Business - Access Interviews

Vincent de Rivaz

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 03:51:07 +0000

Vincent de Rivaz, the boss of EDF Energy, is a typically passionate Frenchman. Unusually for one of our European comrades from the republic across the Channel, he has a passion for the British - or at least for the 5.5m of them who are his customers. He is an especially big fan of the Queen and there is a large picture of Her Majesty in his office, which conveniently overlooks Buckingham Palace. 'This is my favourite thing. I took it myself,' he says with pride as he waves the picture about. He took the photograph in Normandy in 2004 during the 60th anniversary of the D-Day landings as the Queen walked by.

Vincent de Rivaz

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 03:51:07 +0000

In a HARDtalk interview first broadcast on 5 February 2008, Stephen Sackur talks to the UK chief executive of EDF Energy, Vincent de Rivaz. As Europe strives to cut its carbon emissions, how will its member states meet their energy needs? The British Government believes the answer lies in a carefully calibrated mix - a massive expansion in renewable energy sources and a new generation of nuclear power stations. That's exactly what Vincent De Rivaz wants to hear: he's the CEO of EDF Energy, the British arm of the French energy giant. But will it be good for consumers or the planet?

Vincent de Rivaz

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 03:51:07 +0000

The EDF boss has bought British Energy; now he must persuade the public that we need a new fleet of reactors. After 30 years in the energy industry, Vincent de Rivaz faces one last challenge: to persuade the British people that nuclear power is the solution to our energy problems. De Rivaz, boss of the French nuclear group EDF, has already charmed ministers into allowing him to buy the crown jewels of our nuclear generating industry, British Energy, for £12.5bn.

Duncan Bannatyne

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 03:51:07 +0000

Dragons' Den star Duncan Bannatyne has revealed that he considered suicide after his first marriage broke down. In an interview on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs, Bannatyne, 61, said he was driven to despair and would regularly break down in tears on his way to work. 'In the run-up to the separation I was very, very unhappy,' he said.

Anna Gibson

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 03:51:07 +0000

ANNA GIBSON was for ever being stopped by other mothers when they saw her little boy’s three-wheeled micro scooter on Clapham Common, south London. Soon she was buying them from the distributor and selling them to those mothers on the common. The business she now runs sells 120,000 scooters a year and is expected to turn over £4.3m this year.

Bernie Ecclestone

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 03:51:07 +0000

You need nerves of steel to take on Formula 1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone. Here he talks about Max Mosley, those controversial comments about Hitler and still being in love with his former wife

Jeremy Darroch

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 03:51:07 +0000

BSkyB boss Jeremy Darroch is standing up straight, tapping into his computer while overlooking a dreary business park in the West London suburb of Isleworth. No polished walnut desk and gilt-edged paintings in this glass-walled office. As befits a media executive, an open-necked Darroch uses a waist-height ergonomic desk with no chair to conduct his business.

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 03:51:07 +0000

Catherine Raw, a manager on the BlackRock Gold & General Fund, explains how it has multiplied investors' money sevenfold over the past 10 years. To isten to the interview, click here.

Peter Sands

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 03:51:07 +0000

Having just announced his seventh successive year of record profits, it is perhaps not surprising that Standard Chartered chief executive Peter Sands is a little irritated to be quizzed about bonuses. This might be a telephone interview, but his clipped tones are unmistakable as he refuses to give further detail on the bank's $1.1bn bonus pool. 'No, I am not giving a comparison for last year. We have never disclosed this number before and we've had a whole lot of changes to the way we organise our bonus arrangements.'

Nick Jones

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 03:51:07 +0000

Nick Jones is climbing over wooden planks and trying...

Sergey Brin and Larry Pag

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 03:51:07 +0000

The world's most successful search engine makes obscene profits, snoops on our every electronic movement and helped China censor its citizens. New Yorker magazine's business columnist Ken Auletta gained rare access to its billionaire founders to ask: Is their empire turning nasty?

