Life is all about making choices, taking decisions, and living with the consequences.
And sometimes it can also simply be about things just happening for all the right reasons to the right person at the right time. This is what “Serendipity” means, one of my favourite words in the English language. Someone once defined it as “jumping into the haystack looking for the proverbial needle, and coming out with the farmer’s daughter”. Love it.
If a friend of Rom Coms (Romantic Comedies for the uninitiated), check out the eponymous Hollywood movie Serendipity (2001) starring John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale. Good fun.
And while on the subject of things just going this way or that, there is another movie, Sliding Doors (1998) with Gwyneth Paltrow worth mentioning. Here, a London woman's love life and career both hinge, unknown to her, on whether or not she catches a train. We get to see it both ways, in parallel.
Finally, on the topic of catching London trains, or not, and the unintended fortuitous consequences of simply being late by a few seconds, there is the autobiography of rock guitarist Andy Summers, One Train Later (2007). Here, the title refers to the author's chance encounter with drummer Stewart Copeland that led to Summers’ joining him and Sting to form The Police. The rest, as they say, is history.
Had Summers taken one train later, or indeed one train earlier, his life would have been a very different one, and the world might well never have heard of him. A true story. And what a great book title!
Coming back to the present, I spent a few days of last week in Norway, fighting the good fight against Plain Packaging and, hopefully, kicking some butt. I got very lucky in that the weather was absolutely gorgeous, and in addition to spending time in Oslo, I was also treated to a cross-country trip to the little seaside town of Arendal, a three-hour drive south-west of the capital, where I attended an annual political summer conference.
As a nation, the Norwegians look back on a long and proud history. The looting of the monastery on a tidal island in Northeast England in 793, when “the ravaging of wretched heathen men destroyed God’s church at Lindisfarne” (Anglo-Saxon Chronicle) has long been regarded as the event which marked the beginning of the Viking Age.
Established in 872 as a merger of several smaller kingdoms, Norway is one of the original states of Europe and still a monarchy.
Today, with a population of just over 5 million, the country tops the rest of the world when it comes to doing well – primarily thanks to its extensive off-shore reserves in fossil energy resources. On a per-capita basis, it is the world's largest producer of oil and natural gas outside the Middle East. The petroleum industry accounts for around a quarter of the country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
For some key statistics, Norway has the fourth-highest per capita income globally on the World Bank and IMF lists. According to the CIA World Factbook, its budget surplus is 12.5% of GDP, ranking it fourth in the world behind Macau, Kuwait, and Brunei. From 2001 to 2006, and then again from 2009 to 2014, the country had the highest Human Development Index ranking in the world. Norway has also topped the Legatum Prosperity Index for the last five years.
Pretty impressive stuff, right? All this of course translates into a very comfortable standard of living for all Norwegians, with universal health care and a comprehensive Social Security system, and attracts many people from outside Norway who want to come and live there. From a reliable source, I am told that there are 70,000 young Swedes mostly waiting tables in Oslo bars and restaurants, out of a total population of 650,000.
And this fun fact brings me back to decisions and their consequences.
You see, when the American Phillips Petroleum Company first approached the Norwegian Government to request oil exploration rights in the North Sea in 1962, it seemed like a daunting project for such a small nation. Seeing the opportunity while wanting to strengthen his country’s negotiating position, Jens Evesen, the Head of the Legal Department in the Foreign Ministry approached Denmark to suggest some kind of a joint venture between the neighbours. Thus it came to a fateful late-night meeting in November 1963 with the then Danish Foreign Minister, Per Hækkerup who, legend has it, was not altogether sober when he told his Norwegian colleague: “You can have it. You won’t find anything anyway.”
Six years later, in 1969, the Ekofisk oilfield was discovered, to this day the most productive of all North Sea fields. It has been calculated that fateful decision by Denmark translates statistically into 350,000 Norwegian Kronas (around Euro 40,000) for every Norwegian, and there are five million of them. You do the math…
The only consolation the Danes have is that on that same fateful night in November 1963 their national football team managed a 2-2 draw in their away game against Norway. To this day, the Danes call the Norwegian football players “The Mountain Apes”, making fun of their alleged lack of technical skills – a case of sour grapes maybe?
