Learn the Lesson: Canary Wharf Chairman Nigel Wilson

0:00A CNBC original podcast. We all have to make big decisions in our lives. Decisions that define and influence our professional and personal journeys. If you reflect on them, some are good and some I'm sure you'll definitely regret. In my nearly three decades as a financial journalist, I've interviewed literally thousands of CEOs, politicians and market voices, and they all had to make decisions to get to where they are today. In this podcast, I hear about those choices as well as the moments of doubt, risk and conviction that impacted our guests' journeys and the people they lead. This is Executive Decisions with me, Steve Sedgwick.

0:43In this episode, I speak to Sir Nigel Wilson. The world should be a wonderful place because there's tons of opportunities to do great things out there. We're just not doing enough of those great things right now. But the opportunity sets there to do it and really make a difference. and we can. Nigel was the CEO of UK financial services giant at Eaglen General for more than 10 years before becoming chairman of the Canary Wharf Group in 2024. But his journey to becoming one of the UK's most successful business leaders had humble beginnings on a council estate in the northeast of England. Getting a place to study at a prestigious American university helped change that course.

1:21When the Kennedy Scholarship came through, my dad went over to the pub with me and said, I just want to tell you all, well, my son has just got into the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. And the people in the pub went, well, there's a tech at Darlington. He tells me it was his intellectual curiosity, a drive to tackle complex industry challenges that led him from one company to the next. Each move shaped his philosophy on leadership. One of the weaknesses, and I still think it's a weakness in pretty much every business, and certainly every business I've worked for, is people are really good at writing lessons learned reports they're not so good at learning the lessons.

1:57These are Sir Nigel Wilson's Executive Decisions.

2:06I have the bits and pieces. Born in Norwich, moved up to Darlington, lived on a council estate, big loving family with your mother, your father, your grandmother, big influences on you. But you tell me a little bit more about where Nigel Wilson comes from. Yeah, I grew up on a, I was very lucky because I grew up on a modern council estate where modern schools had been built. And so we had young teachers who were totally enthusiastic and enjoyed the intellectual curiosity I had. So they were quite tolerant of some of my idiosyncrasies, which stayed with me till today. But they gave me a lot of good advice and taught me incredibly well in all parts of life, you know, sporting-wise, academic-wise, and real values from a society point of view.

2:55I felt very privileged to have that. And then I went to the local grammar school, which was exactly the same, a brand new grammar school with amazing young teachers who were totally enthusiastic. And, you know, till his dying day, my history teacher still tells funny stories about me being in class when I was asking, you know, questions and having contrarian views about stuff. So I had an intellectual curiosity, which was through my family, my wider family, because I had lots of people looking after me when I grew up because I was the first child, first grandchild, first great-grandchild, and so lots of people gave me care and attention and indulged me to a certain extent.

3:38How important was a loving, big family in evolving who you became? It still is today. I still have a lot of responsibility as the person who looks after the whole of the family, tries to make sure everyone's good, not just mentally and physically, but financially as well. And I learned a lot from my parents, grandparents and great-grandparents about the need to do that and keep the family together and keep everyone happy and jolly and trying to solve family problems, switch. It can be very time consuming and illogical and irrational and immotive and all of those things. But it's really interesting and I'm going to draw very heavily on a speech that was made about you at Newcastle University last year because there's some amazing stuff and your nan's advice was to be kind, optimistic and forgiving as well.

4:33I think that's brilliant advice for a start but A is that accurate, B if it is accurate, how much has that formed the basis of some of the ways you've made decisions over your life? No, I think the first two are absolutely accurate. I found the forgiving bit more difficult when I was younger. But it is a very, as you get older, you realize that's the wisdom that you get from age. And people have to learn to be forgiving and tolerant. And that's probably what's lacking in society at the moment. And if things go wrong, be forgiving about it. You know, don't shout and rage at people because when things do go wrong people themselves often feel terrible uh about them and picking up management teams when things go wrong has to be one of the key things you do and shouting and yelling at them isn't the solution were you a shouter and yell i think when i was a young man for instance well for a start i was a i was a trader so i was shouting and yelling a lot but i i i think my colleagues might disagree but i think i've mellowed a lot over the last couple of years.

