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LINDSAY OWEN-JONES, BEST FRENCH MANAGER OF THE LAST 20 YEARS
Consulting firm A.T. Kearney and the French magazine Challenges just awarded Lindsay Owen-Jones, CEO of L’Oréal, the prize for the Best Manager of the Last 20 Years.
]Continuity”, “Durability”, “Stability”… These are the values upon which the consulting firm A.T. Kearney and the French magazine Challenges built their scoring methodology. Based on performance over the past twenty years, their list of the top 20 French managers is limited to an elite group: the companies they manage must be listed on the SBF 250 stock index and have revenues of over 2 million euros. The men and women under consideration had to have worked at least ten years in the management capacity in the company. Selection criteria: revenue growth, share performance and return on capital invested.
“No one else did as well keeping his promise of growth to the financial markets”Based on the three criteria above, Lindsay Owen-Jones’ performance has been outstanding over the past 14 years. Since he took the reins of L’Oréal in 1988, sales have tripled, net profits have increased six-fold and the share price is 22 times greater than when he began. “No one else did as well keeping his promise of growth to the financial markets”, says Challenges. Among the other CEOs listed in the top twenty were Maurice Lévy of Publicis, Patrick Le Lay of TF1 and Jean-François Dehecq of Sanofi Synthélabo.
How were these CEOs able to achieve the sustained growth and good results they were tapped for? Challenges Magazine says that “French audacity” is the characteristic that allowed these twenty managers “to boldly pull their companies up to the levels of their top international competitors.” The magazine also emphasized the importance of management stability and sticking to an unwavering strategy that resisted business fads, “stock market speculation, the Internet craze, and inappropriate mergers.” Bruno Montmeria, Vice-President of A.T. Kearney, adds: “Good managers concentrate on their work and on the companies they run.”
L’Oréal: Globalization and Intuition
L’Oréal is especially admired for the effectiveness of its globalization strategy. “About twelve years ago”, reports Challenges, “95% of its sales came from Western Europe and half of that was from France. Today, France accounts for only 14% of sales and Europe accounts for less than 50%.”
“L’Oréal has been like going after a dream, a dream that never comes true”, says Lindsay Owen-Jones. “A man whose accomplishments are due to the fact that he’s just never satisfied?” asks Challenges and goes on to answer, “the Owen-Jones method is actually much more than that… L’Oréal’s success is due to Owen-Jones’ acute market intuition. He instinctively knew that the world was ready for L’Oréal to duplicate the enormous success it had in France on a global level, by developing worldwide brands and by choosing the right brands to attack the right markets”. Rapidity is also a big part of getting to number one. “Being fast is sometimes more decisive than verifying every idea and validating every hypothesis”, says Owen-Jones. “The fact that intuition has regained such importance in the world of business is deeply gratifying to me.”
At the awards ceremony Lindsay Owen-Jones commented further on the reasons for L'Oréal's success. "I'm the one accepting this prize, but it was won by many people. Over the past twenty years, several generations of "L'Oréalians" have worked side by side and succeeded one another. I'm sharing this award with them. Thanks to these people, the dream we dreamt together is in the process of coming true."
Recognized All Over Europe
In the UK, The Economist chose L’Oréal as the winner of the Global Corporate Achievement Award 2002 for Europe in recognition of the Group’s exceptional 2002 performance in a difficult economic climate.
And last June Lindsay Owen-Jones received the Futuro 2002 Prize for the Best European CEO. The jury was composed of the editors-in-chief of eleven EC financial and economic publications.
Consulting firm A.T. Kearney and the French magazine Challenges just awarded Lindsay Owen-Jones, CEO of L’Oréal, the prize for the Best Manager of the Last 20 Years.
]Continuity”, “Durability”, “Stability”… These are the values upon which the consulting firm A.T. Kearney and the French magazine Challenges built their scoring methodology. Based on performance over the past twenty years, their list of the top 20 French managers is limited to an elite group: the companies they manage must be listed on the SBF 250 stock index and have revenues of over 2 million euros. The men and women under consideration had to have worked at least ten years in the management capacity in the company. Selection criteria: revenue growth, share performance and return on capital invested.
“No one else did as well keeping his promise of growth to the financial markets”Based on the three criteria above, Lindsay Owen-Jones’ performance has been outstanding over the past 14 years. Since he took the reins of L’Oréal in 1988, sales have tripled, net profits have increased six-fold and the share price is 22 times greater than when he began. “No one else did as well keeping his promise of growth to the financial markets”, says Challenges. Among the other CEOs listed in the top twenty were Maurice Lévy of Publicis, Patrick Le Lay of TF1 and Jean-François Dehecq of Sanofi Synthélabo.
How were these CEOs able to achieve the sustained growth and good results they were tapped for? Challenges Magazine says that “French audacity” is the characteristic that allowed these twenty managers “to boldly pull their companies up to the levels of their top international competitors.” The magazine also emphasized the importance of management stability and sticking to an unwavering strategy that resisted business fads, “stock market speculation, the Internet craze, and inappropriate mergers.” Bruno Montmeria, Vice-President of A.T. Kearney, adds: “Good managers concentrate on their work and on the companies they run.”
L’Oréal: Globalization and Intuition
L’Oréal is especially admired for the effectiveness of its globalization strategy. “About twelve years ago”, reports Challenges, “95% of its sales came from Western Europe and half of that was from France. Today, France accounts for only 14% of sales and Europe accounts for less than 50%.”
“L’Oréal has been like going after a dream, a dream that never comes true”, says Lindsay Owen-Jones. “A man whose accomplishments are due to the fact that he’s just never satisfied?” asks Challenges and goes on to answer, “the Owen-Jones method is actually much more than that… L’Oréal’s success is due to Owen-Jones’ acute market intuition. He instinctively knew that the world was ready for L’Oréal to duplicate the enormous success it had in France on a global level, by developing worldwide brands and by choosing the right brands to attack the right markets”. Rapidity is also a big part of getting to number one. “Being fast is sometimes more decisive than verifying every idea and validating every hypothesis”, says Owen-Jones. “The fact that intuition has regained such importance in the world of business is deeply gratifying to me.”
At the awards ceremony Lindsay Owen-Jones commented further on the reasons for L'Oréal's success. "I'm the one accepting this prize, but it was won by many people. Over the past twenty years, several generations of "L'Oréalians" have worked side by side and succeeded one another. I'm sharing this award with them. Thanks to these people, the dream we dreamt together is in the process of coming true."
Recognized All Over Europe
In the UK, The Economist chose L’Oréal as the winner of the Global Corporate Achievement Award 2002 for Europe in recognition of the Group’s exceptional 2002 performance in a difficult economic climate.
And last June Lindsay Owen-Jones received the Futuro 2002 Prize for the Best European CEO. The jury was composed of the editors-in-chief of eleven EC financial and economic publications.