But there’s one more – remember the young Swedish waiters in modern-day Oslo?
In 1973, the Norwegian government founded the national oil company, Statoil. Oil production, however, did not provide net income until the early 1980s because of the large capital investment that was required to establish the country's petroleum industry.
In 1979, Norway, burdened by debt taken out to finance the offshore exploration, approached their Swedish neighbours, offering them 50% of all revenue from oil and gas exploration against 40% of the Volvo Group. The Swedes politely declined the offer, “Thanks, but no thanks”.
Once again, the rest, as they say, is history. And Volvo Cars, having lost its way, is nowadays a subsidiary of Chinese Geely Auto.
Norway, on the other hand, owns the world’s largest Sovereign Wealth Fund, launched in 1990 and currently worth around US $ 870 billion or so. They are great proponents of Transparency, so you get to watch the number fluctuate in real time on their website: www.nbim.no/en/. Other countries have the same way of tracking their mounting national debt…
The Government Pension Fund Global, as it’s officially called, invests revenue from finite fossil fuel resources so future generations of Norwegians will not really have to worry once they’ve run out. Its assets are almost twice the size of Norway’s GDP, and it has grown by an astounding US $ 165 million every day for the past 14 years, making every citizen a Norwegian Krone millionaire, at least on paper.
Investing only outside of Norway, on average, the fund owns 1.3% of every listed stock in the world. But as they are big on what they understand as ethics, Imperial Tobacco is one of the notable exceptions, along with our competitors and the defence industry. The fund excluded Walmart almost ten years ago because of labour practice issues and has sold out of 114 companies since 2012, according to their own 2015 report on responsible investing. Their latest divestments came only this week when they parted ways with shares in four of Asia’s biggest companies because of concerns over severe environmental damage at Indonesian palm oil plantations.
So Norway has been rewarded for taking bold decisions back then, whereas Denmark and Sweden live with the negative consequences of having made the wrong choices.
With hindsight, of course, that’s easy to say…
In business, as in politics and our personal lives, recognising and seizing the right opportunities when they come along is equally crucial. Or, indeed, consciously passing up on them - "taking a rain check", as the Americans call it. Many a CEO and Board have rued acquisitions they made, and many fewer can take pride in having said, "Thanks, but no thanks" to a deal they could have made but didn't - for better or for worse of course.
http://www.bloomberg.com/ss/07/10/1004_worst_mergers/index_01.htm
With hindsight, of course, that’s easy to say…
In terms of being rewarded for taking a bold decision, here’s a war story from my own past.
At the very beginning of my career, I had just started as a Press Officer with the German chemical company BASF and was responsible for their Audio / Video Division – yes, magnetic tape in cassettes to record music, movies, and sports events that back then you couldn’t just watch “on the go” with the help of your smartphone. In a small team of forward-thinking people in what was otherwise a very conservative company, we came up with the idea of sponsoring a young, talented tennis player who happened to come from the same little town where I was living, Leimen. No big financial investment, but a high-risk move as a lot of colleagues, including the Company’s senior management were, let’s say, sceptical.
Five months later, on 7 July 1985, our young prodigy won Wimbledon at the tender age of 17. His name was Boris Becker. To this day, he remains the youngest-ever Men’s Singles Wimbledon Champion. And 30 years on, I still have framed the famous photo of him in profile, kissing the trophy, with our logo prominently displayed on his shirtsleeve.
We knew it, didn’t we? With hindsight, of course, that’s easy to say…
Management gurus, and there’s so many of them, tend to agree that taking a decision that turns out to be wrong is better than taking none at all. And they say that a successful manager will be right 50% of the time.
While I am with them on the first premise, I think the hurdle they set is too low – as an investor, I wouldn’t entrust my money to people who only get it right every other time. I think I err on the side of the great rock bard Meat Loaf and his immortal way of putting it: “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad.”
