This is very significant appointment...I have a file on this...

This is very significant appointment...

I have a file on this guy, was thinking Panmure Gordon might be on CVI's "to do list"...

Worth checking them out...highly successful!

http://www.panmure.com/


Tony Caplin

Chairman of the Month

When you first see Tony Caplin's CV it is hard to see how this could be even vaguely described as a career, rather than a series of random job hops from one disparate industry to another with nothing to link them. It is only when he puts you straight that the mist parts and his path from selling ad space in a Manchester freesheet newspaper to being the Chairman of an independent investment bank via a West Coast telco becomes, well, almost obvious.

Caplin has a raft of prestigious directorships under his belt, and a depth of corporate experience built up of decades. But he started on the poorest of poor cousins in the newspaper trade, a freesheet. Freesheets are those local papers delivered free along with the flyers for double glazing and two-for-the-price-of-one Hawaiian Pizza offers. And if the general public distrusts and looks down on journalists, then journalists distrust and look down on freesheets.

'They though we were the lowest form of life,' says Caplin. 'But I loved it.' So much he stayed there for decade.

'Everything you do is selling. I started selling ad space. I am now a Chairman. I am still selling. Whatever level you are in industry, you are selling.' It is one of Caplin's life lessons - probably his top one. Sell first; everything else comes second.

His introduction to technology, which was to be his future career, came almost by chance. When freesheets weren't doing so well, Caplin's boss sent him off to Florida to look at cable TV. 'That was how I got into telecoms.'

It was the 'baby Bell' Pacific Telesis that headhunted Caplin to head up their European operation. This was at a time when the monolithic AT&T was broken up. 'The company was brand new, yet at its birth it was the 23rd largest company in the US. That was how big these companies were.'

Unleashed on a world that was on the cusp of the great changes we have witnessed in the last decades, Pacific Telesis went on a global shopping spree. And in Europe it was Caplin who wrote the cheques. 'If you were a big US company looking to expand, that's what you did.'

But eventually the demands of the job were too great. 'I spent a decade sleeping in the nose of a Jumbo jet,' says Caplin.

After a decade running Pacific Telesis' European operation, he changed career again, this time for the City and a merchant bank called First City. 'I got the chance to work alongside a man who was to be a great influence in my life, Sir Ian MacGregor.'

Although the gulf between a West Coast telco and a City of London bank may seem unbridgeable, Caplin points out his experience. 'We did 38 acquisitions in 10 years. I knew what the inside of a merchant bank looked like.'

After four very happy years Citibank bought out the company leaving the two without a job. 'Sir Ian suggested we do turnaround, workouts, and difficult situations. So I moved from high tech to no tech. With Sir Ian as Chairman and I as Chief Executive we tried to save small pieces of corporate UK.

'We worked with about 30 companies over five years, all of them very discreetly. Sitting at the feet of Sir Ian was a privilege.'

Ill health forced Sir Ian into retirement. Ready for yet another career change, Caplin embarked on a series of directorships, and to this day he has built up an impressive portfolio of companies, including non-executive chairman of Durlacher plc.

Seeing life from both sides of the boardroom table and with a depth of experience that few in this country could match, Caplin has seen the best and worst of corporate practice.

Yet for all the hi-tech companies he has worked with he has surprisingly low-tech answers to what makes for a good company.

'It is not very exciting stuff,' he says. 'But in my experience companies that get their procedures right, that have their structure sorted out, that have people with job descriptions agreed and stuck to, those are the companies that do well.'

A great believer in the old fashioned virtues of good governance and proper procedures, Caplin cautions against non-execs trying to assume the role of the executives. 'As soon as that happens it is all over.'

Caplin is a firm believer in the collective roles of the board. He refuses to be drawn on the relationship between the CEO and chairman, but instead sees the bigger picture. 'It is about the relationships in the whole team. The whole team has to work together.'

'Think of it like the Oxford or Cambridge boat crew. If everyone is pulling at the same time and in the same direction, there is no stopping them. But if people don't know what they are doing, you can expend the same amount of energy but go nowhere.

'When these crews train they have a drummer so everyone works together. In a well run board, the chairman is that drummer.'

'A good chairman must have the ability to gather the strands of an argument in order to persuade the rest of the board not only that they are to change their direction to go in the direction the chairman is suggesting, but also to take ownership of it as well. If a chairman can't do that, then he or she should think carefully about whether they are in the right job.

'A chairman who can do that, who can not only change a company but also get the board to take ownership of the change, is a powerful chairman indeed.'

And Caplin has taken his own advice and applied it in what managerially must be one of the toughest environments, the NHS. Appointed to chair the Ealing Hospital NHS trust, Caplin's rules have borne fruit. 'We got the procedures right, we got the structures right, we put in proper job descriptions, we had a proper HR function. And it has worked. Ealing is one of the most improved hospitals in the country.'

There is nothing glamorous in Caplin's rules; there is nothing sexy or dramatic, nothing that will look good when delivered in a slick PowerPoint presentation by a sharp-suited MBA. Instead you get the feeling that he has learned and relearned some old wisdoms the hard way. And if they can make the NHS run better, well what more proof do you want?

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It all starting to come together.

Cheers!