"UK airport boss's ideas ready for take-off"

Sunday, February 9, 2003

Airport boss's ideas ready for take-off
United Kingdom - The Express On Sunday


MIKE CLASPER, the newly announced boss of airports group BAA, considers
himself to be that most handy of combinations in a chief executive: "Fresh
but knowledgeable".

This is just as well because Clasper takes the top job at the FTSE 100
airport operator at a tricky time. The world's aviation industry is only now
recovering from the events of September 11. Though BAA digested that
disaster better than most, we are now on the brink of war with all the
economic uncertainty that goes with it.

More specifically for BAA, Clasper will be implementing an investment
programme costing GBP8 billion over the next decade. If you think of it as a
landlord taking out a mortgage to pay for home improvements, the risk seems
huge. BAA's level of debt to equity will shoot from below 40 per cent to
well above 80 per cent during the programme.

But Clasper is anything but anxious about the prospect. Unlike a landlord,
he hasn't got to worry about tenants going elsewhere. Clasper knows the
airlines - the lifeblood of BAA's business - are not about to desert him.

A s the owner of Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted airports, Clasper controls
access to the jewel in the aviation crown, London.

Around GBP6.5 billion of the GBP8 billion spend is being swallowed up by the
highly controversial Terminal 5 at Heathrow, which will be British Airways'
new home. Nevertheless, Clasper is on course for a bit of a ding-dong with
the w orld's favourite airline about the rise in landing charges it will be
levelling to pay for all this. BAA is raising the cost of landing at
Heathrow by 40 per cent.

He points out that in the league table of landing costs, Heathrow is at 25,
below Paris and Amsterdam, while only Mumbai (Bombay) is cheaper than
Gatwick.

Conscious, however, that the nation's number two and three players are
budget airlines, Clasper agrees that pricing needs to be "more sensitive" as
it constitutes a higher proportion of the ticket cost. He points out,
however, that neither easyJet nor Ryanair are after Heathrow slots and the
pricing at BAA's other airports, including Gatwick and Stansted, is "in line
with inflation".

The only thing that seems to really concern the otherwise unflappable
Clasper is his tussle with the Civil A viation Authority about how far BAA
can fund security improvements from its commercial activities. He asks: "Why
should the regulator not support this desire, why should it reward penny
pinching? It's perverse and it's wrong."

It is obvious why Clasper ticks the "knowledgeable" box in his
selfassessment - after all, he spent 18 months as deputy to the retiring
Mike Hodgkinson. But what of his "fresh" thinking? He says: "I'm ideally
prepared for this after 23 years in consumer goods, running a world-class
operation at Procter&Gamble."

What this means is that while there will be no wild change in strategic
direction, he is bringing a consumer's eye to the job. "I was trained to see
Ariel or Fairy Liquid in the eyes of the user and I will be seeing airports
in the eyes of the passenger."

What he also brings is a handy gong from Buckingham Palace with which to
appease the environmental lobby - a CBE earned in 1995 for services to the
environment.

So what does this corporate green make of being responsible for our noisy,
polluting airports? First, he dismisses the notion of aviation as a "big
dirty industry". He believes environmentalism is less about wielding a veto
and more about moving to sustainability.

HE DRAWS up a complex list of benefits and costs. This boils down to
business and leisure travel to sustain the economy and enrich our lives on
the one hand, while on the other are C02 emissions and noise.

Clasper looks to a future where the costs are mitigated. To a world with
watertight emissions trading agreements that would see the aviation industry
pay towards the closure of, say, dirty power stations in Russia.

Whether any of this will convince the environmental activists remains to be
seen. Clasper says all three London airports are at full stretch during peak
hours, with Heathrow seeing up to 90 take-offs or landings an hour, Gatwick
more than 50 and Stansted more than 40.

He is pleased at being allowed to grow passenger numbers without the lengthy
planning process that mired Terminal 5.

This will see numbers grow at Stansted from 15million to 25million and at
Gatwick from 30million to 40million.

At P&G, Clasper reckons he took 1,000 flights to 100 airports. Now he's at
BAA "the job's all on the ground", he laughs.

Just as well, then, that his favourite airport is Heathrow.

Track record 1953: Clasper is born in Sunderland, the son of a building
merchant.

1971: Wins a place at Cambridge.

Takes a double first in engineering.

1974: Joins British Rail as a graduate trainee. Involved in signalling and
telecommunications.

1978: Moves to Procter & Gamble, again as a graduate trainee.

1991: Made P&G's vice-president and managing director in UK and Eire.

1995: Awarded CBE for services to the environment.

1999: Becomes president of P&G's global homecare division in Brussels.

2001: Deputy chief executive at BAA.

2003: Gets the top job at the FTSE 100 international airports business.


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