Of course, you will still regret that third time where you made The Wrong Choice, especially if it was A Big One. This is often, and wrongly, labelled The Fifth Beatle Syndrome.
In their very early days, the Fab Four really were five musicians. Stu Sutcliffe, a friend of John Lennon’s from art school in Liverpool, joined the band in January 1960, playing bass. When they went over to Hamburg for the first of their five residencies there, he met and fell in love with the German part-time photographer Astrid Kirchherr, and eventually left the group to resume his art studies in Hamburg. Paul McCartney from there on took over on bass.
Ms Kirchherr went down in history not just for having split The Fifth Beatle from the other four, but importantly as the person who created the irreverent (at the time) Beatles hairstyle – legend has it to help George Harrison conceal his rather prominent ears, a constant source of embarrassment for the shy young man.
Tragically, Stu Sutcliffe never had the opportunity to rue his decision as he died of a brain haemorrhage in April 1962, aged 21. The Beatles’ breakthrough didn’t happen until early 1963, but I guess the concept of someone missing out on the chance of a lifetime is too tempting, so “The Fifth Beatle” stuck.
But yet again, I can contribute anecdotal evidence from my own personal background.
I have a friend whose brother used to work at the German subsidiary of IBM in a team with a bunch of other techies developing software programs. Among themselves, these engineers were often talking about starting out on their own, and in 1972 five of them did. My friend’s brother at the last moment pulled out, opting for the relative job security of the corporate world over the risks of entrepreneurship.
The others left to found SAP.
A true story, I swear.
While this poor guy was left behind to kick himself into eventual retirement, and I’m sure the conditions at IBM were generous, sometimes life does grant second chances:
After an early February audition in 1962, Decca Records rejected The Beatles, telling their newly appointed manager, "Guitar groups are on the way out, Mr. Epstein." Three months later, producer George Martin signed them to EMI's Parlophone label. The rest, as they say, is history.
But at least Decca Records got to redeem themselves by shortly afterwards signing another “guitar group” that knocked at their door and went by the name of The Rolling Stones.
“Luck is what happens to you when fate gets tired of waiting.” Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram (2003).
If a friend of Rom Coms (Romantic Comedies for the uninitiated), check out the eponymous Hollywood movie Serendipity (2001) starring John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale. Good fun.
And while on the subject of things just going this way or that, there is another movie, Sliding Doors (1998) with Gwyneth Paltrow worth mentioning. Here, a London woman's love life and career both hinge, unknown to her, on whether or not she catches a train. We get to see it both ways, in parallel.
Finally, on the topic of catching London trains, or not, and the unintended fortuitous consequences of simply being late by a few seconds, there is the autobiography of rock guitarist Andy Summers, One Train Later (2007). Here, the title refers to the author's chance encounter with drummer Stewart Copeland that led to Summers’ joining him and Sting to form The Police. The rest, as they say, is history.
Had Summers taken one train later, or indeed one train earlier, his life would have been a very different one, and the world might well never have heard of him. A true story. And what a great book title!
Coming back to the present, I spent a few days of last week in Norway, fighting the good fight against Plain Packaging and, hopefully, kicking some butt. I got very lucky in that the weather was absolutely gorgeous, and in addition to spending time in Oslo, I was also treated to a cross-country trip to the little seaside town of Arendal, a three-hour drive south-west of the capital, where I attended an annual political summer conference.
As a nation, the Norwegians look back on a long and proud history. The looting of the monastery on a tidal island in Northeast England in 793, when “the ravaging of wretched heathen men destroyed God’s church at Lindisfarne” (Anglo-Saxon Chronicle) has long been regarded as the event which marked the beginning of the Viking Age.
Established in 872 as a merger of several smaller kingdoms, Norway is one of the original states of Europe and still a monarchy.
