I am proud of the fact that the U.K. is an open trading country. I welcome inward investment such as that of Nissan, and the takeover of struggling British companies by foreign companies who turn them around, as in the case of Jaguar Land Rover. I also accept that job losses sometimes have to occur to restore failing companies to health.
If ailing British companies such as Rolls-Royce, Land Rover, British Airways and Cadbury can be turned around, there is still hope for the BBC.
In business, sometimes you have to change the CEO in order to change the direction of the company.
We took a plant that was being closed by a big company thinking there was no good use for it, and we came in with a different perspective. We bought some used equipment, as simple as we could.
In the fall of the year 2000, there just happened to be a decision point when they asked me to become Chief Executive Officer of the company. It was a time when, as you remember, we were starting to have some real problems in the California energy markets.
I talked about 12 to 18 months, and that's about reaffirming our foundation for sustained growth: getting the discipline back, getting the basics right, getting the customer focus back... so by the end of next year, I hope most of that's in place.
You can't delegate turning a company around.
I have had the pleasure of knowing Mitt Romney for several years now. There's so much to appreciate about him. He fixes things. He's results-driven. He's taken broken companies and made them successful.
I turned Compaq from a small company with troubles into a computer powerhouse. We can do the same at Intershop.
