:00:00. > :00:10.And now on BBC News, The Bottom Line, with Evan Davis.
:00:11. > :00:18.You enjoy a life in power. The authority, the exhilaration, the
:00:19. > :00:24.attention. Then, suddenly, it comes to an end. You could be Prime
:00:25. > :00:27.Minister, a football manager. Today, we will talk to three leading
:00:28. > :00:32.business executives about life after they were in charge. How do they
:00:33. > :00:37.build a new career? How do they look back on their old one? Each week,
:00:38. > :00:46.influential business leaders gather in London for the BBC Radio 4
:00:47. > :00:53.programme, The Bottom Line. You can see it as well as hear it.
:00:54. > :01:08.I have three experts with me in the studios, three ex-executives. --
:01:09. > :01:11.exes. It would be a good place to start to hear about what you were
:01:12. > :01:14.doing and what you are doing now. You come from different places. You
:01:15. > :01:21.are in children's publishing, a fashion group. Let's start with
:01:22. > :01:28.Gucci. You with the chief executive there. What state was it in when you
:01:29. > :01:35.took it over? It was in a great state. As we saw in the late 90s, we
:01:36. > :01:43.have the warring 90s and the coming together of groups by families who
:01:44. > :01:54.did this. -- which companies were in this? Gucci, you've sent the run, a
:01:55. > :02:03.high jewellery brand, and the famous UK brand Stella McCartney. -- Yves
:02:04. > :02:09.Saint-Laurent. It was a natural ending. In 5-7 years, people were in
:02:10. > :02:17.the same position. After that time, you do diminish little bit. I don't
:02:18. > :02:21.want to say complacency but for the sixth or seventh time do I need to
:02:22. > :02:25.do budget rounds with all of these guys and girls who are trying to get
:02:26. > :02:32.a low-budget? I know the tricks, do I want to do it again? Did you step
:02:33. > :02:42.down? The original founders of the company, which was then called PPR,
:02:43. > :02:49.they would owners of the Gucci Group, it became more than 70% of
:02:50. > :02:55.the total profit of the listed company. At a certain moment in
:02:56. > :02:59.time, he said, and he is ten years younger than me, that there would be
:03:00. > :03:01.a day when we would have to merge both positions and it would be
:03:02. > :03:15.either him or me. And then in January, 2011, I said I thought long
:03:16. > :03:20.and hard at -- he said he wanted to take my job. What is your main
:03:21. > :03:24.activity now? I always thought I loved engaging with people. Thinking
:03:25. > :03:30.through challenges and managing brands. It is still what I do. That
:03:31. > :03:35.I combine it with a lot of free time and adventures. I love sailing. I
:03:36. > :03:40.sailed across the ocean with my youngest daughter. Thank you very
:03:41. > :03:49.much, Robert. I next guest is Kate Wilson. Used to be the managing
:03:50. > :03:52.director Macmillan is books, then Scholastic UK. And you brought some
:03:53. > :04:03.popular children's titles to Britain. I did. I brought to Britain
:04:04. > :04:09.things like Judy Bloom's Forever, then Hunger Games. I also have
:04:10. > :04:18.worked on other great names, like horrible histories, among others.
:04:19. > :04:22.You didn't get Harry Potter. I am one of the 20 publishers who turned
:04:23. > :04:25.it down. But I have never done before in 60 check out whether I
:04:26. > :04:30.really was in charge of the company at that time. Your career is
:04:31. > :04:32.interesting. You are running children's publishing companies and
:04:33. > :04:37.running quite sizeable operations. The new thought, I'm going to be
:04:38. > :04:44.adult publisher. What went wrong? What went wrong... I really had two
:04:45. > :04:50.of the most exciting, I think, jobs in terms of publishing in the UK. I
:04:51. > :04:54.had grown children's books significantly and then I had
:04:55. > :04:58.Scholastic. One day I was called again by a company that was keen to
:04:59. > :05:02.hire me and they had tried before. I said, all right, I will come and
:05:03. > :05:08.have a chat. And I did. I ended up in an adult publishing world. I
:05:09. > :05:14.ended up as managing director of a division of an adult publishing
:05:15. > :05:18.house. Were you good at it? I was fired after five months. Tell us
:05:19. > :05:24.about how they got rid of you. After five months, I submitted a strategy
:05:25. > :05:29.paper and that was not in line I think it would be fair to say that
:05:30. > :05:33.the direction that the head of the company thought was the right
:05:34. > :05:42.direction. There had been a little bit of silence after the paper. I
:05:43. > :05:49.asked to leave that day. You asked to leave? No, I was asked to leave.