Today, with a population of just over 5 million, the country tops the rest of the world when it comes to doing well – primarily thanks to its extensive off-shore reserves in fossil energy resources. On a per-capita basis, it is the world's largest producer of oil and natural gas outside the Middle East. The petroleum industry accounts for around a quarter of the country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
For some key statistics, Norway has the fourth-highest per capita income globally on the World Bank and IMF lists. According to the CIA World Factbook, its budget surplus is 12.5% of GDP, ranking it fourth in the world behind Macau, Kuwait, and Brunei. From 2001 to 2006, and then again from 2009 to 2014, the country had the highest Human Development Index ranking in the world. Norway has also topped the Legatum Prosperity Index for the last five years.
Pretty impressive stuff, right? All this of course translates into a very comfortable standard of living for all Norwegians, with universal health care and a comprehensive Social Security system, and attracts many people from outside Norway who want to come and live there. From a reliable source, I am told that there are 70,000 young Swedes mostly waiting tables in Oslo bars and restaurants, out of a total population of 650,000.
And this fun fact brings me back to decisions and their consequences.
You see, when the American Phillips Petroleum Company first approached the Norwegian Government to request oil exploration rights in the North Sea in 1962, it seemed like a daunting project for such a small nation. Seeing the opportunity while wanting to strengthen his country’s negotiating position, Jens Evesen, the Head of the Legal Department in the Foreign Ministry approached Denmark to suggest some kind of a joint venture between the neighbours. Thus it came to a fateful late-night meeting in November 1963 with the then Danish Foreign Minister, Per Hækkerup who, legend has it, was not altogether sober when he told his Norwegian colleague: “You can have it. You won’t find anything anyway.”
Six years later, in 1969, the Ekofisk oilfield was discovered, to this day the most productive of all North Sea fields. It has been calculated that fateful decision by Denmark translates statistically into 350,000 Norwegian Kronas (around Euro 40,000) for every Norwegian, and there are five million of them. You do the math…
The only consolation the Danes have is that on that same fateful night in November 1963 their national football team managed a 2-2 draw in their away game against Norway. To this day, the Danes call the Norwegian football players “The Mountain Apes”, making fun of their alleged lack of technical skills – a case of sour grapes maybe?
But there’s one more – remember the young Swedish waiters in modern-day Oslo?
In 1973, the Norwegian government founded the national oil company, Statoil. Oil production, however, did not provide net income until the early 1980s because of the large capital investment that was required to establish the country's petroleum industry.
In 1979, Norway, burdened by debt taken out to finance the offshore exploration, approached their Swedish neighbours, offering them 50% of all revenue from oil and gas exploration against 40% of the Volvo Group. The Swedes politely declined the offer, “Thanks, but no thanks”.
Once again, the rest, as they say, is history. And Volvo Cars, having lost its way, is nowadays a subsidiary of Chinese Geely Auto.
Norway, on the other hand, owns the world’s largest Sovereign Wealth Fund, launched in 1990 and currently worth around US $ 870 billion or so. They are great proponents of Transparency, so you get to watch the number fluctuate in real time on their website: www.nbim.no/en/. Other countries have the same way of tracking their mounting national debt…
The Government Pension Fund Global, as it’s officially called, invests revenue from finite fossil fuel resources so future generations of Norwegians will not really have to worry once they’ve run out. Its assets are almost twice the size of Norway’s GDP, and it has grown by an astounding US $ 165 million every day for the past 14 years, making every citizen a Norwegian Krone millionaire, at least on paper.
Investing only outside of Norway, on average, the fund owns 1.3% of every listed stock in the world. But as they are big on what they understand as ethics, Imperial Tobacco is one of the notable exceptions, along with our competitors and the defence industry. The fund excluded Walmart almost ten years ago because of labour practice issues and has sold out of 114 companies since 2012, according to their own 2015 report on responsible investing. Their latest divestments came only this week when they parted ways with shares in four of Asia’s biggest companies because of concerns over severe environmental damage at Indonesian palm oil plantations.
So Norway has been rewarded for taking bold decisions back then, whereas Denmark and Sweden live with the negative consequences of having made the wrong choices.