5:35But have you? I've never been a shouter, you know, even when I captained football. Even when you weren't forgiving? Yeah, even when I wasn't forgiving. I've never been much of a shouter. Even on the football pitch, you know, when I was captain of a few of the teams I played for, it was the, you know, real role to really encourage people all of the time. And some people think shouting has a big impact. And, you know, I'm a great believer as well in the theatre of management. But actually shouting, you know, rarely works. and it's not a tool that I consider as being part of my toolbox to achieve good outcomes.

6:07On a soccer pitch, you were called small, fast and a little cocky. Yeah. Not good enough to be a Newcastle number nine, but still pretty good as well. Has that been a little bit of who Nigel Wilson is off the pitch throughout life? Yeah, to a certain extent. I got lucky and unlucky in a sense, is that when all the scouts were watching me, when I was 16 and 17, I was 5 '1 tall and weighed about five and a half, six stone and really just got kicked every game. And I remember I was playing semi-pro football up in the northeast and after about 10 or 15 minutes, I went over to the referee. At the time, I had long curly hair and I was wearing a pair of gloves.

6:48So it was tiny and I went, ref, ref, ref. Somebody's savage kick, kick, kick and foul on me. Somebody spat at me and somebody's punched me in the nuts, to be honest. And I said, ref, you've got to protect me. He said, son, it's a man's game. Get on with it. And at the end of the game, a couple of the old pros came over to me and said, look, this is going to happen to you the rest of your life every week. They're just going to kick and kick and kick because they hate the fact that you're quick and they can't tackle you and you whiz by. And they're just going to foul you all the time. So you're a clever lad.

7:21Go to university. But is that a metaphor for life and kind of toughened you up a little bit in business, the way you were treated on a soccer pitch? Yeah. I learned to be tough and then I grew 10 inches. And so when football clubs came and had a look at me again, by that time I'd gone. I'd moved into academia by that time and I really wanted to be a very successful academic. And I realized that lots of things had a different lifestyle and lots of the people who had been amazing at 14, 15, 16 didn't make it as professional players and very few got through to doing it. So even if it's your dream, it doesn't naturally happen.

8:00And the probability of success in academia was way higher than in for me. I say all the time, to be pretty good at sport is a curse. Not very good, but pretty good. The thing is, I looked at it the other way around. It's actually, I think of myself as lucky, the fact that actually I didn't go and sign up for a football club and spend year after year after year trying to get through. And then not make it at 80. Not make it at something else. And I want to try and be the best version that I can. And the same for football running when I was young. I tried the best I could, but I just wasn't quite good enough.

8:33And I realized... You still have that in you as a businessman. I mean, look, you have been a stunningly successful businessman. And we'll talk through that. But has that guided how you've made decisions in your life? The fact that you really want to knuckle down and be the absolute best you can? Yes. Yeah. I want to be the best chief executive I can be. And now I want to be the CFO, then best chief executive. of now the best chairman, I can possibly be. Can you be too driven? I think so at times I can be too driven. And I set standards for other people, which I have in the past set excessively high standards, I think.

9:09In retrospect, at the time, I probably wasn't as perceptive as I am now. And I got better at that as I got older. You've already referred to the move into academia a couple of times. And I want to explore that because that was probably your first big early decision, not sport, not business to start off with, but academia as well. So a kid who grew up in Darlington area, County Durham, part of the world as well, going to university, but then going on to MIT as well. That raised a few feathers, didn't it? That decision, this fact that you decided to go overseas. Yeah, it was very funny. when the Kennedy scholarship came through, my dad went over to the pub with me and said, I just want to tell you all, my son has just got into the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

9:56And the people in the pub went, well, there's a tech at Darlington. Why is he not going to Darlington? Where is Massachusetts? I'm sure Darlington tech is amazing, but. And so I said, dad, just calm down. Nobody's going to be terribly interested about that. Just leave it. But for me and my friends and whatever, it was hugely exciting to get to go on a Kennedy scholarship and a double Kennedy scholarship. So what was this, the mid-70s? Yes. So even then, why did you want to go to MIT and you said you got the scholarship? Yeah, that goes back to the importance of mentors who open doors for you in your life.

