Masters 2013: ‘No such thing as business failure’, says NW Ambassador Marks
THE Co-operative Group’s chief executive Peter Marks told the Business Masters audience that there was “no such things as failure in business”, a day after pulling out of the deal to buy 630 Lloyds branches.
Mr Marks, who was named the North West Ambassador at the awards, had earlier joked he was the odd one out in a room of successful entrepreneurs for being “famous for failing to do the Lloyds deal”.
On Wednesday morning the Co-op announced it was pulling out of the £750m deal because of the wider economic environment and increasing regulatory requirements for the financial services sector.
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Mr Marks spent the day conducting media interviews and quelling talk that the group would pull out of banking altogether. After accepting his award he said: “I don’t think there’s any such thing as failure in business. Things can only go two ways, forwards or backwards. Standing still is not an option, there’s no safety. Business is about taking risk. Tesco was pilloried for pulling out of the US, but you have to try things.
“We tried to buy Lloyds but circumstances changed so we failed. You’ve to try things but walk away when you realise it’s not working and move on to something else.
“My advice is, don’t be put off by failure. Everybody fails at some stage. You’ve got to pick yourself up and move on.”
For information on the other winners click here. On Monday TheBusinessDesk.com will be publishing an awards review which will include a photo gallery of the event.
Speaking about his long career at the Co-op he said: “It’s not just a profit maximising business, it does have ethics and social responsibility in its DNA but it needed to be more commercial and it was fragmented. There were lots of different co-ops all doing the same thing but inefficiently. We had to convince them to band together. We managed to do that in 2007 then we had the economies of scale we really needed.
“The ethics and commercialism balance was out of sync. We were bloody awful business people and retailers so we had to get that balance back but it’s a good tension to have. If I bring a good commercial idea to the board they ask, ‘how does it fit with our values?’ And, ‘can you tell us about the ethics of it?’ If that had been happening at banks like Lloyds and Barclays maybe we wouldn’t be where we are in the banking sector.”
The Bradford-born executive began his career in 1967 when he joined what became Yorkshire Co-operatives as a management trainee in the food retail business. He then rose through the ranks at United Co-operatives before taking the top job with the combined society in 2007.
Mr Marks, who will retire next month, believes the unification of the co-ops was his biggest achievement, citing it as the catalyst for a number of big ticket deals including the acquisition of Somerfield and the merger with Britannia Building Society.
The Ambassador award was sponsored by Etihad Airways. The other contenders were Siemens Industry UK managing director Juergen Maier and Maurice Watkins, a partner at Brabners Chaffe Street.