With hindsight, of course, that’s easy to say…
In business, as in politics and our personal lives, recognising and seizing the right opportunities when they come along is equally crucial. Or, indeed, consciously passing up on them - "taking a rain check", as the Americans call it. Many a CEO and Board have rued acquisitions they made, and many fewer can take pride in having said, "Thanks, but no thanks" to a deal they could have made but didn't - for better or for worse of course.
http://www.bloomberg.com/ss/07/10/1004_worst_mergers/index_01.htm
With hindsight, of course, that’s easy to say…
In terms of being rewarded for taking a bold decision, here’s a war story from my own past.
At the very beginning of my career, I had just started as a Press Officer with the German chemical company BASF and was responsible for their Audio / Video Division – yes, magnetic tape in cassettes to record music, movies, and sports events that back then you couldn’t just watch “on the go” with the help of your smartphone. In a small team of forward-thinking people in what was otherwise a very conservative company, we came up with the idea of sponsoring a young, talented tennis player who happened to come from the same little town where I was living, Leimen. No big financial investment, but a high-risk move as a lot of colleagues, including the Company’s senior management were, let’s say, sceptical.
Five months later, on 7 July 1985, our young prodigy won Wimbledon at the tender age of 17. His name was Boris Becker. To this day, he remains the youngest-ever Men’s Singles Wimbledon Champion. And 30 years on, I still have framed the famous photo of him in profile, kissing the trophy, with our logo prominently displayed on his shirtsleeve.
We knew it, didn’t we? With hindsight, of course, that’s easy to say…
Management gurus, and there’s so many of them, tend to agree that taking a decision that turns out to be wrong is better than taking none at all. And they say that a successful manager will be right 50% of the time.
While I am with them on the first premise, I think the hurdle they set is too low – as an investor, I wouldn’t entrust my money to people who only get it right every other time. I think I err on the side of the great rock bard Meat Loaf and his immortal way of putting it: “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad.”
Of course, you will still regret that third time where you made The Wrong Choice, especially if it was A Big One. This is often, and wrongly, labelled The Fifth Beatle Syndrome.
In their very early days, the Fab Four really were five musicians. Stu Sutcliffe, a friend of John Lennon’s from art school in Liverpool, joined the band in January 1960, playing bass. When they went over to Hamburg for the first of their five residencies there, he met and fell in love with the German part-time photographer Astrid Kirchherr, and eventually left the group to resume his art studies in Hamburg. Paul McCartney from there on took over on bass.
Ms Kirchherr went down in history not just for having split The Fifth Beatle from the other four, but importantly as the person who created the irreverent (at the time) Beatles hairstyle – legend has it to help George Harrison conceal his rather prominent ears, a constant source of embarrassment for the shy young man.
Tragically, Stu Sutcliffe never had the opportunity to rue his decision as he died of a brain haemorrhage in April 1962, aged 21. The Beatles’ breakthrough didn’t happen until early 1963, but I guess the concept of someone missing out on the chance of a lifetime is too tempting, so “The Fifth Beatle” stuck.
But yet again, I can contribute anecdotal evidence from my own personal background.
I have a friend whose brother used to work at the German subsidiary of IBM in a team with a bunch of other techies developing software programs. Among themselves, these engineers were often talking about starting out on their own, and in 1972 five of them did. My friend’s brother at the last moment pulled out, opting for the relative job security of the corporate world over the risks of entrepreneurship.
The others left to found SAP.
A true story, I swear.
While this poor guy was left behind to kick himself into eventual retirement, and I’m sure the conditions at IBM were generous, sometimes life does grant second chances:
After an early February audition in 1962, Decca Records rejected The Beatles, telling their newly appointed manager, "Guitar groups are on the way out, Mr. Epstein." Three months later, producer George Martin signed them to EMI's Parlophone label. The rest, as they say, is history.
But at least Decca Records got to redeem themselves by shortly afterwards signing another “guitar group” that knocked at their door and went by the name of The Rolling Stones.
“Luck is what happens to you when fate gets tired of waiting.” Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram (2003).