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 03:51:07 +0000

The Tupperware plastics firm's ebullient boss still relies on its famous parties – and an army of female sales repsA sturdy, see-through container with an airtight lid: it doesn't sound like rocket science. But Tupperware has emerged as the plastic fantastic of the global economic downturn, wowing Wall Street as legions of hard-up women throw parties peddling kitchen equipment to bolster their household income.Tupperware Brands, the American multinational behind the kitchen mainstay, has seen its shares rocket by 160% in a year. Every 2.3 seconds, somebody somewhere in the world hosts a Tupperware party, the company claims, and sales topped $2.1bn (£1.3bn) last year. In tough times, Tupperware is a rare success story – and it's a force for the empowerment of women, too, according to its chief executive, Rick Goings.Goings, a former US Navy navigator, is something of an alpha male who oversees an overwhelmingly female global sales network from Tupperware's headquarters in Orlando, Florida. A lean, dark 64-year-old with a penchant for black turtlenecks and a daily routine of transcendental meditation, Goings believes he understands the female psyche. "I identify very much with that Mel Gibson movie, What Women Want," he says, referring to the romantic comedy about a sales executive who is able to read women's minds after getting an electric shock in the bath. "I haven't gotten into trying on a pantyhose and seeing what it looks like on me. But I live women; I love the company of women."Uniquely for a multinational, Tupperware has stuck to a seemingly old-fashioned distribution strategy of recruiting casual representatives to sell its goods at parties thrown in living rooms for friends and neighbours. The firm, established shortly after the war by a New Hampshire-born inventor, Earl Silas Tupper, does very little advertising and in most countries it does not sell its products in shops."The average retail store is open 12 hours a day but the other 12 hours of rent is built into the cost of the product," says Goings, explaining Tupperware's shunning of the high street. "If somebody buys our products, they get incredible value. There's no heating, no air conditioning, no rent, no advertising [to pay for]. It's a great product and it doesn't cost a lot of money."While the Tupperware party may once have had a Stepford Wives image of suburban stay-at-homes swapping tips on kitchen economy, the modern reality is altogether sharper. Tupperware's range spans knives, teatowels, pans, electrical appliances and, following a series of acquisitions, beauty products under names such as Naturcare, BeautiControl and Nuvo. The company has 2.4 million part-time sales reps, the large majority of them female, of whom 814,000 are classified as regularly "active". The army is multiplying, particularly in emerging markets: Tupperware's active reps rose by 32% last year in Asia and the Pacific, by 14% in North America and by 6% in Europe."The recession isn't good for us," says Goings, who says it's harder to get party guests to part with their pennies when the economy is in a rut. "If somebody asks what environment I really want, I want strength and growth in disposable income." But, he adds, high unemployment makes it easier to recruit salespeople: "We can, at times, attract some women who have been put out of the workforce – the highly skilled, talented woman who in better economic circumstances wouldn't have considered us. Then she does well and she stays with us."The Tupperware party, says Goings, need not be a staid affair. Many are themed, say, as Tex-Mex nights or, in the case of a popular idea in France, as an evening to learn about "decadent and delicious desserts". And there's alcohol: "It's six or eight women sitting around having a good time. Thank goodness they're taking public transport home."But isn't the concept still a bit of a throwback to the notion that a woman's place is in the kitchen? Goings doesn't think so. "Even though a woman doesn't want to cook, she is still nurturing. She still wants to take care of her man," he says. "Women think 'we'. Men think 'me'." Warming to his theme, he adds that women still want to entertain at home – and, he adds conspiratorially, the party is "a girl's night out that doesn't include us".A former US boss of the Avon cosmetics company, Goings joined Tupperware in 1992 and became chief executive in 1997, shortly after the business gained independence as a spin-off from the sprawling catering-equipment group Premark International. He lives in the same Florida gated community as Tiger Woods (a "good soul" despite recent difficulties, believes Goings) and has marketing in his blood: an early business venture, while he was serving as a navigator in the navy, was a "slush fund" lending out $5 a time to cash-strapped fellow sailors for shore leave, in return for repayment of $7.Goings and his wife Susan are parents to eight children between them and play a leading role in the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, a national organisation providing recreation facilities for young people.Reviving Tupperware's fortunes has hardly happened overnight. The brand was drifting early in the decade and in an effort to give it a "cooler" image, celebrities such as Brooke Shields and even the rapper Ice-T have been brought on board. With profits up by 6% to $175m for 2009, Goings can afford a little chest-beating over Wall Street: "The attitude in the investment market is 'wow, this isn't just some whim – they've actually figured this thing out'."For most Tupperware salespeople, the odd party provides a handy bit of extra income – perhaps $100 or $150 of commission for a 90-minute event. For the more dedicated, says Goings, it can be a decent living: some parties can generate $800 in sales and at a rate of 30% commission, organising several events a week can produce a liveable wage.The classic Tupperware item is an all-purpose container that, Goings explains, can be used at every stage of a meal: "You can prepare food in it, start it in a microwave, finish it in a conventional oven, serve in it and store it in the freezer". But the Tupperware product range runs into the thousands and the driving force of the business is emerging markets. Tupperware has more than 70,000 sales reps in Russia and 70,000 in India. About 85% of the company's revenue is outside the US, though Tupperware has found one particular territory a struggle: Britain.Back in 2003, Tupperware shut down its direct sales operation in the UK, citing changes in consumer demand, and although it tentatively restarted operations two years later, Goings admits the company's British presence is "nominal".Things went awry, he says, when Tupperware upgraded its product range in the mid-1990s with flashier, pricier kitchenwares. "Rather than be a Boots brand, we tried to be a Selfridges brand," he says. "But in the UK, we didn't have a Selfridges sales force."Back then, Goings says, the British legion of the Tupperware army was largely rural, with little marketing training: "We'd be taking good country people, many of them from the north, and having them selling Bentleys."Tupperware is ready for a fresh attempt at cracking Britain and is in the final stages of preparing an "acceleration plan". He wants Tupperware to be a $100m business in the UK and has been cheered by snaps taken by a tabloid reporter of the Queen's breakfast table at Buckingham Palace which revealed that the royal cereal is served in Tupperware containers. "She has good taste. She clearly has good taste in horses, hats and handbags," says Goings, who has swiftly become an ardent royalist. "She's an elegant woman at a time when the monarchy is unpopular."Getting into his stride, Goings adds: "She's handled it so great. It's so great how she's weathered change. And it's things like Tupperware that keep you grounded."The CVAge 64Education Guilford College, North CarolinaCareer Served as a US Navy navigator on the destroyer USS Power; in 1970 set up direct sales company Dynamics, selling it in 1978; joined Avon Products in 1985; moved to Tupperware as president in 1992, becoming chairman and chief executive in 1997Lives Windermere, FloridaFamily Married to Susan, a former ABC television presenter and widow of Jeff Porcaro, the drummer with rock band Toto. The couple have eight children between themInterests Golf, weightlifting, scuba, sailing, languages, meditationManufacturing sectorAndrew Clarkguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Luke Johnson