10:33And I really thought very hard about who you get advice from and who are your mentors through life. And even to this day, I have a few people who are still mentors of mine because they know me very well and I can bounce ideas off them. and the panel on the Kennedy scholarship were also really enthused about me going to MIT and this sort of quirky guy from the northeast who turned up in a park and whatever for the interview. They just thought it was terrific. Did you feel overwhelmed or did you feel it was the right place for you? Oh, the right place, yeah. I never feel overwhelmed. I am what I am and I never get nervous.

11:10That's why I took penalties all the time. I was never the best penalty taker in training, but I only missed three in my life. It's one of those traits, and we've done a lot of these interviews now, where the CEO we're speaking to loves making decisions. I mean, it's the root of this program. That's why we're speaking to so many successful CEOs. You have to like making decisions, being the last woman or the last man standing as well. You like that. And good decisions. And decisions that have been through a process which builds teamwork and constructive collaboration and all the things that I value as a person that people feel as though we've done the right thing.

11:48And if it goes wrong, and lots of things go wrong, you recognize that it's not a fault. It's a learning experience that when things go wrong. And one of the weaknesses, and I still think it's a weakness in pretty much every business and certainly every business I've worked for, is people are really good at writing lessons learned reports. They're not so good at learning the lessons. It's a vast amount of literature out there about the importance of making mistakes. Yes. Do you feel that, A, companies are forgiving enough when you make the wrong decision or actually kind of they're too quick to close the book on you or just say, no, you're the wrong person for the job?

12:28And also, do you learn from those decisions? Yeah, there's just some historical context around this. You know, I was lucky again to a certain extent is that two really big decisions that were made. I was on the exec but not the boards. I was neither CEO or CFO. When I was at Dixon's, we were going to buy Best Buy. We ended up buying Silo, which was the last firm that was on the list. Terrible acquisition and should never have happened. So the strategy was right. The execution was really poor. And people didn't really step up to the fact that actually that was a really poor decision. We should learn from that.

13:03And when the IPO at GPA didn't go ahead, I wrote a really good board paper saying what I thought we needed to do, which in hindsight was the right thing. however I didn't influence the influentials on the board ahead of it I was so proud of the document I'd written that I got outmaneuvered by the chairman at the meeting that decided what steps we should take and again that's when I really realized that you need collaboration at every level and that you can understand things very quickly but other people don't necessarily understand things as quickly so you can have the smartest idea you can make the best decision but unless you build a consensus yeah and collaborate with other people you're not going to get it through that's really important to do that and it works on the negative side as well is that you you don't want to be involved in decisions that you think are bad and and i've tended to step away from those sorts of situations which doesn't always enhance your career but it does keep you intellectually honest

14:09Let's go back before we go forward, because you mentioned Dixons. I want to go just back before that. So you've gone to MIT. You're loving it. How long was it that you wanted to be an academic before you made what was perhaps one of your best decisions and you got out of academia? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I dreamt of being what I'd become, which is, you know, at MIT. And I really enjoyed working with Bob Schiller. Wow. Yeah. And I taught with him and did research with him. You're not going to take credit for the index? No, no, no. I did a lot of the work. Did you now? That's interesting. I realized very quickly one of us was going to get the Nobel Prize for economics and one of us wasn't.

14:51Bob Schiller's name will go down as the winner of that. Yeah, well, he deserved it. But I had a weekend away with my friends from Harvard. And we'd gone skiing. I'd never been skiing in my life. My wife and I were super excited. and the guys from Harvard wouldn't go out until they'd finished their homework. And I was like, come on, guys. And in the end, I walked over. And for somebody who was as mathematically inclined as I was, this was relatively straightforward. So I did it very quickly for them. And they went, wow, that's amazing. Sounds like a good wheel hunting moment. It was, it was really.

15:23Because they said, why don't you go to Goldman Sachs or McKinsey or somebody like that? And I said, never heard of them. What do they do? So I went away and did some analysis on this and figured that actually McKinsey would be a good place for me to go and thought a lot about it, talked to some of my friends and went and interviewed for McKinsey in America. They offered me a job in America, but I'd put the wrong tick in the box. I meant to tick the UK box. So I had to go through the process twice. Was it, well, I really believe now that this is the way forward for me or were you just ambivalent about it?

