As Barclays CEO John Varley takes the homelessness baton from HSBC co-head of CIBM John Studzinski, they talk to Karina Robinson about charity work and corporate social responsibility.
Surely, the ultimate consigliere (counsellor) would not need to be defended from awkward questions? Yet Barclays Bank CEO John Varley rushes to stop John Studzinski from having to answer a query on whether he had been “kicked upstairs” at HSBC.
The question was framed as it would be if interviewing UK prime minister Tony Blair – one would have to ask him whether he was planning to resign, even if the interview was about, say, education reform. Picking up on this and following on from Mr Varley’s heated defence of him, Mr Studzinski seamlessly shifts the answer into one about government and how helpful it had been with the issues that preoccupied him as chairman of Business Action on Homelessness (BAOH), a role that Mr Varley has just taken over.
BAOH aims to help its homeless ‘clients’ become ready for work and it then goes on to provide them with work experience. As well as big banks, retailer Marks & Spencer and law firm Freshfields are among the 200 employers involved. In the past five years, 1700 job placements have been filled.
Skills of persuasion
His effortlessness and consummate professionalism have turned ‘Studz’, as he is known, from an unknown young Morgan Stanley banker who arrived in London many years ago into a 50-year-old member of the establishment. He rented out Cliveden, the old Astor family home that is now a luxury hotel, for a millennium bash that outdid most others. Mr Studzinski is also a consummate networker who does not take no for an answer. Take, for instance, how he convinced the Barclays veteran – whom he had never met – to become involved in BAOH.
“I had not met him but I got this call from John’s office three or four years ago asking whether I would go and have a look at a couple of places in central London, where good works were being done on behalf of the homeless,” says Mr Varley. “I did and found it all very interesting. When I left the second or third such place I visited that morning, there was a rather large car outside with darkened windows and inside was Studz who gave me an intense briefing in the following 15 minutes and then disappeared into the sunset.
“But he persuaded me in those 15 minutes – a good marketer this man – that it was something I should become involved with. Barclays was already involved at that stage but I became involved.”
Charitable endeavours
The question of balancing a company’s involvement in charity/ corporate social responsibility with ensuring a benefit – albeit not numerical – to the corporate entity is an interesting one. To ensure this, over the past few years Mr Varley has taken a more focused approach to the number of endeavours in which Barclays is involved.
“One of the things I like about our work with the homeless is that the support that we give – whether it is our people mentoring or whether our people volunteering in places like The Passage [a homelessness charity] or corporate giving – it energises our people, “ he says.
From left: John Studzinski HSBC, John Varley Barclays Bank CEO
Mr Studzinski’s energy is clear: he is involved in countless charities and has been instrumental in moving the debate on from providing basic care to the homeless, to restoring their self-esteem and confidence through to the point of incorporating – or reincorporating – them into the workforce.
“I can go all the way back to the days in which we were running up and down the Strand at three in the morning with the Princess of Wales counting homeless people, trying to prevent [former prime minister] Margaret Thatcher from moving them off to Wandsworth,” he says. Now, the issues are more to do with metrics to measure the success of their efforts and identify where there is a need for further change.
At the time of this interview, rumours were rife that Sir Chris Gent, Vodafone’s life president and former chief executive, was campaigning against his embattled successor, Arun Sarin. Would the departing chairman of BAOH leave his successor in peace or interfere? Mr Varley, in gentlemanly fashion, says he hopes he will continue to receive his predecessor’s advice.
Mr Studzinski, on the one hand, seems keen to leave the bespectacled, 50-year-old table tennis enthusiast alone. “I am not going to be on the board, I am not going to be honorary president or lifetime president or any of that. I am going to be available if John wants me,” he says.
He is also intent on telling Mr Varley, albeit in charmingly subtle fashion, what needs to be addressed: how to turn job placements into sustainable employment, how to achieve a larger involvement from businesses outside London and how to increase the number of placements at small and medium-sized enterprises.
Employment opportunities
Mr Varley, who seemed preoccupied with other matters – perhaps market rumours that Barclays was to buy Spanish bank Bankinter or the forthcoming announcement of Barclays’ sale of its stake in FirstCaribbean International Bank – says that in the next five years he wants to “get the numbers up” by creating a bank of employment opportunities. Bank results under his stewardship have certainly been rising. Barclays posted record pre-tax profits of £5280m in 2005.
Meanwhile, Mr Studzinski’s time as co-head of corporate, investment banking and markets (CIBM) at HSBC has also been fruitful. When he moved from the post of deputy chairman of Morgan Stanley International to HSBC in 2003, the market was aghast. Whatever his disagreements with the US firm, moving to a commercial bank with a decidedly love/hate attitude to investment banking was a far from obvious step.
Early this year, the critics were temporarily silenced when HSBC catapulted from 13th to sixth place in the Dealogic league table rankings for European M&A advisers in the year to date. HSBC is sole adviser to German utility company Eon in its bid for Spanish energy company Endesa, as well as advising Mittal Steel on its bid for Arcelor, two of the most high-profile bids in the market. The veteran dealmaker may well have justified his move. The perennial jokes circulating in the City about misunderstandings that reportedly arose with penny-conscious chairman Sir John Bond – when Mr Studzinski was told he could have £10m to hire new staff and presumed this was a bonus per new hire – could be laid to rest.
Client relationship role
Still, press reports suggest his new role following the February reorganisation of the CIBM unit will involve an emphasis on client relationships and withdrawing from management of the business. But this has caused consternation among his staff and the street is awash with the CVs of investment bankers who Mr Studzinski recruited, according to one headhunter, which might make that league table position precarious.
Whatever happens on the corporate front, though, both Johns will be involved in helping the homeless for many years. And if Mr Varley is right, this will also help their institutions in a purely financial sense.
“What I have found consistently is a very strong correlation between those parts of your business that are most active in the area of corporate responsibility and the ones that make the most profit. That is all around energy and creativity, but it is there and unmistakable,” he says.
