Since Pilkington Glass turned Japanese in Nippon Sheet Glass’s takeover, Stuart Chambers’ world has grown. But he’s still a North West man at heart, as Michael Taylor discovers.
Stuart Chambers still calls Cheshire his home, but is cutting a particularly impressive dash across Tokyo at the moment as the chief executive of Nippon Sheet Glass (NSG), the Japanese glass-maker that fought hard to take over Pilkington, where Chambers was chief executive.
The very measure of an urbane English executive at the helm of a global company, he has kept his home in Cheshire yet commutes between the North West, Tokyo and the 27 countries and outlying parts of the Nippon Sheet Glass empire.
In the current economic climate there is a mountain of challenges for Chambers, not least getting to grips with Japanese management culture. He’s one of only two Brits to run a Japanese company, following Howard Stringer, who is president of Sony.
“The board has 12 people, five-and-a half are non-Japanese. It’s proving to be a rich mix of talents and we come to a decision,” he says.
What’s different? “An American or a UK plc devotes 50 per cent of its energy towards worrying about shareholders, 25 per cent on customers and 25 per cent on staff. In Japan they spend 70 per cent of their energy on customers, about 5 per cent on shareholders and the rest on staff. Personally I think a third each is the best way to succeed.”
The disruption to his life is clear, but he is a down-to-earth chap who took his personal assistant, support staff and his wife Nicky to the CBI lunch in December, where he was given the prestigious Business Leader of the Year Award. Even as the chief executive of Pilkington – a job he did from 2002 until its acquisition by Nippon Sheet Glass – he lived a large part of his executive life on the road.
Chambers was born in Brunei and went to schools in Asia, where he lived an expat life, but eventually went to university in London. He emerged with a science degree in 1977 and immediately entered industry, working for oil giant Shell and then at Mars confectionery as the European sales director.
He first joined Pilkington in 1996, serving under flamboyant Italian chief executive Paulo Scaroni, then taking the top job himself after running the building products division. Scaroni, who Chambers is still close to and who spoke at the Liverpool Business Conference chaired by Chambers last year, transformed Pilkington and slashed the workforce from 40,000 to 25,000. He introduced self-cleaning glass, K-glass and repositioned the business as a leader in automotive and construction.
When Scaroni was made an offer he couldn’t refuse from the Italian prime minister to sort out the energy industry, chairman Sir Nigel Rudd installed Chambers in the hot seat. It was the ultimate irony that Chambers led a team that fought off a Japanese takeover, succumbed, and then assumed the top job at the acquirer as president and chief executive officer as of June 2008.
All that, however, is in the past. Right now the business faces the full weight of the economic challenge on a daily basis and is fully focused on meeting those challenges. He says: “The biggest issue is the massive decline in demand. Especially in the automotive sector, the second half of this year will be challenging. We’re reshaping capacity to meet the needs of the business.”
NSG has also paid a lot of money for Pilkington and has debt levels to work within. He admits that is high on his agenda. “It’s a tough challenge. Our mettle will be tested and, of course, we’ll have to be at the top of our game, but we were in Germany at our global conference and we’ve got a great team behind us,” he said.
At St Helens, where 2,000 people are still employed in the glass industry, he says the business is less exposed to the shocking downturn in building and car sales, but has done well to invest in new technology.
He says: “What we’ve managed to do is upgrade to make glass for the solar power industry. We want to grow that part of our business. The downturn in the UK will be severe and we’ll have to live with that.”
He believes there are lessons he is able to draw on from colleagues in Japan who have had to cope with a recession in more recent memory than European or American colleagues.
“There has been a ten-year recession in Japan based on a banking problem and it took ten years to get through. No-one wants that here in the UK. There were different problems in Japan. The Japanese consumer doesn’t do things on credit and they tend to save more.”
In the UK Chambers still remains a heavyweight business leader. He chaired the Northwest Business Leadership Team in 2008, a quirky gathering of senior business figures that considers a view on strategic regional issues and distributes an art prize, the Lever Prize, each year.
His view of government intervention is measured, and time will tell if it has worked. He says. “There has never been such a concerted effort by a government to tackle financial issues on a global scale. For all of us it’s going to be 12 months of extreme difficulty. We’ve got to plan for the worst and hope for the best. The optimistic view is this could be 12 months, but it could take three years or more to work through.
“The interest rate move was necessary, and you have to give the Bank of England credit for not doing things in half measures. I’m sceptical about the VAT cut, though, and not sure if that will work.
“But you have to balance all that with the reality that wealth still has to be created in the private sector. But the debt levels are a real worry. Eventually there is going to have to be belt tightening in the public sector and a need to reduce government debt. Private industry will certainly be doing that.”
Also in: January 2009
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The world has changed beyond recognition. Government controls the financial system and the amount of companies in hock to the banks make for a year of twists and turns. Michael Taylor reports.
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She’s won admiration in her steady opposition to Greater Manchester’s Transport Innovation Fund bid and will contest Bolton West for the Tories in the next General Election. Neil Tague speaks to Trafford council leader Susan Williams.