:05:50. > :05:56.When they tell you to leave, you are out the door by the end of that day?
:05:57. > :06:01.Yes, you are out. It would have been much more painful if this had
:06:02. > :06:08.happened within a context in which I made a very serious investment.
:06:09. > :06:14.Emotional and time and effort. What, as it was, this was five months and
:06:15. > :06:19.I think both sides had a clear and growing recognition, perhaps most
:06:20. > :06:24.acute on the part of my boss, that I was not well suited to this role.
:06:25. > :06:29.The truth is, having done my shuffle out on the Friday afternoon, I think
:06:30. > :06:34.it was, with a big cardboard box of photographs of the kids and the
:06:35. > :06:39.BlackBerry, which I was allowed to hang onto for a bit, at 2am on the
:06:40. > :06:46.Saturday, I nudged my ever patient husband a and said, what are we
:06:47. > :06:49.going to do? We will set up a children's publishing company in the
:06:50. > :06:53.basement. That's what we will do. He didn't say, don't be ridiculous, he
:06:54. > :07:00.said, but the business plan? Either next morning, we had a business
:07:01. > :07:06.plan. -- by the next morning. Did the kids say, mum has gone mad! The
:07:07. > :07:09.kids came down and the youngest one said, there were bits of paper and
:07:10. > :07:13.half drunk cups of tea around the bed, I said with a going to set up a
:07:14. > :07:18.company in the basement. She is eight, she looked at me and said,
:07:19. > :07:26.you will fail. You will fail, Mum. A proper job! My third guest, John
:07:27. > :07:31.Brown, former head of British Petroleum. We upgrade to call you
:07:32. > :07:38.John for the sake of this programme. You are famously called by the
:07:39. > :07:43.Financial Times the sun king, because it had a law and industrial
:07:44. > :07:45.career at BP. How much did the market capitalisation of the company
:07:46. > :07:53.grow while you with their? Because it was a good run. I had over 12
:07:54. > :07:56.years as Chief Executive of BP. I suppose the best measure is the
:07:57. > :08:05.increased the market capital why a factor of five or six. It grew quite
:08:06. > :08:09.it. It was a pretty good company but small. And focused on a couple of
:08:10. > :08:15.places, Alaska and the North Sea. In fact, a predecessor said to me, it's
:08:16. > :08:18.no bad thing. You get into a ring with some heavyweight and if you are
:08:19. > :08:23.a lightweight you can scamper between their legs. I thought, that
:08:24. > :08:27.was quite a good advantage. But, actually, the heavyweights would
:08:28. > :08:33.usually win. You needed a balance sheet, with real muscles, to do
:08:34. > :08:41.anything in this area. You took over an eco-, the American oil company?
:08:42. > :08:45.We did. -- Amico. And we took over Burmah Castrol as well, which used
:08:46. > :08:49.to own BP. You also created this very large Russian joint-venture
:08:50. > :08:54.team. That's right. It is interesting. Kate said it was less
:08:55. > :08:59.painful for her to be edged out of the publishing company because she
:09:00. > :09:04.hadn't invested perhaps quite as much in it, as she had in some of
:09:05. > :09:08.the other careers. You had invested everything in BP. It was your
:09:09. > :09:13.family, your entire career. You were an apprentice there from university
:09:14. > :09:18.days. That's right. I typically joined on my 18th birthday. BP paid
:09:19. > :09:23.me to go to Cambridge. Actually, my father, my late father had worked
:09:24. > :09:32.for BP. This was a very long history. Oil in the veins almost.
:09:33. > :09:35.Yes. Some people will know about the manner of your departure because it
:09:36. > :09:41.was a bit easy. Can I get you to summarise it? Absolutely. I left
:09:42. > :09:48.because I resigned, it was I got myself into a terrible mess. I am
:09:49. > :09:53.gay and I am of a generation that could neither admit it to itself for
:09:54. > :10:00.a little while, nor to the outside world. When I was at university,
:10:01. > :10:03.people who did gay things, homosexual acts, usually went to
:10:04. > :10:09.prison and stayed there a long time. So, lots of things changed but of
:10:10. > :10:14.course people don't change as fast as their environment. So, I tried to
:10:15. > :10:20.hide the relationship, a very bad relationship, with a guy who sold
:10:21. > :10:25.the story to a well-known newspaper. And we tried to stop him and, in the
:10:26. > :10:32.heat of the moment, I told a lie in the court, which I then corrected.
