Business Diary: March 27

John Pienaar, Radio Five Live’s chief political correspondent, can certainly lay claim to being a celebrity in his own right. But he has a doppelganger with a sporting background.

Mr Pienaar was the celebrity speaker at the R3 Northern Conference at Oulton Hall, near Leeds, which attracted some of the biggest names from the region’s restructuring and insolvency community. Mr Pienaar revealed he has been mistaken for Daley Thompson, who won two Olympic gold medals in the decathlon in the 1980s. Diary wonders if other members of Yorkshire’s business community resemble retired sporting heroes.

Hair today...

It’s lucky that Dalton Philips, Morrisons’ hirsute chief executive, gets on so well with finance director Richard Pennycook.

When asked by a journalist why Bradford-based Morrisons’ market share has slipped below rivals in the latest Kantar research, he quickly retorted that Morrisons has put down the least amount of new space among its competitors, hence the apparent loss of market share.

Mr Philips then went on to say: “If I managed the business based on four-weekly Kantar data...” – big pause as he looks over at the far less hirsute Mr Pennycook – “.... I was going to say I’d have no hair left.” Fortunately, the room erupted in laughter and Mr Pennycook saw the funny side.

Bluntly speaking

It appears us Yorkshire folk have more in common with our US counterparts than we might think.

When US insurance giant Arthur J Gallagher & Co, based in Chicago, decided to acquire UK firm Heath Lambert last summer, David Fryer, director of the firm’s Leeds office, was keen to find out more about the people who were buying the company. He told Diary: “When the talks with Heath Lambert were happening, I got a call from the chief executive saying, ‘The guys are going to come to Leeds so the deal rests on your head’.

Thinking on his feet, Mr Fryer rang a colleague in London. “I said, ‘You’ve got an American wife, can you just give me a heads-up? Chicago – what are they like?’

“I could see him on the end of the phone mulling it over, and he said, ‘Well, they’re not into glitz and glamour, they say it like it is, they don’t like bull,’ then he paused and said: ‘To be honest, Dave, they’re like Yorkshire people’. “I said, ‘I’m taking that as a compliment’”.

Three wise men

Diary was taken aback by the number of people with beards at Sheffield’s Global Manufacturing Festival. It was astonishing. During one panel debate on technology and enterprise, all three speakers on stage had striking facial hair. There was Sir Chris Donnell, the former chief executive of Smith & Nephew, with his white goatee cut with the same kind of exacting precision as his firm’s medical devices.

Alongside him sat Professor Keith Ridgway, the sage of South Yorkshire and research director of Rotherham’s Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre, with fuzz befitting his bear-like build and gruff demeanour.

Completing the trio of wise men was Ric Parker, director of research and technology at Rolls-Royce, whose ear-to-ear chin beard gave him the likeness of an abbot. Ancient Greeks regarded the beard as a sign of virility. Indeed, Mr Parker recalled during the debate how a former boss told him “manufacturers create wealth, everything else is just moving wealth around”. That ability to create wealth is the surest sign of virility. In more recent times, the beard has been associated with wisdom.

As the future of British manufacturing lies in the creation of intellectual property and technological prowess, it is fitting that the leaders and acolytes of this strategically important industry should wear beards.

Horse sense

Now, when it comes to business networking groups, everyone thinks they have something different to offer.

But, you couldn’t argue with the fact that training provider Learning to Listen certainly takes a unique approach to the activity. A leadership and teambuilding taster called Networking in Wellies saw participants learn a thing or two from horses at a farm in Sicklinghall.

Sarah Kreutzer, founder, told Diary a demonstration explained how to learn from horses about leadership and teamwork. “Horses are herd animals and need a leader, and without a leader they need to take that position.” She explained that the way participants interact with the horses after the demo tells them how they behave back in the workplace.