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May 17, 2006
Back The Tough Guys
We find John Moulton's take on what makes good CEO material a refreshing change to what the b-schools are telling us. Citing evidence from the States, he says that the types that build large cap tech companies are "tough" and are not necessarily consensus building leader types. Therefore, he concludes "unreasonable and bright people" are the ones that investors should be backing. We've got the quote below.
It's worth remembering that in the US there are about a dozen CEOs running IT companies whose net worth exceed the market caps of Sage, the largest IT company in the UK, they don't get there by mistakes these guys are tough, we don't have them in the UK, we have a lot of guys who are good at running things efficiently but we really don't see as we poke around UK IT CEOs those who are competent at all aspects. We tend to have salesmen or accountants, we have very few from a technical back ground who are able to make the big creative leaps.The good ones are not consensus people, think of the guys who made a bundle in the States such as Bill Gates and Larry Ellison, they're not noted for their warm friendly approach to decision taking, they are people of vigorous opinions, not always right but they force them through, their big drivers, so actually the evidence of the US says, the guys who are fairly unreasonable and pretty bright are the people we should be backing in this industry. There are very few excellent CEOs in the UK, very few. Only a couple of names come up regularly, they are very thin on the ground, we have a lot of competent people but we haven't got very many serious Zars.
Moulton is the managing partner at Alchemy Partners (a private equity firm) and he's written his thoughts on US versus Euro CEO in a newsletter from corporate finance boutique, ICON, which is specialized dealbrokering for tech firms.
Read - John Molton Insights On How to Spot A Failing CEO And Private Equity (ICON 66 April Issue)
Posted on May 17, 2006 09:24 AM | Posted to entrepreneurship | Permalink
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