:10:33. > :10:37.Ten days later. But it was fatal. And I realised at that very moment
:10:38. > :10:40.that I had to resign at actually, because the court case was going
:10:41. > :10:44.through the courts, I couldn't do it. I wasn't allowed to tell anyone
:10:45. > :10:51.what had happened. So I had four months of this, until the court
:10:52. > :10:59.documents were released. So, I resigned. I walked out of the
:11:00. > :11:00.building on the 1st of May. But you decided well before the whole thing
:11:01. > :11:08.exploded in the public arena. decided well before the whole thing
:11:09. > :11:16.was watching the end come. You knew it was going to happen. You just
:11:17. > :11:21.didn't know the date and the time. But when we were given 24 hours
:11:22. > :11:26.notice, but was it. But it was messy before that? Because the company
:11:27. > :11:30.were beginning to feel that they needed to get new blood into the
:11:31. > :11:33.role and they were preannouncing your departure and you were kind of
:11:34. > :11:40.saying, I don't want to go. There was a kind of... To an extent. The
:11:41. > :11:45.thing about a succession, it is really handled well. Because
:11:46. > :11:50.succession is about the transformation of power, of course
:11:51. > :11:53.it is, and the moment the transfer is at least even imagined it
:11:54. > :11:56.happens. So, I think there was a leak and then there were people who
:11:57. > :12:05.were apparently trying to help me, who said, he will stay. Other people
:12:06. > :12:11.said I would go. Messy. A big mess. There was nine months of mess. What
:12:12. > :12:15.are you doing now? I am still in the energy business, you would expect me
:12:16. > :12:19.to be, but I am in private equity in the energy field only. That's my
:12:20. > :12:25.business activity. But I like to think that, in a very small way, I
:12:26. > :12:30.write books and I have time to myself to be able to enjoy London
:12:31. > :12:34.and Venice and the rest of the world. We have had the briefest
:12:35. > :12:39.overviews of your careers. You have all really risen to the top of
:12:40. > :12:42.something and then it stops and in fact these things tend to stop quite
:12:43. > :12:47.suddenly. I suppose that interesting thing to ask, maybe you can each
:12:48. > :12:50.tell me how you were feeling at the time, is the day after. Because
:12:51. > :12:54.people often when they finish something big deal a gaping hole.
:12:55. > :13:05.What do you do? The phone doesn't ring, though one is interested. If
:13:06. > :13:08.the essence of that. Quite often, people start confusing their role as
:13:09. > :13:18.CEO with who they are, actually. And they are inside. I'm a lot less
:13:19. > :13:22.funny now that I'm no longer the CEO in a room of people laughing at my
:13:23. > :13:26.jokes. I tell the same jokes but hardly anybody laughs any more. I
:13:27. > :13:31.use that as an example but this is how people treat you. This is
:13:32. > :13:39.nothing to do with me but the role that I played. I was rather
:13:40. > :13:48.devastated, actually. I'm quite blurry about my identity and part of
:13:49. > :13:53.my identity was someone who had run this publishing company and I liked
:13:54. > :13:58.my status of that in mind for world. In my case, I felt the risk was that
:13:59. > :14:03.I was jumping too quickly into something else. I did have to
:14:04. > :14:08.balance up questions about the loss of status, financial loss, frankly,
:14:09. > :14:13.there are a whole lot of questions that I was addressing at that point,
:14:14. > :14:20.which were quite tricky. You were the same person as the match one. I
:14:21. > :14:24.spent the first three days avoiding the paparazzi. People were trying to
:14:25. > :14:29.take photographs through my apartment windows. Every time I
:14:30. > :14:34.left, someone would be on a motorbike, chasing me. But quite
:14:35. > :14:40.quickly, you are no longer important and you realise that in business,
:14:41. > :14:44.everything that you achieve is completely femoral, actually, and so
:14:45. > :14:49.you have to look at that and say it's ephemeral. I remember all the
:14:50. > :14:55.exciting as I did, lots of stories and lots of people, but now I must
:14:56. > :14:59.think about the future and that is exactly what I did. And I realised I
:15:00. > :15:05.had to come back to the things that I think I was quite good at, which
:15:06. > :15:11.is energy and business. That had to be the core and then other things
:15:12. > :15:16.that excited me on top of it. Do you really feel that what you did was
:15:17. > :15:23.ephemeral? Decades of your life? Do you really think what you achieved
:15:24. > :15:26.was ephemeral? I think so. Business is as good as the leader who is
:15:27. > :15:35.leading it today and the leader who makes it good for tomorrow. I'm the
:15:36. > :15:39.chairman of Tate. All the Tate galleries in the UK. And I look at
:15:40. > :15:47.all the things inside those places and say, now that is not ephemeral.
