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| BAA Group Retail Director Brian Collie on his resignation: “This is a purely personal decision, based upon my desire to pursue a different lifestyle and I will not be seeking any full time executive position in the airport or retail industry in the future.” |
UK. Brian Collie is to step down as Group Retail Director of BAA and as a member of the BAA plc board and will leave the company towards the end of this year.
This morning’s announcement will come as a major surprise to most people in the industry. Collie heads the UK company’s overall retail operation, including its flourishing World Duty Free subsidiary.
BAA said a search process has begun to identify a successor. Collie has been with BAA for 12 years and has been a member of the BAA plc board for seven years, during which time BAA’s retail business has delivered strong growth in sales and profitability.
BAA Chief Executive Mike Clasper said: “Brian has been the key player in establishing BAA as the world’s leading airport retailer and we will be very sorry to lose him. But we respect his decision and wish him well for the future and will now concentrate upon identifying the right successor. Our retail team is strong and I have no doubt that we will continue to deliver the powerful retail performance that underpins the business.”
Brian Collie said: “This is a purely personal decision, based upon my desire to pursue a different lifestyle and I will not be seeking any full time executive position in the airport or retail industry in the future. I will work closely with Mike Clasper and the team to ensure a smooth transition for the business.”
Speaking to The Moodie Report this morning, Collie said he planned to spend a lot more time with his family in future and enjoy his lifestyle after years of such a hectic business pace. He said his preferred departure would be around Christmas this year though he would stay on into 2005 if necessary in order to help an orderly succession.
“That’s the way we do things here. I have a real proprietorial pride in this business – both the airport business and the retail business. But I’m leaving the business in good shape… and I wouldn’t have been prepared to leave unless that was the case. It wouldn’t have been appropriate earlier with all the [external] things the company has had to go through. We’ve got a great team and a great retail board and it’s a great company.”
Collie said the search for his replacement “starts today” (nothing could be done in terms of a successor until the stock exchange was advised). He said internal candidates would not be excluded but that as a plc the company would also conduct an extensive external search.
“It’s a great job, a unique role in UK retail,” he said.
Collie bequeaths a highly successful operation to his successor. The shining star, UK airport retail (including World Duty Free), continued to deliver a strong performance in the quarter ended June 2004. Net retail income was +12.3% higher at £146 million (US$266 million) while net retail income per passenger rose in the quarter by +1.8% to £4.06 (US$7.40).
Those figures confirmed the pattern of strong underlying growth Collie and his team had established since overcoming the worst of the market distortions of early last year caused by SARS and the war in Iraq.
Collie commented at the time: “Most importantly, that positive momentum is being established through the strength and consistency we’re demonstrating right across our commercial operations. The significant rises seen across all three of our vital performance parameters – traffic, revenue and profit – illustrate the effectiveness of our retail business and our increasing confidence for the future.”
THE MOODIE REPORT COMMENT: The industry will take some time to digest the impact of this announcement, which came, as the Americans put it, “right out of left field”. Brian Collie’s recent years have been ones that will be remembered for protracted success, ones that have been synonymous with retail innovation and impressive sales and profits development.
After initially living somewhat in the shadow of his high-profile predecessor, Barry Gibson, and putting the debacle of the company’s acquisition of Duty Free International (later divested to the Falic family) behind him, Collie grew into the role and became very much his own man – in a position that increasingly grew in stature to become, as Collie says, a unique one in UK retail.
Finding the right replacement will not be easy. The role is highly demanding as it necessitates not only retailing acumen but also boardroom skills and external communication abilities. BAA is one of the UK’s most high profile companies and the ability to adroitly manage the external and internal politics of that status will be integral to the successful candidate’s choice.
Noted a source close to the company: “He will be a massive loss to the business. The importance of this job is so great to BAA that you have to have someone who can think on a macro level.”
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| “When he believes in something, he really believes in it,” a leading retailer told The Moodie Report. “He gives his reasons and doesn’t change his mind. And if he has to make a U-turn for any reason, he never decries what happened before.” |
One leading European retailer told The Moodie Report this morning: “I completely respect and admire what he’s done – whether you agreed with him or not, we need good strong leaders and he was one. He has done many positive things in terms of the stores and bringing in Mark Riches [World Duty Free Managing Director] was a strong move as Brian recognised we constantly need unshielded vision to take us forward.
“When he believes in something, he really believes in it. He gives his reasons and doesn’t change his mind. And if he has to make a U-turn for any reason, he never decries what happened before.”
Collie has overseen and driven a sea change in the company’s relationships with suppliers, particularly the leading houses in each category. Relationships with, say, the liquor giants such as Diageo, are profoundly different than they were in the late 1990s and much for the better. And few would question the tremendous strides the company has taken in terms of airport retailing standards – particularly in the fragrances and cosmetics sector that has dominated much of his recent thinking.
A determined, sometimes feisty character, Brian Collie has not only overseen the rapid development of BAA’s retail fortunes but also assumed the mantle of industry leader – both at retail and airport level. His lead role in the ‘Trinity Forum’ debates didn’t always win him friends but it did influence people. His contribution towards a more enlightened view by airports towards commercial revenue sectors will be particularly missed.
His speech at last year’s ACI Europe conference in Dublin was one of the best the industry has heard – even if some didn’t like the message. Many concessionaires took umbrage at his comments that ‘generalist retailers’ had become ‘the weakest link’ but few doubted the sincerity of his conviction or the fact that his central premise – that the tender model was broken – was right.
But Collie’s message has been not so much about models as about seizing the opportunity and the upside. He likes to cite one key statistic – the fact that a decade ago BAA was making around US$300 million from retail under the old ‘safety net’ concessionary model, compared with US$915 million by 2003. “If you triple your income, you can invest in all the things you want to do as a retailer,” he told The Moodie Report.
Collie may be a senior board director of one of the UK’s most blue-chip public companies but at heart he is a retailer. He told us a year ago: “I am a keen traveller and I am a salesman. If you can combine both those things, there is no better job you could have than be involved in retailing at an airport.”
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