms, its founder, as a huge influence.

“A lot of people viewed him as an authoritarian, but he was enormously empowering. He provided a fantastic demonstration of entrepreneurship and commerciality. He would not let anyone forget that if you are in business you are there to make money,” Mr Pluthero recalls.

Archie Norman, the Asda founder, was another role model. Mr Pluthero worked with him at Energis, the smaller rival telecoms group, which was bought by C&W in late 2005 in a £674 million deal. The tie-up was one of the first consolidation moves in a sector blighted by overcapacity and fierce pricing pressures. Analysts have long said that the only way forward in the sector was a reduction in the number of companies.

Pricing pressures and the like are, Mr Pluthero insists, no excuse for poor performance. “For a long time, voice was making a ‘super-normal’ profit,” he says. “I don’t think the pressure we are under is unusual compared to other industries.”

If his natural fearlessness is not enough to incite a strong performance, the reward for completing a successful transformation of the telecoms business surely is.

Last year Mr Lapthorne put in place a “private equity-style” incentive scheme, which will give Mr Pluthero, as well as Harris Jones, his counterpart at the international division, and other executives a share in a £220 million windfall. The scheme was aimed at reviving the fortunes of the group, with which investors had lost patience after such a long run of poor performance.

For now, Mr Pluthero insists that the money is not an issue. Aside from certain triggers, including a full demerger or a takeover, he will not see a penny of it for two years, regardless of how high the share price rises (it has leapt 90 per cent in the past six months).

When Mr Lapthorne split the telecoms group into two separate divisions, UK and international components, last year, the City assumed that it was only a matter of time before a full demerger would be announced. Essentially, analysts said, C&W was being prepared for a sale.

Hopes about this happening soon are, Mr Pluthero says, premature. “People assume that a demerger is our choice. It isn’t. The market has to support it and [the UK division] needs to be generating cash and be back in growth.” he says.

“If you try to go too soon, the business will die in a ditch – be killed stone dead.”

Besides, he adds, demerging is not the only option. C&W could become a consolidator, scooping up smaller rivals.

“Being bigger is intriguing,” he says, “and if we get the business in the right place the market will back us to do things. People latch on to a thought and it is limiting in a way. That [a demerger] is not the only conclusion.”

The extent of his ambitions was underlined last week when C&W renamed its UK corporate operations as C&W Europe, Asia, America. The group, Mr Pluthero believes, has a huge opportunity to provide services to companies abroad as it does in the UK market.

As he had promised his staff in that address last year, the doubters are being made to “eat their words”.

Curriculum vitae

Age 43

Birthplace Chelmsford, Essex

Education Degree in economics from the London School of Economics. A chartered accountant and member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales

Career Spent two years as a director at P&O, the British ports company, before moving to Holiday Inn Worldwide in 1992 to become strategy and planning manager. After another two-year stretch, he was appointed as business review director at Dixons in 1994, where four years later he founded Freeserve, the internet group that pioneered the pay-as-you-go web model. As Freeserve’s chief executive, he turned the company into the UK’s largest internet service provider before leading it to its July 1999 flotation in London and New York.

In 2002, after Freeserve was sold to Wanadoo, of France, he became chief executive at Energis, the corporate telecoms group, which was sold to Cable & Wireless in November 2005, when he became UK executive director in the new group.

In April 2006, he was promoted to his present position at Cable & Wireless as group managing director and executive chairman of Europe, Asia and the United States

Family Married with two children

Hobbies Golf

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