‘These clouds will have a silver lining’

22 November 2008

Judi Bevan meets Sir John Parker, who chairs National Grid and the Court of the Bank of England — and takes an optimistic view of the deepening recession

After studying naval architecture and mechanical engineering at Queen’s University, he trained at Harland & Wolff before becoming, at 32, the youngest managing director of the Greek-owned Sunderland shipbuilders Austin & Pickersgill, selling ships around the globe. ‘We built standard ships for export to replace the American Liberty ships after the war — we perfected the design and built one every 27 working days,’ says Parker with evident pride. Selling them exposed him to international markets, taking him to many far-flung places in the East, including war-torn Vietnam where he recalls having to sleep in the same room as two fellow directors because most of the hotel had been destroyed by bombing. ‘We managed to get a couple of orders though,’ he says with another chuckle.

So what is the key to doing business abroad? ‘Having the emotional intelligence to pick your way through the cultural differences is very important,’ he says.

When the shipbuilding industry was nationalised at the tail end of the Callaghan government in 1978 he was persuaded to join the nationalised British Shipbuilders. ‘On day one there was an admiral, myself, an accountant, a box of paper clips — and 86,000 employees.’ He prevailed, however, and five years later he returned to a badly holed Harland & Wolff. It was the height of the Troubles in Belfast, but when the Norwegian shipping tycoon Fred Olsen financed a management buy-out of the yard, Parker was persuaded to stay, somewhat against his will. It was during this decade that he began his non-executive career, joining the board of British Coal followed by GKN and British Gas.