15:56No, because I was thinking of the research I was doing with Bob, but I really didn't have enough life experience. And I thought, this is like a free option. I'll go and work for McKinsey for three or four years, maximize my knowledge. And then if I need to go back into academia or if I'm really good at it, I can have a business career and then go back to university maybe when I'm 15. That's the one. That's your best decision. That's the best decision I ever made. And what I really like about it, and resonates with me in my own modest career, when I first became a trader and also when I first became a journalist 11 years later, Both of those times, I gave myself the optionality to go back to university first time or go back to trading the second time if either of those scenarios hadn't worked.

16:36And I think that's really important for everyone listening and watching. Give yourself options. Don't tie yourself down to one route. And that's what a good decision does, isn't it? It does, yeah. And it builds confidence in your decision making as well. The fact that I was going to be paid five or six times as much at McKinsey. So I went back to talk to my wife at the time. And I said, you know, I've been offered this job at McKinsey. It's going to pay five or six times as much as I'm getting paid as an academic. What do you think I should do? And she went. I love you as an academic, honey, but we could have a better life as well.

17:07We can have a life. We can, you know, we can have children. As you know, I have five beautiful daughters. We could live in a really nice detached house in London and be financially secure, not just for me, but for the rest of my family, for the rest of my life. So one thing I've noticed, I was amazed when I was doing my research that you were at McKinsey in 82, Dixon's in 86, Stanhope in 88. What have I got? Guinness Pete Aviation 92, Waste Management International, Viridian, UBM as well. I couldn't believe how many jobs you'd had. Holford's capital, legal in general. Yeah, a lot. What were you doing?

17:42Because were you just sounding out different places, seeing how you feel? Or were you unsettled? No, no, it was back to being intellectually curious about everything. I wanted to do the best job I could possibly do and try and solve what was the industry problem that we were in and go to an industry that was really interesting. When I joined Dixon's, I wanted toughening up commercially, and they made me responsible for the Far East buying operation and having to deal with the likes of Alan Sugar. Not just the deep end, the very deep end. And it toughened me up commercially, which I felt having had a sort of softish career at McKinsey.

18:18Because Dixon's and Amstrad had a bit of a relationship in those days. Yeah, Alan wasn't the easiest guy to deal with. And as you can still see, even today, you know, brilliant entrepreneur and was ahead of his time and everything else. But it was good to learn about what was happening in the Far East and actually going to Taiwan and Korea and Japan and Hong Kong and meeting people. and doing face-to-face tough negotiations with people and then having support from Stanley and Mark back at Dixon's. So did you always have then a vision that you would end up somewhere to make an impression or actually were you hoping to make an impression at those individual jobs?

18:58I was the best version I could possibly be myself in all of those jobs, worked really, really hard at everything. And I felt when I became chief executive of Legal & General, this was my big opportunity to use all the learning I'd got from all of the years to do a really really fantastic it's almost Churchillian Nigel Churchill says and look there are a lot of books about him being a study in failure before 1939 1940 but what he says is his entire life up till that moment 1940 was preparing himself for the key role of his life I'm not comparing you necessarily to Churchill but it's almost like all those roles up to that point prepared you for the key role where you're going to make the biggest impact.

19:35Yes. Yeah. And I thought like that. And it gave me the optionality all the time of going back into academia if I wanted to. So if I got fatigued about doing... You always felt there was a put option there. There was always a put option there. There really is. And today with my most recent appointment, you can see that's back into semi-academic life. So you joined Legal & General. You became the CFO. I joined the CFO with the intention of becoming the CEO. Right. Right. And tell me why you stayed there as long as you did, given the fact that up until that point, you had moved around every few years.

20:09The job itself, you know, a global job, a complicated job. You know, when I first agreed to join the share price, it was about 20p and there was a lot that needed changing. And I was given a great platform to do all of that and to, you know, how do you expand in Japan? How do you expand in America? How do you build market leading positions across the UK? and recruiting the team and building the team was a multi-year plan. And, you know, we did incredibly well. I probably extended it by a couple of years because of COVID, to be honest, is that I could have left a couple of years early, but COVID meant I didn't have to travel as much and I felt I was still making a big contribution to it.

