Talking transport with Brian Souter

Jan 18 2011 by Gordon Bannerman, Perthshire Advertiser Tuesday

BRIAN SOUTER really is a man in a hurry.

Even now, 30 years after a modest family enterprise in Perth blossomed into a corporate giant with FTSE 100 status and 35,000 employees on both sides of the Atlantic, the son of a Letham bus driver is showing no sign of taking the foot off the accelerator.

Over lunch at 63 Tay Street, having arrived hot-foot from a gathering of big hitters in the UK transport industry in London, he’d nipped back down memory lane to review an extraordinary journey embarked upon with his sister Ann Gloag and other members of the family in 1980.

But he was equally enthused dealing with the here and now – and a rack of future plans to maintain the impetus of a company firmly rooted in the Fair City, where a lean 40-strong head office staff liaise with a range of satellite businesses at home and abroad.

The extraordinary tale of how Stagecoach took to the road with an overnight service from Dundee to London, survived the notorious “bus wars”, and embarked on voracious expansion at home and abroad to emerge as a key player in 21st Century transport policy, has become enshrined in business lore.

But, at 56, the father-of-four isn’t for slowing down.

Much of the chat centres on an ambitious strategy for rolling-out the popular megabus.com concept in the USA, where car has been king for more than a century.

But the interview encompasses everything from a pat on the back to Perth staff who have kept the wheels going through the most sustained winter weather in Souter’s lifetime, to the banking crisis, predictions of a healthy future for the UK rail industry, the pressing need for government to unshackle family enterprises from red tape and encourage growth with timely tax breaks, to the lure of the odd sunshine break in Dubai.

Stagecoach – a “management meritocracy” – won’t pass down the generations but chief executive Souter has no plans to back-off from driving the business forward.

“I’m not going to go on, and on and on but I have no fixed date in mind for retiral. They always say ‘find something you enjoy that someone will pay you to do.’ I guess I’m a good example of that,” he observed.

“I don’t find work stressful, never have. If you’re are in command of your brief you shouldn’t be stressed out by work.

“I have always enjoyed work, whether it was picking berries or being a bus conductor.”

While he enjoys ‘Dragon’s Den’ and knocked back an approach from ‘Back to the Floor’, he doesn’t hanker after the profile of a Lord Sugar, Duncan Bannatyne, or close business colleague Richard Branson.

“I’ve never left the shop floor so it’s not a question of going back. All our management trainees can drive a bus,” he said.

“’Never ask someone to do a job you wouldn’t do yourself’ is a fundamental principle of management. Otherwise you don’t have any credibility with your staff.

“I love watching these programmes and they are great fun. But it’s not for me. I prefer dealing with real business issues and real people.

“Stagecoach started 30 years ago with family money and this isn’t the first time we have experienced a recession or had liquidity problems. But it is the first-time the banks have gone bankrupt.

“I’m not so much bothered about bankers being punished as getting things sorted out for the future. But clearly the bankers couldn’t read their own balance sheets!

“The government should be offering incentives to family businesses and entrepreneurs. If corporations can get tax breaks, why not parents supporting their sons and daughters in business?

“It is time for government to think out of the box. But businesses can thrive in a recession and if you have an idea that is good enough you will find backing, whether it is from a bank, a private equity firm or a business angel.”

He may have been there, done it and got the t-shirt but Souter takes quiet satisfaction from the initial success of the megabus concept in the States, acknowledging that for Dundee to Glasgow, read New York to Boston.

“From a cold start we have already generated 100 million dollars in sales,” he declared.

“Americans just love the double deckers. They are totally new to them. The average fare for a 300-mile trip is 18 dollars.

“They are coming out of a really hard recession and it is challenging to get them to park the car and take the bus. But we are breaking through, especially with women and a younger age group.

“It’s an exciting time for public transport in America. We’re growing the business from nothing and it’s very like Stagecoach when we were pioneers here in the ‘80s.”

On the home front Stagecoach this month announced a massive investment in new buses, being built in Falkirk, and the popular number seven Perth-Scone route is in line for hybrid buses further down the line as Stagecoach continues to enhance their green credentials.

And with a quick glance at his £4 Saltire watch “from the Barras” – Souter wears his political allegiances on his wrist – the multi-millionaire one-time bus conductor and accountant drains his cup of tea and bows out.

It may be Friday afternoon but there’s no clocking-off early for this boss.