:15:48. > :15:50.There was a lot of ephemeral stuff. Thousands and thousands of artists
:15:51. > :15:57.who nobody remembers, but some of it does last. I would agree with John.
:15:58. > :16:03.Business is not only one person who happens to be the leader at a
:16:04. > :16:07.certain moment in time. Often, people become leader of an
:16:08. > :16:17.organisation, a new leader, and they say, now we shall do this. And I
:16:18. > :16:22.always find it a bit confronting. BP is not ephemeral. That is not what I
:16:23. > :16:26.meant. BP is the sum total of millions of things that other people
:16:27. > :16:32.have done. Some of BP will be ephemeral. Some of Gucci is
:16:33. > :16:38.ephemeral. But right at the corner, it is adding value to mankind in one
:16:39. > :16:44.way or another and that is the purpose of business. We have heard
:16:45. > :16:50.quite a lot about your departures and the first moments after that.
:16:51. > :16:54.One observation is how useful it is and how important it is to have some
:16:55. > :16:59.other interests, something to get your teeth into, some hinterland,
:17:00. > :17:07.some family, something that is there for you. John, your life was very
:17:08. > :17:13.wrapped up in the business. I get the impression, Robin, yours was
:17:14. > :17:19.perhaps a little less so. I always said that I stopped on Friday
:17:20. > :17:24.evening at seven o'clock and I literally, physically switched off
:17:25. > :17:28.my phone and my blackberry and I switched them on again on Monday
:17:29. > :17:34.morning. It's better to have a good rest for two days and spend your
:17:35. > :17:38.time in a completely different environment with 1's children and
:17:39. > :17:43.1's wife and then go full speed again for the rest of the week. It's
:17:44. > :17:50.a discipline you have to allow yourself. Kate, you are obsessive. I
:17:51. > :17:55.am obsessive. I am not so good at dividing things. I don't want to
:17:56. > :18:05.come across as the token woman multitasker, but I would talk about
:18:06. > :18:14.the activities of me personally as much as the activities of the
:18:15. > :18:23.business. When I stopped, they said that for the first nine months, you
:18:24. > :18:28.have got to say no, and you have to remember that. Before you know it,
:18:29. > :18:33.you fill up your agenda and you have not had the time to put a strategic
:18:34. > :18:40.framework together as to how the next phase in one's life has to look
:18:41. > :18:44.like. I agree with the weighting. In my case, I waited three months and
:18:45. > :18:49.that was enough. It was not a strategy, like saying I will spend
:18:50. > :18:57.2.2 days doing this and the other. I filtered out of it. I had to make a
:18:58. > :19:01.realistic assessment of myself, and it was very important, to me at
:19:02. > :19:06.least, to look in the mirror and say to myself, you cannot go on to a
:19:07. > :19:11.public board because no one is going to ask you. No one is going to ask
:19:12. > :19:15.you after the way you left BP because you are too controversial.
:19:16. > :19:23.Remember that and don't do something silly like, oh, that didn't matter.
:19:24. > :19:28.It matters to people. And so I said, here is what I should do will stop
:19:29. > :19:32.and I went and did something in the private business area and I'm very
:19:33. > :19:39.pleased that I did that because it opened up new vistas I had never
:19:40. > :19:45.seen before. Do you look back on your legacy as successful or not?
