Rudyard Kipling would have made a good judge for our annual competition to
find the business person of the year. Over the past 12 months the winners in
business have had to pass the test posed by Kipling in “If”, his best-known
poem, and “meet with Triumph and Disaster, and treat those two impostors
just the same”.
This was the year when triumph did indeed turn into disaster, and how. After
the biggest bull market in history, fuelled by cheap money, overoptimistic
management and the occasional $50 billion (£33 billion) fraud, the crash
came. It hit first in the banking industry, where the credit crunch brought
some of the world’s largest financial institutions to their knees, then
hammered the real economy, with housing, commercial property, retailing, car
production and large swathes of manufacturing in serious trouble by the end
of the year.
After years of sunny growth, most western economies now face at least a year
of bleak recession. Dodging disaster was noteworthy in itself — turning it
to your advantage catapulted you onto our 10-strong shortlist.
Assembling this year’s list was difficult. The debate among The Sunday Times
business staff was even fiercer than normal, with some writers saying they
would boycott the Christmas party if Gordon Brown was included. Others
baulked at the choice of any banker, and in the end we have chosen just one,
Eric Daniels. The other difficulty was in finding candidates who could
justifiably claim to have done well in such trying times, and weren’t just
made to look good by happy accident or inertia.
HAVE YOUR SAY
WE will choose the winner from our shortlist, but we won’t make up our minds
until we hear your views. You can e-mail us at businessperson2008@sunday-times.co.uk.
The winner will be revealed in next week’s issue. Here, in alphabetical order,
are our contenders.
MICHAEL BIRCH
Founder of Bebo
IN a year when so many fortunes were lost, Michael Birch is one of the few who
made one. The self-confessed “geek” sold Bebo, the social networking site he
and wife Xochi started in 2005, to AOL for £420m. The couple and Birch’s
brother Paul split about £290m between them thanks to a shared 70% ownership
stake.
It is an extraordinary sum for a company that had been around for so little
time and whose main product, providing an online forum for teenage gossip
and photo-sharing, is so ethereal. The 38-year-old Imperial College graduate
recently launched his next project: Wordia, a cross between a social
networking site and a dictionary.
MARC BOLLAND
Chief executive of Wm Morrison
WHEN the Morrisons super-market chain drafted in former Heineken executive
Marc Bolland to revive its fortunes two years ago, the City was sceptical
that he could boost the parts founder Sir Ken Morrison had failed to reach.
Morrisons was in crisis after its takeover of Safeway. It had issued five
profit warnings and the City was baying for blood. No longer. Morrisons very
own flying Dutchman has rapidly transformed the chain from laggard to
leader, delivering a bumper 8.1% rise in sales this year – four times that
of Tesco. Perhaps most impressively, the results were achieved by swimming
against the tide and ignoring City pressure to sell off Morrisons’ extensive
freehold property portfolio and set up an e-commerce operation.
CARLOS BRITO
Chief executive of Inbev
IT was the end of an era for two Bushes this year. That George Bush would bow
out after two terms as president was a given, but the takeover of
Anheuser-Busch, the world’s largest brewer and maker of American icon
Budweiser, was a shock. Credit, then, to Carlos Brito for this coup,
particularly in the face of widespread opposition.
Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the deal, though, was Inbev’s ability to
arrange $52 billion of funding. In a market where credit was notoriously
hard to come by, this was truly remarkable.
No doubt much ruthless cost-cutting will follow, but simply for getting this
mammoth deal over the line, Brito earns his place on our list.
GORDON BROWN
Prime minister
MANY in business will blanch at the inclusion of Gordon Brown in this list but
the prime minister was hard to ignore during the autumn banking crisis, when
he nodded through Lloyds TSB’s takeover of HBOS and seized the initiative by
announcing, and championing internationally, a comprehensive banking rescue.
Though Brown’s plan for bank recapitalisation, liquidity and lending
guarantees had many authors, even his political opponents were impressed by
the way he pushed it around the world. One fan, Paul Krugman, this year’s
Nobel prizewinner in economics, said Brown “defined the character of the
worldwide rescue effort, with other wealthy nations playing catchup”.
Less impressive was what his successor as chancellor, Alistair Darling,
revealed. Public borrowing will rise to 8% of GDP next year and government
debt will surge to well over £1,000 billion.
