SPIRIT OF THE EIGHTIES

摘要

When I encountered a senior Stagecoach UK Bus manager last autumn, he had no doubt that his chief executive was relishing his return to the hot seat. 'Brian's having the time of his life,' he told me. 'He thinks he's back in 1983.' Twenty years earlier, Brian Souter was the cheeky upstart pursing opportunities to turn his small independent coach and bus company into something bigger. By 2003, after an uneasy period when Stagecoach had gone corporate with hired chief executives and an underperforming international portfolio, he was back in day-today charge, trying to inject small company thinking into a multi-million pound business.