Gerald Corbett
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Gerald Michael Nolan Corbett DL (born 7 September 1951) is a businessman who was the chairman of the
Marylebone Cricket Club Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) is a cricket club founded in 1787 and based since 1814 at Lord's Cricket Ground, which it owns, in St John's Wood, London. The club was formerly the governing body of cricket retaining considerable global influence ...
(MCC). A businessman, over a long career he has been a director of thirteen public companies, seven of which he has chaired. He is currently chairman of Segro plc, the FTSE 100 international industrial property logistics group. He chaired Britvic plc for 12 years until September 2017. Britvic plc is the international soft drink company whose brands include Robinsons squash, J2O, Tango, Fruit Shoot, Ballygowan water and is also a bottler for PepsiCo. As chairman he led the flotation of Britvic in 2005. He was chairman of Betfair plc between 2012-16 when Betfair merged with Paddy Power plc to create Paddy Power Betfair. He was chairman of
Moneysupermarket.com Moneysupermarket.com Group PLC is a British price comparison website-based business specialising in financial services. The website enables consumers to compare prices on a range of products, including energy, car insurance, home insurance, tr ...
plc between 2007 when he led the floatation until April 2014. He chaired Towry, the wealth advisory business between 2012 and 2014 and was a non-executive director of
Numis Numis is an independent institutional stockbroker and corporate advisor with its main headquarters in the City of London. By the autumn of 2017, the firm had 195 stock market clients, and a February 2018 report by Adviser Rankings Ltd found that ...
plc, the stockbroking and investment banking business based in the city from 2008. He was chairman of Numis from 2014-17. In 2005 he became Chairman of
SSL International SSL International plc was a British manufacturer of healthcare products. Its best known brands were Durex and Scholl; other significant brands were Sauber and Mister Baby. The company's name was an abbreviation of ''Seton Scholl London Internati ...
plc, the consumer healthcare group, whose major brands included Durex and Scholl, sold in over 50 countries. In 2010 he negotiated the sale of SSL to
Reckitt Benckiser Reckitt Benckiser Group plc, trading as Reckitt, is a British multinational consumer goods company headquartered in Slough, England. It is a producer of health, hygiene and nutrition products. The company was formed in March 1999 by the merg ...
for £2.5 billion, a gain of 400% on the share price 5 years previously. He was Chairman of Action on Hearing Loss between 2007 and 2013 (formerly known as the Royal National Institute of the Deaf), the UK’s largest charity for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. He is Chairman of the Hertfordshire Community Foundation and has been a trustee since 2010. He was chairman of St Albans Cathedral Music Trust 2010-16. He Chairs the St Albans Cathedral Appeal, "Alban Britain's First Saint". He was High Sheriff of Hertfordshire for 2010/11 and served on the Council of the Shrieval Association between 2008 and 2012.
David Freud David Anthony Freud, Baron Freud, (born 24 June 1950) is a British politician, life peer, and former investment banker who served as Minister for Welfare Reform from 2010 to 2016. Before he joined the Conservative Party, he was vice-chairman o ...
described him in his book "Freud in the City" as "immensely approachable, a short and jovial figure, full of impromptu quips relayed to the accompaniment of short, barks of laughter". He had an executive career which covered many years as a Finance Director (he was one of the longest serving members of the 100 Group of FTSE Finance Directors) prior to a controversial spell as Chief Executive of Railtrack, the infrastructure is part of the Tory Government’s Railway privatisation.


