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Saturday 11 October 2008

Facing the flak at Terminal 5

Judi Bevan meets BAA chairman Sir Nigel Rudd, an Eighties entrepreneur turned City grandee who still relishes tough challenges — and has met several at Heathrow

Sir Nigel Rudd, chairman of BAA and motor group Pendragon and deputy chairman of Barclays Bank, has a reputation for riding towards the sound of gunfire. ‘I like difficult challenges — if it’s not difficult, where’s the fun?’ he says, an impish grin lighting up his solemn face. Not that the opening of Terminal 5 can have been a bundle of laughs amid the public uproar over cancelled flights and mountains of lost luggage. ‘The first few days were a tragedy,’ says Rudd, who admits that BAA must take the blame for some of the equipment not working properly. ‘It was a matter of a number of small things building up into something much bigger.’ Yet he has nothing but praise for British Airways chief executive Willie Walsh, who took most of the flak. ‘I really admired the way Willie took responsibility for the problems and showed true leadership.’

Now 61, Rudd made his name as the co-founder of Williams Holdings, which he built up with Brian McGowan to be one of the Thatcher era’s most successful go-go stocks. These days he is a City grandee, a man they call for when big companies lose their way. He exudes warmth and solidity and might be dull were it not for an irreverent sense of humour bubbling beneath the surface — and a delight in taking risks. ‘I quite like sailing close to the wind because there is a thrill in that,’ he says softly, with a hint of a Derbyshire accent.

We meet in the cosseted splendour of Barclays Wealth Management offices in Mayfair, a world away from the chaos of Heathrow. Here there is no hint of the storm raging over the airport’s proposed third runway or the rumpus over Terminal 5. Rudd looks remarkably relaxed in an immaculate grey suit and pale blue shirt with natty cufflinks; but then, he has never been one to flap. Sorting out BAA, owned by the Spanish group Ferrovial, will be his third job turning round a big floundering company — and by his own admission, the toughest yet. ‘It is so much in the public eye and it is a regulated business with several structural problems.’

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