Tim Jackson - Virgin King (Text Only)

‘Hello,’ he replied tentatively, ‘I’m Don Cruickshank, the new MD. And you are?’

Vickery explained quickly that he was in charge of the company’s car fleet, and dealt with its insurance and its property holdings. He had heard that this was Don’s first day, he said, and since their offices were next door to each other, thought he should come and introduce himself.

They made an odd pair, wandering around the cramped Virgin offices in Ladbroke Grove. Vickery was the cockney wide-boy, affectionately known inside the company as Virgin’s Arthur Daley, the man who used to tease the public schoolboys close to Richard Branson by pretending that he had graduated from Oxford University instead of Twickenham Art School. Cruickshank, his new neighbour, was fastidious, cerebral, and quietly spoken – and had ‘management consultant’ written all over him. Yet it was Cruickshank, not Vickery, who was the odd man out. Why, wondered the people Vickery introduced him to, had Richard brought in this man to run the Virgin Group?

Though only a handful knew it at the time, the reason was straightforward. Ten years after the foundation of the record label, nearly fifteen after the first discount LPs had been sold by mail-order, Branson had decided to take Virgin public. Knowing that the group would need some tidying up before it could be sold to investors on the stock market, he had resolved to bring in a manager from outside who could groom the company for its coming listing and who could reassure the City that someone who sympathized with its interests was inside.

Given the sensitivity of the appointment, and the special qualities that would be required of someone who could fit tolerably into the Virgin corporate culture while doing this job, Branson had been careful not just to accept the first recommendation of an outside firm of headhunters. In appointing Cruickshank, as with so many other people, the Virgin chairman relied on personal connections. David Puttnam, the film producer who made Chariots of Fire, had told Branson that he was talented and reliable. Robert Devereux, Branson’s brother-in-law, had a healthy respect for his negotiating abilities, having dealt with him at Goldcrest Pictures during one of Virgin’s sorties into the British film industry. Simon Draper had known nothing about him, but had met Cruickshank over lunch and come away with the conclusion that he was ‘serious’.

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