Gerald Corbett

Gerald Michael Nolan Corbett (born 7 September 1951) is a British businessman. Over a long career, he has been a director of twelve public companies, six of which he has chaired. He is currently chairman of Betfair plc, the world’s leading betting exchange, which he joined in January 2012. He is also chairman of Britvic plc, the international soft drinks company whose brands include Robinsons squash, J2O, Tango, Fruit Shoot, Ballygowan water and is also a bottler for PepsiCo. As chairman he led the floatation of Britvic in 2005 since when the profits have almost trebled.

He was chairman of Moneysupermarket.com plc, the UK’s leading price comparison website between 2007 when he led the floatation until April 2014. He chaired Towry, the wealth advisory business between 2012 and 2014 and was a non-executive director of Numis plc, the stockbroking and investment banking business based in the City from 2008. He took over the chair at Numis in 2014.

In 2005 he became Chairman of SSL International plc, the consumer healthcare group, whose major brands included Durex and Scholl, sold in over 50 countries. In 2010 he negotiated the sale of SSL to Reckitt Benckiser for £2.5 billion, a gain of 400% on the share price 5 years previously.

He was Chairman of Action on Hearing Loss between 2007 and 2013 (the Royal National Institute of the Deaf), the UK’s largest charity for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. He is Chairman of the Hertfordshire Community Foundation and Chairman of the St Albans Cathedral Music Trust. He was High Sheriff of Hertfordshire for 2010/11 and served on the Council of the Shrieval Association between 2008-2012.

Described by David Freud in his book "Freud in the City" as "immensely approachable, a short and jovial figure, full of impromptu quips relayed to the accompaniment of short, barks of laughter", he had an executive career which covered many years as a Finance Director (he was one of the longest serving members of the 100 Group of FTSE Finance Directors) prior to a controversial spell as Chief Executive of Railtrack, the infrastructure part of the Tory Government’s Railway privatisation.

Early career

Corbett attended Tonbridge School, before studying history at Cambridge University, where he was a foundation scholar. After this, he attended London and Harvard business schools before joining Boston Consulting Group, which advises on corporate strategy, in the mid-70s. In 1982, he joined electrical retailer Dixons, where he became group Financial Controller and Corporate Finance Director.

He left after five years to be Group Finance Director at international building materials firm Redland. In 1993, he became Group Finance Director of Grand Metropolitan, the food and drink giant. In February 1996 in The Mail on Sunday, Patience Wheatcroft identified Corbett as one of business' "high powered hot shots" who would lead British business into the new millennium.

When "Grand Met" merged with Guinness to form Diageo, in summer 1997 he left and was appointed Chief Executive of Railtrack,^[1] which he left in November 2000.^[2]

Railtrack

Railtrack was the most controversial of the Conservative government privatisations. The railway was dismembered into over 100 different pieces of which by far the largest was Railtrack which owned and operated the infrastructure. According to Railtrack's annual reports and in a series of documents published by the office of the Rail Regulator, under Corbett, train punctuality improved to levels not seen before, investment rose, profits increased, the share price went up and the safety record steadily improved (Network Management Statement 1999). This is in spite of the Hatfield rail crash, which exposed Railtrack's inadequate maintenance of the railways. In 1998 Railtrack rescued the Channel Tunnel rail link, which was subsequently delivered on budget and on time. By the year 2000, 20% more people were travelling by rail than under old BR .

In September 1997, three weeks after his appointment, a First Great Western express train from Swansea collided with a freight train at Southall, West London, killing seven passengers. Twenty seven months later, in October 1999, another Intercity train collided with a commuter train near Paddington, killing 31 people. It was Britain's worst rail disaster in a decade.

Railtrack came under intense scrutiny from the regulator who claimed Railtrack was pursuing a deliberate "culture of defiance" due to disagreements over failed punctuality improvement targets. Corbett, who became the mouthpiece of the privatised railway, was frequently on TV and Radio defending his company.

A year after the Paddington crash, in October 2000, a train from London to Leeds derailed at Hatfield, resulting in four deaths. Corbett’s resignation was initially rejected by the Railtrack board.^[3] On the same day on the BBC 7 o'clock news Corbett identified the Railways problem as its fragmentation. The railway had been "ripped apart by privatisation". He urged Government and regulators to "think the unthinkable". He eventually left with a compensation package estimated to be worth £1.3m in total (of which £900,000 was his accrued pension benefit).

Corbett was personified on the London stage in David Hare's "The Permanent Way" and in the television film "Derailed".^[4] These dramatisations showed the private tension beneath the public face and noted that Corbett had his own share of personal tragedy.^[5] His father was killed at an early age by a drunk driver in a car accident. Corbett is married to an artist. Together they have four children, and he himself is one of five brothers.

After partial re-nationalisation of the railways in the form of Network Rail, improvements in punctuality were initially slow due to speed restrictions imposed on the rail network after Railtrack's poor health and safety standards resulted in significant infrastructure problems.^[6] As of 2014, punctuality has greatly improved, with a Public Performance Measure (the percentage of trains arriving at their terminating stations on time) at 92.1% ^[7]

After Railtrack

In March 2001, he was back at the helm of another major company, Woolworths, appointed to oversee the demerger of Woolworths Group from Kingfisher. Once this was completed in August 2001, he remained on the board as Chairman until 2007.

In October 2003, he was appointed non-executive chairman of Health Club Holdings, the Holmes Place fitness clubs business, which he stepped down from at the end of 2005 following his appointment as Chairman of soft drinks company Britvic,^[8] to oversee its flotation in December 2005 on the London Stock Exchange. Since flotation Britvic has expanded into Ireland, France the USA and India. The market value is over three times that at flotation.

He has also been a non-executive director of Burmah-Castrol plc and the MEPC property group.

In July 2005 he was appointed as Chairman of SSL International,^[9] the company that manufactures and sells internationally Durex contraceptives and Scholl footwear and footcare products. In the last five years SSL's profits have trebled as the business has expanded into Russia, the Ukraine and China, benefitting also from major new product development. On 20 July 2010 the SSL Board accepted a £2.5 billion offer for the company from Reckitt Benckiser plc. Over the 5-year period this represents an improvement in shareholder value of almost 400 per cent making it one of the best performing shares on the London market over that time period. The Lex column in the Financial Times described the price as "gutsy at twenty times ebitda" on 22 July. Nils Prately in the Guardian said that "SSL was the clear winner of the deal". Alex Brummer in the Daily Mail wrote that "it was a fairy tale for SSL shareholders"

Between 2004 and 2010 he was a non-executive director of Greencore Group plc, the Irish food company headquartered in Dublin. He was Chairman of the Governors of Abbot's Hill School between 1997–2002 and has been a governor of Luton University.^[10] In 2010 he served as High Sheriff of Hertfordshire^[11]

In the recent past Corbett has kept out of the public eye, focusing on his Chairmanships at Britvic, Betfair, Numis and his charity work. In December 2014 it was announced that he will take over as Chairman of the Marylebone Cricket Club in September 2015.

References