Early career

Corbett attended
Tonbridge School (God Giveth the Increase) , established = , closed = , type = Public schoolIndependent day and boarding , religion = , president = , head_label ...
, before studying history at
Cambridge University , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...
, where he was a foundation scholar. After this, he attended
London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
and
Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
business school A business school is a university-level institution that confers degrees in business administration or management. A business school may also be referred to as school of management, management school, school of business administration, o ...
s before joining
Boston Consulting Group Boston Consulting Group, Inc. (BCG) is an American global management consulting firm founded in 1963 and headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. It is one of the Big Three (or MBB, the world’s three largest management consulting firms by rev ...
, which advises on corporate strategy, in the mid-70s. In 1982, he joined electrical retailer Dixons, where he became group Financial Controller and
Corporate Finance Corporate finance is the area of finance that deals with the sources of funding, the capital structure of corporations, the actions that managers take to increase the Value investing, value of the firm to the shareholders, and the tools and anal ...
Director. He left after five years to be Group Finance Director at international building materials firm Redland. In 1993, he became Group Finance Director of Grand Metropolitan, the food and drink giant. When "Grand Met" merged with
Guinness Guinness () is an Irish dry stout that originated in the brewery of Arthur Guinness at St. James's Gate, Dublin, Ireland, in 1759. It is one of the most successful alcohol brands worldwide, brewed in almost 50 countries, and available in ove ...
to form
Diageo Diageo plc () is a Multinational corporation, multinational alcoholic beverage company, with its headquarters in London, England. It operates from 132 sites around the world. It was the world's largest distiller before being overtaken by Kweich ...
, in summer 1997 he left and was appointed Chief Executive of
Railtrack Railtrack was a group of companies that owned the track, signalling, tunnels, bridges, level crossings and all but a handful of the stations of the British railway system from 1994 until 2002. It was created as part of the privatisation of ...
, which he left in November 2000.


Railtrack

Railtrack Railtrack was a group of companies that owned the track, signalling, tunnels, bridges, level crossings and all but a handful of the stations of the British railway system from 1994 until 2002. It was created as part of the privatisation of ...
was the most controversial of the Conservative government privatisations. The railway was dismembered into over 100 different pieces of which by far the largest was Railtrack which owned and operated the infrastructure. In September 1997, three weeks after his appointment, a First Great Western express train from
Swansea Swansea (; cy, Abertawe ) is a coastal city and the second-largest city of Wales. It forms a principal area, officially known as the City and County of Swansea ( cy, links=no, Dinas a Sir Abertawe). The city is the twenty-fifth largest in ...
collided with a freight train at Southall, West London, killing seven passengers. Twenty-seven months later, in October 1999, another
Intercity train Inter-city rail services are express passenger train services that run services that connect cities over longer distances than commuter or regional trains. There is no precise definition of inter-city rail; its meaning may vary from country ...
collided with a commuter train near
Paddington Paddington is an area within the City of Westminster, in Central London. First a medieval parish then a metropolitan borough, it was integrated with Westminster and Greater London in 1965. Three important landmarks of the district are Paddi ...
, killing 31 people. It was Britain's worst rail disaster in a decade. Railtrack came under intense scrutiny from the regulator, Tom Winsor, who claimed Railtrack was pursuing a deliberate "culture of defiance" due to disagreements over failed punctuality improvement targets. Corbett, who became the mouthpiece of the privatised railway, was frequently on TV and Radio defending his company. A year before the crash, he stated that Paddington was the "best protected" station in the UK; prompting Lord Cullen - head of the public enquiry into the crash - to comment that Corbett's statement was "not only ill-considered, but ... demonstrated either a degree of complacency on the part of senior management or a desire to encourage undeserved confidence in what Railtrack had actually achieved". A year after the Paddington crash, in October 2000, a train from
London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
to
Leeds Leeds () is a city and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds district in West Yorkshire, England. It is built around the River Aire and is in the eastern foothills of the Pennines. It is also the third-largest settlement (by populati ...
derailed at Hatfield, resulting in four deaths. Corbett's resignation was initially rejected by the Railtrack board. Later on the same day, on the BBC news, Corbett identified the Railways problem as its fragmentation. The railway had been "ripped apart by privatisation". He urged the Government and regulators to "think the unthinkable". He eventually left with a compensation package estimated to be worth £1.3m in total (of which £900,000 was his accrued pension benefit). Corbett was personified on the London stage in David Hare's "
The Permanent Way ''The Permanent Way'' is a play by David Hare first performed in 2003. In 1991 the British government decided to privatise the country's railways. David Hare recounts the development through the first-hand accounts of those most intimately ...
" and in the television film "Derailed". These dramatisations showed the private tension beneath the public face and noted that Corbett had his own share of personal tragedy. His father was killed at an early age by a drunk driver in a car accident. Corbett is married to an artist. Together they have four children, and he himself is one of five brothers.


