Boardroom talent is an international market, but a market is supposed to be two-way. Some 38 of the chief executives at FTSE-100 companies are foreigners, but how many UK executives head leading overseas quoted companies? Britain has a serious balance of payments deficit on management talent.
BP turned to Sweden for chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg (pictured) while the Rexam packaging group replaced its Swedish chief with Leslie van de Walle from France.
Maybe Britain is such a wonderful country no-one wants to leave and everyone wants to come; perhaps foreign boards are prejudiced against recruiting UK executives.
Or is the embarrassing truth that British managers are not good enough to make it in the international league?
Some of those 38 executive imports are understandable, like the Kazakhstani who heads the Kazakhmys mining group. But Cadbury’s chief executive, Todd Stitzer, is from the US, just like Lloyds Bank’s Eric Daniels. Supermarkets group William Morrison recruited Marc Bolland from Holland, while Vodafone CEO Vittorio Colao is Italian.
There are three Australians, six South Africans and 12 Americans running top UK companies plus an exotic mix of Mexicans, Ukrainians and Indians among the nationals of 14 different countries. Where, though, are the Brits running market leading public companies abroad?
If there is not actually prejudice against UK managers, there are certainly countries less willing to welcome outside management. England, after all, is the country that recruits foreign football managers for its national team when most rivals would not. And perhaps UK managers’ abilities with foreign languages hold us back at the interview. But it does seem the single market in management talent is not working.
The UK may also have more foreign managers because it has so many international businesses that are based on London but operate globally. Even so, there are plenty of multinationals in Europe, Asia and the US — some even run by foreigners, but few run by Brits.
Britain does welcome foreign business of course — look at the ownership of its investment banks or car companies. The danger is that appointments committees and headhunters become so awed by overseas talent, they ignore locals.
Or is it that UK companies are being forced to recruit abroad because the quality of top management at home is so poor? We may have been fooling ourselves about our skills.
The presence of so many foreign executives in UK boardrooms justifies the claim that pay has to be set to international levels. If companies have to attract foreign talent, they must match the remuneration paid abroad. But why are we paying our indigenous managers so well? The idea that the British-born head of a once-nationalised utility should be paid an international salary is ridiculous when the chance of him being asked to head a foreign company appears to be next to nil.
