Elegy to the Eighties

I first met Roy on a sunny afternoon in the middle of the nineteen eighties when I was shown into his wood panelled office in one of the rather dismal towns in the West Midlands – a town which had been described to me as twelve miles and four dialects northwest of Birmingham.

Roy, or WRP, as he was also known, had been hired a few months earlier by the chairman of the group which had acquired B Limited. Although the Manufacturing Director had survived the usual post acquisition cull of the Board, the Managing Director, Marketing Director and Finance Director had all been sent packing.

At the age of 30, I had precociously applied for the job of Finance Director of this 600 employee company sensing I would lose my current Directorship in a (much smaller) company which was about to be sold.

Within five minutes Roy had decided to offer me the job although I didn’t know that until much later.

It was not my outstanding academic qualifications (ha!) or star studded professional record (again, ha!) which had persuaded him to this decision but the fact that I bore a strong physical resemblance to his favourite nephew.

Roy himself was of medium height with light red hair and a deeper red complexion and looked at me from behind his desk over a pair of gold rimmed half moon glasses.

The complexion was doubtless the result of his fondness for pre-dinner Campari and soda followed by several glasses of Mouton Cadet during the 25 years he had held executive positions in an era when “Business Entertaining” was a more significant figure in the Profit and Loss Account than in later years.

The first task of the new board was to turn the company round from the losses it had made previously which we managed in the space of twelve months, transforming a ￡300k loss to a ￡900k profit.

Roy’s methods were not always orthodox or conventional but he had an uncanny instinct for making effective decisions. Time and again he would seek to find the spirit of the situation rather than proceed according to the letter of the law – or internal regulation – and it was his deep belief that business prospered as a result of building strong relationships.

Whereas the conventional wisdom of the previous management had been to sell as much steel tube as possible - even if it mean cutting prices to loss making levels - Roy took a more collaborative approach by discussing pricing levels with our competitors in an arrangement known as “The Club” and woe betide any member who sold below the agreed price.

I once asked Roy whether this tactic conflicted with with anti-competition legislation and was given a gentle lecture by way of a reply to the effect that he believed his primary duty was to keep 600 people in employment rather than let the company go to the wall with the consequent impoverishment of the local community.

This departure from his usual position as a disciple of Thatcherite free market economics in which the shareholder was king surprised me but his sincere response was delivered in almost sacred tones and brooked no further argument.

Roy was not a morning person. He was an adult version of Shakespeare’s snail “creeping unwillingly to school” as he made his way, very slowly, each morning around 10 am from the car park to his office.

He was just getting into his stride by lunch time and would be in full flow by 4 pm. He ?treasured independent thinking and we spent many late afternoons in his office discussing the philosophy of accounting and economics as a result of which my two eldest children were frequently the last to be picked up from their swimming class on a Thursday evening.

“Imagine I’m the man from Mars” Roy would often say as he asked me - yet again - to explain how it was possible for the company to make more profit by manufacturing rather than selling – my previous boss had asked the same question just as frequently so I was well practised.

Accountants can go on for hours about the anomalies of “absorbing overheads in stock” but it is almost impossible to make sense of it to the uninitiated and I don’t think he ever truly felt I had made complete sense – even after I had an article on the subject published in an accountancy journal.

Roy’s proposals for taxation were also what might be termed “left field.” Without irony, he would suggest that companies making a loss should pay tax as they had demonstrated they didn’t know what they were doing. Conversely, companies which made a profit should receive a payment from the Treasury as a reward for their proven skill and ability.

The other setting for our thought provoking dialogues was the directors’ dining room – this time in the company of the other members of the board as well as various suppliers, customers, professional associates and whoever else Roy might have invited for a “jaw” as he used to term these lunches.

This all came to a juddering halt six months into my tenure when the chairman closed all the ?directors’ dining rooms in the group. The cutbacks came in the wake of a discovery that one of his recent acquisitions had been inflating their profits with fictional stock and he immediately axed any hint of what he saw as indulgent or unnecessary expenditure.

Roy publicly acknowledged the rightness of this decision and then promptly made the necessary arrangements with a local hostelry to set up an account and a semi-private room where we could transfer our daily “business.” On the one or two days each month when the group chairman visited our company we would make do with sandwiches in the board room.

Meetings to consider the annual budget could last well into the evening accompanied by copious cups of tea – many of which Roy never finished – and the nicotine fog which hung over the table. Roy’s 60 a day habit was suitably marked on his 60th birthday by a cake fashioned in the form of a packet of Silk Cut cigarettes – received with great amusement by the birthday boy.

There were, inevitably, many drafts of the annual budget, but only when the green biro came out did we know we had reached the final version – no further amendments could be made over the green ink.

When mobile phones were introduced around 1986 Roy refused point blank to have one. He had no interest in anybody being able to contact him – or know where he was – when his silver Rover purred its way up the M6 to an undisclosed destination each Wednesday afternoon.

After three and a half years I left my job to become self-employed and only saw Roy on one further occasion when we bumped into each other in a local bookshop.

He was in retirement, having parted company with his employers over a difference of opinion regarding his purchase of a Jaguar (in Racing Green) to replace his Rover.

The red hair was now flecked with white although his complexion was undimmed. He may have run engineering companies but his hinterland was broad and we chatted briefly about “cabbages and kings” – another of his favourite expressions to describe a wide ranging discussion. Sadly, I heard that he died just a few years later in his mid seventies, the alcohol and nicotine having finally – and prematurely – caught up with him.

Roy was a true character and his influence on my business life extended far beyond the time we worked together. Even my (belated) love of Mozart’s operas is due to Roy’s own enthusiasm and I just regret that I didn’t come to them earlier. Discussing the metaphysical themes of The Magic Flute with Roy late on a dark November afternoon in the depths of the West Midlands might, perhaps, have been more rewarding than continually rehashing the esoteric aspects of accountancy.