After Railtrack

In March 2001, he was back at the helm of another major company,
Woolworths Woolworth, Woolworth's, or Woolworths may refer to: Businesses * F. W. Woolworth Company, the original US-based chain of "five and dime" (5¢ and 10¢) stores * Woolworths Group (United Kingdom), former operator of the Woolworths chain of shops ...
, appointed to oversee the demerger of Woolworths Group from Kingfisher. Once the demerger was completed in August 2001, he remained on the board as Chairman until 2007. In October 2003, he was appointed non-executive chairman of Health Club Holdings, the Holmes Place fitness clubs business, which he stepped down from the end of 2005 following his appointment as Chairman of soft drinks company
Britvic Britvic plc is a British producer of soft drinks based in Hemel Hempstead, England. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index. It produces soft drinks under its own name, and several other brands. Hist ...
, to oversee its flotation in December 2005 on the
London Stock Exchange London Stock Exchange (LSE) is a stock exchange in the City of London, England, United Kingdom. , the total market value of all companies trading on LSE was £3.9 trillion. Its current premises are situated in Paternoster Square close to St Pau ...
. Since flotation Britvic has expanded into Ireland, France, the USA, Brazil and India. The market value is over three times that at flotation. He has also been a non-executive director of Burmah-Castrol plc and the
MEPC The Middle East Policy Council (MEPC) is a Washington, D.C.-based 501(c)3 non-profit organization that produces analysis and commentary on issues impacting U.S. national interests in the Middle East. It was founded in 1981 under the stated mission ...
property group. In July 2005, he was appointed as Chairman of
SSL International SSL International plc was a British manufacturer of healthcare products. Its best known brands were Durex and Scholl; other significant brands were Sauber and Mister Baby. The company's name was an abbreviation of ''Seton Scholl London Internati ...
, the company that manufactures and sells internationally
Durex Durex is a brand of condoms and personal lubricants owned by the British company Reckitt Benckiser. It was initially developed in London under the purview of the London Rubber Company and British Latex Products Ltd, where it was manufactured bet ...
contraceptives and Scholl footwear and foot-care products. In the five years 2005-2010, SSL's profits trebled as the business expanded into new countries. Between 2004 and 2010, he was a non-executive director of
Greencore Group plc Greencore Group plc is a food company in Ireland. It was established by the Irish government in 1991, when Irish Sugar was privatised, but today Greencore's products are mainly convenience foods, not only in Ireland but also in the United Kingd ...
, the Irish food company headquartered in
Dublin Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of th ...
. He was Chairman of the Governors of
Abbot's Hill School Abbot's Hill School is an independent day school for girls aged 4–16 years and a day nursery and pre-school for girls and boys from 6 months in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire in the United Kingdom. History The School celebrated its 100th A ...
between 1997 and 2002 and has been a governor of
Luton University The University of Bedfordshire is a public research university with campuses in Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire, England. The University has roots from 1882, however, it gained university status in 1993 as the University of Luton. The Univers ...
. In 2010 he served as High Sheriff of Hertfordshire In December 2014, it was announced that he will take over as Chairman of the
Marylebone Cricket Club Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) is a cricket club founded in 1787 and based since 1814 at Lord's Cricket Ground, which it owns, in St John's Wood, London. The club was formerly the governing body of cricket retaining considerable global influence ...
in September 2015. He also became a Deputy Lieutenant of Hertfordshire in 2015.


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Corbett, Gerald Michael Nolan 1951 births Alumni of London Business School Alumni of Pembroke College, Cambridge Boston Consulting Group people British businesspeople British public transport executives Burmah-Castrol Deputy Lieutenants of Hertfordshire Harvard Business School alumni High Sheriffs of Hertfordshire Living people People educated at Tonbridge School