20:55But you still could have made a big contribution to this day, couldn't you? I could, but I wanted to move on at that point is that I decided I wanted to be an executive chairman. And my advice again, but go back to my non-executive chairman. My advice from my mentor group was hurry up because there's a very big birthday not far away for you. And you better get one of those jobs before that big birthday comes around. because you'll find it as a first-time non-executive chairman. I did some of it on a much more minor scale. It would have been a lower probability of getting that. I still had the option of going back into academic life, but I could do both.

21:36I could do all the things I was really interested in in the new life that I wanted to lead and going back to my earlier ambitions about athletics, etc., etc. I couldn't do that while I was working flat out for League of the General. But for someone who is so hands-on and has so many strong ideas and likes making decisions, we've established it from the moment you're a kid taking the penalties in the football team as well, this was your toughest personal decision, full stop, to give up being that CEO. And there'll be a lot of CEOs watching this as well who are thinking about their timing in life.

22:10All of us who are of a certain age thinking about our timing. That was really, really tough. It was really tough, but I got good advice from mentors and coaches around it. I thought a lot about it myself. I had long discussions with the chairman, John Kingman, and the board about it. And I was happy with the decision. You seemed happy there. I mean, I interviewed you for a long time there. You seemed energized. And you can clearly see people who feel they made the right decisions in their career. They are excited. They have it in their eyes. They smile in their eyes. And I think every time I interviewed you, you looked like you were enjoying it.

22:45Well, I think things I've applied myself to in my life, I feel as though I've pretty much delivered lots of success as a consequence. And I wake up happy. I'm one of these people who wake up happy, and I'm happy pretty much all of the time. And the world should be a wonderful place because there's tons of opportunities to do great things out there. We're just not doing enough of those great things right now. But the opportunity sets there to do it and really make a difference, and we can. You've tried to make a difference and had a degree of success as well, but not many of us can consult Isaiah Berlin about this.

23:21Political theorists. And so let me just quote it, and I believe this is true. You talked about the search for the truth for the common good as well. And I really believe this because in many of our interviews over the years, it's come across that you really want to improve the common good via your position and via legal in general. It was a huge pension position, what have you. The key is the effort to illuminate the facts of the problem to unlock its resolution for the benefit of many. Has that been one of the guiding principles of your career? For my whole life, yes. For your whole life? Yeah.

23:54The common good? Yeah, because I was chairman of the village at the youth club when I was 12 and 13. You were chairman at 12 and 13. And I was the representative on the village committee when I was 12 and 13 for youth in the village. And, you know, the average age was about 70 on this committee. And you were going toe-to-toe with the village grandees of 70. They loved it. And I played badminton. I entered the mixed doubles badminton with a pensioner when I was 30. We got the final. We got beats. But it was just, it was, you know, how do you create an environment that's the best it can be? And how do you collaborate together to do that?

24:32And I felt even though I was very young. And I used to go knock on door and canvas for the Labour Party. I was very young at the time. And people would open the door and this midget stood there asking them questions about things. I want to ask you one more question about your hardest business decision because you mentioned your biggest personal tough decision was stepping down. And this has come up, I know part of your answer, because it's come up with other CEOs I've spoken to, the pain for you in having to make harsh business decisions that are best for the company, best for shareholders, but are painful for individuals.

25:07Yeah, I think it's when you've got to lay off a lot of people. And we lived through the tech boom. It's called a tech boom in 2000, 2001, 2002 at UBM. And we had some businesses, one in particular, which had$250 million revenue, made£124 million to£25 million of profit one year. And just the revenue collapsed the next year because digital came over. They took all the advertising revenue away, which you know about. we had to get rid of thousands of people over a period of time many of whom had been hugely committed to the brand to their their skills and whatever and it was the right decision to do because we had no alternative and we but we did make the decision but you felt horrible you know it's the only time i felt horrible going to work it's just knowing that there was names that had been drawn up over the weekend and that people would be like let go and there wasn't an alternative because we had to build another growth business around it.