Sports Calendar

It’s also a Mulcahy schedule. She arrived at 4am, opened the conference at 1pm, saw me at 2pm, hosted drinks and dinner from 6pm, jetted off to Switzerland at 5am, picking up another customer to fly to the Drupa printing conference in Dusseldorf.

On the Xerox corporate jet, Mulcahy apparently spends more time handing out drinks and snacks than sitting still. “Customers and staff” is the key Mulcahy mantra. Inside the company, she is known for never forgetting anyone’s name. “That is job No 1 for me,” she says, “followed by meeting customers to see how we’re doing. Everything else is so far distant in terms of meaningful impact.”

Her revival of Xerox, a brand once synonymous with photocopying, is one of the extraordinary business stories of the past decade. A technology titan in the 1960s and 1970s, Xerox then fumbled opportunities to move into computing and was mauled by cheaper rivals in the 1990s.

Walloped by declining market share, $18 billion debt, and an accounting scandal beginning to brew, it posted a $273m loss on $18.75 billion revenue in 2000. That forced its board to ditch one chief executive, bring back a retired one, and then support his choice of Mulcahy, a former head of human resources running desktop printing, as the right person to clean up the mess.

Mulcahy was not even on the board when she was picked. Fortune magazine later dubbed her “The Accidental CEO”. Few thought she would take the tough actions the company needed. She started by closing her old division, and then transferred half the company’s production to outside contractors, slashing costs, refocusing the firm on service and sellable innovation.

Her technique was to be brutally honest with staff, and appeal to their sense of loyalty, even as they shifted out of Xerox. She also rode that storm over Xerox’s accounting methods — the Securities and Exchange Commission forced it to restate five years of revenues prior to 2002. And she won over bankers, begging them not to pull the plug.

With sales now rising again — above $17 billion last year — her actions have been vindicated. And it’s doubly satisfying because, as she says, she really loves this business.

“It’s unusual, lots of people spend their entire careers here, you get a sense of mission beyond just a job.” More so for Mulcahy whose husband — her second — is a retired executive who spent 35 years at Xerox. And her elder brother, Tom Dolan, is senior vice-president, global accounts, at the firm.

Isn’t that awkward, having your big brother down the table from you? Not at all, says Mulcahy, there’s never been a conflict. “He’s a great supporter.”

Dolan was also the reason she joined the firm. Brought up outside New York, the fourth of five children and the only girl, Mulcahy read journalism and English literature at university, then trained as a banker. At 24, she swapped Chase Manhattan for Xerox because her brother talked her into it. She liked its reputation for innovation and social responsibility.

She says her upbringing among boys also gave her a head start in business. Her father was a writer, her mother a housewife — “the best multi-tasker you could base yourself on,” grins Mulcahy. Both parents pushed her on. “I talk to women who feel guilty for working and I am just the opposite, I would feel guilty for not working.”

Yet she freely admits she never aspired to be a chief executive. She started in sales, but always preferred managing. Colleagues say she is adept at all parts of the business.