Content area
Full Text
The odds were stacked heavily against Alan Jackson when he got off the plane at London's Heathrow Airport a bit more than two years ago to take over as managing director of Britain's $13.2 billion-in-sales BTR PLC.
"When I first arrived here, the City London's financial district! was a bit reluctant to put too much confidence or faith in me," he says in his broad Australian accent. " There was a lot of criticism. This was an English company and I was just a guy from down under."
Admits Michael Murphy, an analyst at S.G. Warburg in London: "I suppose in a way, as the Australian coming across, there was a slightly different culture. Alan was slightly more outspoken than we had been used to. He was saying, 'We are going to do deals."
London had had its fill of Australians doing deals at that point. "I was following a number of serious failures," says Jackson. There was Alan Bond; Christopher Skase, a failed Australian tourism and media baron who at one time tried to take over MGM/United Artis Studios; John Spalvins, a Latvian immigrant to Australia who bankrupted the Adelaide Steamship Co., which owned huge retail interests, including Australia Woolworth's; and John Elliott, who failed in building a brewing empire. Sums up Jackson: " The Australian businessman's respect in London was probably at low ebb.
"Before I left Ausali" he goes on, "I was told by the chairman of the Melbourne Stock Exchange, 'You will be carrying the mantle for Australian business." But Jackson's brash (to the British) ways and salty tongue only made the London business community more skeptical than ever.
Curiously, that was the stimulus Jackson needed to his afterburners. "A lot of my success is not from ambition but from fear of failure," he says. "And I've worked doubly hard to be certain that wouldn't occur." The son of an engineer, who insisted he leave school early due to his lack of effort and poor grades, Jackson earned his accounting degree through a correspondence course. Meanwhile he worked his way up from clerk at a publicly owned Australian pump manufacturer to become managing director.
Jackson is used to people underestimating his abilities. As CEO of BTR's 62%-owned Australian subsidiary, BTR...