:19:46. > :19:53.You said, as you look back quite a lot of it is ephemeral. Let me be a
:19:54. > :20:00.bit mean. Some say it's worse than ephemeral. When you leave, the new
:20:01. > :20:03.guy has to pick up your mess. When you people take over, it's better to
:20:04. > :20:06.build on the strength of the organisation than the finals the
:20:07. > :20:13.weaknesses that there are, that there always will be and say now I
:20:14. > :20:17.am going to change everything. -- define all the weaknesses. That is
:20:18. > :20:23.not reality. If you jump on a moving train, it's not a still standing
:20:24. > :20:26.train that you can put an engine in. There are chief executives today
:20:27. > :20:32.who, when they took over, people said the end is nigh and that is not
:20:33. > :20:37.true. They assess ten, 20 years of activity against two quarters and
:20:38. > :20:43.they say these two quarters don't look as good as the last ten years.
:20:44. > :20:48.I find myself looking at these large companies, perfectly well run, and I
:20:49. > :20:53.think really positively about how well they are doing. I do. And I
:20:54. > :20:59.think it's interesting about this ephemeral question. I'm still seeing
:21:00. > :21:05.what McMillan is doing with the Gruffalo. I will be absolutely
:21:06. > :21:12.furious if they drop that ball. They should make it the most exciting and
:21:13. > :21:22.fantastic and most forever piece of children's publishing ever. Have you
:21:23. > :21:28.ever given advice to the new guys? I have done the opposite. They would
:21:29. > :21:33.organise on Fridays a pensioner's lunch once a month and people would
:21:34. > :21:37.come in and out of the company all the time who, even though they had
:21:38. > :21:45.lost touch for a few years, still had an opinion and it's not helpful.
:21:46. > :21:51.When I left BP, I did not go back into the building for five years. I
:21:52. > :21:57.think it's so wrong for former chief executive is to offer any advice, to
:21:58. > :22:02.make any comment at all, unless they are asked. I'm a supplier to
:22:03. > :22:07.Scholastic, so I'm not in a position to advise. What has been very
:22:08. > :22:13.striking in this very fascinating conversation is I get the impression
:22:14. > :22:17.that none of you entirely initiated your departure at the time that it
:22:18. > :22:23.occurred from the company from which it occurred, and yet the impression
:22:24. > :22:30.I have from all of you is that it was a great step for you. You were
:22:31. > :22:34.pushed out that oil, the parachute opened and you all feel liberated by
:22:35. > :22:41.the fact that your career have I. -- pushed out that door. I remember I
:22:42. > :22:45.walked out that building after I came to an agreement and I
:22:46. > :22:51.immediately phoned my wife of 33 years. And I said this is the last
:22:52. > :22:57.step in our freedom. And the last bit of freedom that I really wanted
:22:58. > :23:01.was the freedom to manage my own agenda and not having an agenda that
:23:02. > :23:07.was completely filled three years in advance. I love being an
:23:08. > :23:12.entrepreneur. I love having the autonomy of that. That comes at a
:23:13. > :23:16.price because we could raise significantly more money than we
:23:17. > :23:20.have chosen to raise but I choose not to do it because right at this
:23:21. > :23:27.moment it's not as important to me as that freedom. When I left BP, and
:23:28. > :23:35.awful lot of things changed for me. My whole life changed because I came
:23:36. > :23:40.out. And that was one of the most extraordinary things. And I also
:23:41. > :23:44.changed my professional life at the same time. It was an extraordinary
:23:45. > :23:49.combination of things and I'm very pleased it happened. I really am
:23:50. > :23:54.pleased. And it's now convinced me, of course, that I need to make sure
:23:55. > :24:00.I keep changing what I'm doing because I find that very exciting.
:24:01. > :24:08.You are feeling freer and I'm feeling the free-flowing reflections
:24:09. > :24:20.from you. Thank you, all of you, for joining us today. And thank you for
:24:21. > :24:25.listening. I will be back next week. Don't forget, the downloads of this
:24:26. > :24:31.programme are available. Details are on our website and you can always
:24:32. > :24:33.listen to it on BBC radio. We also like to get your e-mails. Drop us a
:24:34. > :24:49.line. It's a case of mixed fortunes as far
:24:50. > :24:54.as the weather is concerned. Saturday will be the best day for
:24:55. > :24:58.many of us. It will be windy and there will be some rain, with the
:24:59. > :24:59.best of the weather in the