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 03:51:07 +0000

Serial entrepreneur turned Channel 4 chairman Luke Johnson likes to call himself a maverick, but isn’t that a stretch when you’re burrowing ever deeper into the heart of the Establishment?

Gill Fielding

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 03:51:07 +0000

Gill Fielding is a self-made millionaire and mother of three, best known for her appearance on Channel 4's The Secret Millionaire when she gave away nearly £250,000 to good causes.

Sir John Gieve

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 03:51:07 +0000

Former deputy governor of the Bank of England Sir John Gieve has told Public Servant that it will be difficult to create a financial services regulatory system that does not become complacent again over time as memories of the economic crisis fade, writes Dean Carroll.

Luke Johnson

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 03:51:07 +0000

Even the Pizza Express entrepreneur thought his appointment as Channel 4 chairman was 'brave'. Luke Johnson, the multi-millionaire restaurant entrepreneur and Channel 4 chairman, arrives at the broadcaster's headquarters carrying our lunch in a paper bag. Having promised food, he had decided to pop out for some "proper" sandwiches.

Luke Johnson

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 03:51:07 +0000

Luke Johnson comes with a reputation. Bright, young, media-smart, a loner who made his reputation carving out the deal that turned Pizza Express into one of Britain's most successful restaurant chains, he circles the business pages like a carrion crow, picking at bits of companies, gobbling pieces up, looking for opportunities. Others, drawn by his name, follow him here and there, into a new start-up, behind a new investment vehicle. This lure of the name is acute, especially as he reinforces it with a column he writes for a Sunday newspaper.

Luke Johnson

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 03:51:07 +0000

Luke Johnson, Chairman of Channel 4, takes part in a candid and open interview and shares his opinions on all aspects of the television industry.

Luke Johnson

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 03:51:07 +0000

Watchdog Ofcom has left the option open for a possible merger between Channel Four and Channel Five. The scenario does not appeal to C4 chairman Luke Johnson. Sky's Jeff Randall began by asking him if his TV station was in danger of running out of money.

Luke Johnson

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 03:51:07 +0000

In the first interview after his surprise takeover of Borders, Luke Johnson plans expanding into toys. It is hard to resist scanning a new acquaintance's bookshelf for a clue to their personality. Take Luke Johnson's favourite novels: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S Thompson and Nostromo by Joseph Conrad. In between chairing Channel 4, sitting on several boards and writing a newspaper column, he is currently reading - 'before I go to bed, when I travel on trains and on holiday, and sometimes on a Sunday afternoon if the children will let me,' - JG Ballard's Kingdom Come