ERIC DANIELS
Chief executive of Lloyds TSB
PICKING any banker for the title of businessman of the year is tricky in a
year that has seen the sector crumble under the burden of the credit crunch.
Supporters of Eric Daniels, however, would argue that the Lloyds TSB chief
will eventually come out smiling through his takeover of HBOS. The
integration of the two will be painful, but by having the courage to move
quickly to seal a deal, Daniels has created a retail banking superpower that
nobody would have thought possible just a few months ago.
PIERRE GADONNEIX
Chief executive of EDF
IF there is one person who can be credited with leading the renaissance of
nuclear power, it is Pierre Gadonneix, who has put up a truckload of French
taxpayers’ money to revitalise the industry.
In the UK, he agreed to pay £12.4 billion for British Energy, operator of the
country’s rickety old nuclear fleet, and has pledged another €20 billion
(£18.6 billion) to build up to four new reactors here. In America, he
out-duelled none other than Warren Buffett to win Constellation Energy. The
company last week opted to take the $4.5 billion he offered for half its
nuclear business rather than agree to the outright takeover that had been
proposed by the Sage of Omaha.
Gadonneix’s bet is that the UK and US will view nuclear power as changing from
scary technology to clean and dependable energy for a climate-conscious age
– and that EDF will profit handsomely from leading the charge. It’s a big
bet.
MARK HURD
Chief executive of Hewlett-Packard
IN the 12 months after he took the top job at Hewlett-Packard in 2005, Hurd
laid off 15,000 staff. It was the kind of vigorous shaking the venerable
computer maker needed. Analysts and investors agreed that HP had lost its
way.
Hurd’s big move this year was the $14 billion purchase of EDS, the Texas-based
IT services group that counts the British government as one of its biggest
clients. The idea is simple – HP makes kit, like PCs and servers, and it
will sell much more if it has consultants advising big companies and
public-sector clients what to do with their IT budgets. It’s a great idea –
the question is, how will it weather the recession?
JUSTIN KING
Chief executive of J Sainsbury
SAINSBURY’s boss Justin King is always relentlessly chipper. But this year he
has more reason to feel smug than usual. Sainsbury was tipped as a sure-fire
loser in credit crunch Britain because it sits in the middle ground between
upmarket groups such as Waitrose and Marks & Spencer and discounters
such as Aldi and Lidl.
King refused to bow to his fate and took action early – introducing a new
own-label discount range and urging customers to “switch and save” from
high-priced branded goods. The plan worked wonders and Sainsbury delivered
sales growth ahead of Tesco in the first half of its current financial year.
NASSIM NICHOLAS TALEB
Author of The Black Swan
OPTIONS TRADER turned author and philosopher Nassim Taleb takes a very dim
view of most economists and almost all bankers. The author of bestseller The
Black Swan faced a barrage of criticism for arguing that financial wizards
lived in a fantasy world falsely prophesying the future with their
sophisticated mathematical models. He wouldn’t let Ben Bernanke, chairman of
the Federal Reserve, drive his car, he recently told The Sunday Times.
“These guys are dangerous. They’re not qualified in their own field,” he
said. The credit crunch “was my greatest vindication”. Others have taken a
similarly dim view of the experts but the outperformance of Taleb’s Universa
hedge funds gives him the edge.
WENDELIN WIEDEKING
Chief executive of Porsche
Porsche’s head honcho won our prize last year for the deft way he had driven
the sports car company out of a slump to become the world’s most profitable
motor group. This year, he qualifies for a different coup – making monkeys
out of hedge funds by beating them at their own game. Porsche used contracts
for difference and other derivatives to secretly build up a majority stake
in Volkswagen. When the news came out, hedge funds had to scramble for stock
to cover the bets they had taken against VW stock falling. Porsche 1, hedge
funds 0. Last month Porsche reported a 50% jump in profits – 80% of which
was from the killing made at VW. It’s hard to see how he can repeat the
trick – 2009 looks like being a long grind for carmakers, particularly
upmarket ones like Porsche.
Our previous winners
2007 Wendelin Wiedeking, chief executive of Porsche
2006 Lakshmi Mittal, chief executive of Arcelor Mittal
2005 Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the founders of Google
2004 Steve Jobs, chief executive of Apple
2003 Sir Ken Morrison, chairman of Wm Morrison
