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They don’t make them like Gerry Robinson any more.
These days, chief executives are expected to talk earnestly about their environmental, social and governance policies, sip mineral water at lunchtime and list participating in triathlons among their hobbies and pastimes.
Sir Gerry, who died on Thursday at the age of 72, was a larger-than-life character who spoke his mind, liked a drink and did not mind using the odd Anglo-Saxon epithet.
None of that, however, was why he stood out as one of the outstanding chief executives of his age.
Beneath the twinkly-eyed Irish bonhomie lurked a razor-sharp intellect and a shrewd accounting brain that, somewhat unfairly, led one commentator to describe him as a “shark in a Val Doonican pullover”.
His was also a spectacular and inspiring rags-to-riches story.
The ninth of ten children, he was a carpenter’s son, born in Dunfanaghy, a fishing village in Donegal in the far north-west of Ireland.
The family emigrated to London when he was 11 and, to please his mother, as he put it, he joined a seminary in Cumbria in order to train as a priest.
But as he recalled to the Sunday Times in 2007: “Any vocation I had was lost, I think, to a girl called Mary Williams.”
Gerry Robinson was headhunted to run Granada, maker of ITV soap operas Coronation Stret and Emmerdale
He left school at 16 and joined the toy-maker Lesney, owner of the Matchbox brand, as a clerk.
He ended up becoming the firm’s chief management accountant before joining the motor dealer and car leasing firm Lex.
There, he was talent-spotted by Eric Walters, a man later to become a fixture in Britain’s boardrooms.
In 1980, he went with his mentor to Grand Metropolitan, a conglomerate whose activities spanned hotels, brewing, tobacco, bingo,…
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Source : skynews
