In their rich history of British chief executives, Michael Aldous and John D Turner investigate why UK companies have fallen behind their American competitors.

British Airways used to carry more passengers more miles than any other airline, earning it the title “the world’s favourite airline”. But a series of missteps reduced the national carrier to the butt of jokes. New slogans became popular, such as “I’m flying Abba — Anyone But British Airways”. As BA nosedived, the Dubai-based Emirates took over as the world’s favourite airline. Why did BA slump while Emirates soared? The difference is leadership —the subject of this book by Michael Aldous and John D Turner.

Emirates has a visionary boss, Tim Clark, a Briton who has read the global trade winds brilliantly over the past 30 years and invested in new aircraft, notably the Airbus A380 super jumbo, food and drink, customer service and a hub airport in Dubai. By contrast, BA has hired a series of penny-pinchers, notably the Spanish chief executive Alex Cruz, who will for ever be known as the man who took away a free cuppa in the morning and gin and tonic in the evening — on a British airline!

This book is about men like Clark and Cruz. The authors, academics at Queen’s University Belfast, start by asking what makes a good chief executive. There are no shortcuts to success, they remind fans of The Diary of a CEO -style podcasters, bloggers and influencers who boast about getting rich quick. Having ambition and purpose is not enough. You need “tremendous work ethic and energy” to sustain “18-hour days”.

A solid grasp of “demography, social and economic trends, consumer behaviour, global macro trends, the political landscape and new technology” is just the start of the skillset. You also need “strong emotional intelligence” and the ability to strategise in organisations with lots of moving parts, and turn on a dime if circumstances change.

Being an outsider is helpful and being an immigrant is better yet because it can give a chief executive “the perspective and instinct which lets them see things differently from their peers and to be non-conformist when needed”. Take Martin Sorrell: Aldous and Turner argue that his “Jewish heritage gave him a very clear self-awareness as an outsider”, which helped him to “see opportunities that others overlooked” and create the world’s largest marketing and public relations company, WPP. Sorrell often bristles at this characterisation.

He does not dispute, however, that he and other successful chief executives are “willing to upset” rivals and immune to criticism. David Ogilvy, the former boss of the global advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather, called Sorrell “an odious little shit”, while Chris Ingram, the ex-CEO of the media-buying group Tempus, said he would “rather lick an abattoir floor than work for Sorrell”. Sorrell’s response was to redouble his efforts to disrupt them.

Aldous and Turner race through 160 years of British CEOs, from the gentlemen amateur traders of the Victorian era to the post war buccaneers and latter-day bankers. Their narrative is rich with anecdotes. I did not know, for instance, that it was the business style of John Davis, the managing director and then the chairman of the Rank cinema company, that was responsible for the ‘Carry On’ films’. He capped film budgets at £150,000 and demanded “formulaic moves with predictable costs and certain box-office returns”. The franchise’s “slapstick, sexual innuendo and other forms of bawdy humour”, which were shot at Pinewood studios and performed by comic actors who commanded lower rates than film stars, made Davis one of Britain’s richest men in the 1960s.

But it is Thomas Sutherland of the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company who wins the top prize for ballsy negotiating. Angry at the “extortionate” fees the French operator was charging British firms to use the Suez Canal in the1870s, he led a delegation of British shipping companies that threatened to build a second canal. The French caved.

Thomas Lipton, of packaged tea fame, was an early Richard Branson. “I’m not vain but I like a small place on the frontpage,” he liked to say. His publicity stunts — he competed five times in the America’s Cup yacht race — elevated his profile so much that he became the first British business leader to have his portrait on the cover of Time magazine.

There are few women in the book, but Margaret Haig Thomas stands out. She served as a company director on 33 boards and as chair of seven in the early 20th century. She also found time to establish the Time and Tide newspaper, which ran for nearly four decades. Not even Branson managed that.

The authors show that the success of many UK companies has declined in recent years due to a lack of innovation and because labour productivity is lower than in other nations, notably the US. They explain the slump by pointing out that most post war British CEOs came up through the ranks of accountancy and engineering, which meant they tended to prize production over vision and marketing. By contrast, US fi rms “were more likely to have CEOs from a sales and marketing background” who were “better able to exploit the mass consumer revolution” of the post war era.

They add that management training is more advanced in the US. The first business school in the US was established in 1881when the Wharton School opened at the University of Pennsylvania. Britain’s first, the London Business School, was founded more than eight decades later in 1964. It is perhaps no surprise that the first three women to head UK companies — Marjorie Scardino at the media company Pearson, Cynthia Carroll at the mining giant Anglo American, and Angela Ahrendts at the fashion house Burberry — are American.

It’s easy to blame governments for sluggish growth in the UK, but this book shows Britain’s CEOs can do better too.

Printed in The Sunday Times, June 15 2025, John Arlidge