Mr Chancellor, If You Were to Google the Name Peter Erskine You Would Find Two Eminent People of That Name, Both of About the Sa

Mr Chancellor, If you were to Google the name Peter Erskine you would find two eminent people of that name, both of about the same age and both decorated, in an earlier stage of their careers, by highly distinctive and yet virtually identical moustaches. One Peter Erskine is one of our great jazz musicians, the drummer who first achieved fame with the band Weather Report. The other is one of our great business leaders, the manager who was until recently Chairman and Chief Executive of the telephone company O2. Given the remarkable physical resemblance and given the meteorological and musical strengths of our University, there is scope for some confusion here, but it is the business leader I present to you today. From humble North-East London beginnings, Peter Erskine’s drive, enthusiasm and immense ability took him first, via a psychology degree at Liverpool, into a career in marketing. Following positions at Polycell and Colgate Palmolive and a substantial and successful stint at what is widely regarded as the world’s most sophisticated marketing company, Mars, he was headhunted in 1990 to be head of sales and marketing at a start-up mobile telephone company by the name of Unitel – known nowadays as T-mobile. Three years later he moved to British Telecom and by 1998 he was Managing Director of BT’s own mobile telephone arm, Cellnet. By 2001, following the de-merger and re-branding of the Cellnet business, he was Chief Executive Officer of what was then mmO2. Under Peter’s direction, O2 grew rapidly to become the largest and most successful mobile telephone operator in Britain, as well as in Ireland, Germany and the Czech Republic. In 2005 it was acquired by the Spanish firm Telefonica, in what was, at £18 billion, the largest cash takeover ever seen in Europe. Peter stayed on, continuing to lead O2 through a string of new successes and carefully seeing through the integration process. He stepped down at the end of last year in order to seek new challenges and has recently taken on an advisory role with the private equity company, Apax partners, but remains a member of the Telefonica main board. With his O2 headquarters in Slough, and living first in Shiplake, then in Henley, Peter Erskine has for some years been one of our local business chiefs and an active and enthusiastic supporter of the University of Reading. He has served on the Advisory Board of the University of Reading Business School, supported and judged our undergraduate students’ projects in marketing, and been unstinting of his time and advice to both School and University. We have thus been extremely fortunate to see at first hand some of the qualities for which he is renowned. To become the Chief Executive of a major international company, several qualities are compulsory. All are, of course, exceptionally able. All are confirmed and compulsive winners. All are workaholics, and deeply committed to the organisations they run. And almost all pull of the remarkable feat of combining happy family lives with hundred hour working weeks and Sunday evenings at Heathrow. In all these respects, Peter is no exception. What he has, exceptionally, brought to the role, and to all the activities in which he has engaged, is a rare but common humanity: the ability to communicate with anyone, whoever they may be, to draw them out and make them feel more important than he is; the true leader’s ability to listen, not only to what people say, but also to what they mean, and to act on what he hears; the ability to take success without succumbing to arrogance or hubris. In business he has learnt to take the hard decisions, but he has never learnt to be hard, or in any way uncaring. Among his hobbies, Peter lists ‘bad golf’ and what must be even more distressing, though true to his North-East London origins, supporting Spurs. Witnessing a defeat of Spurs by Reading at the Madejski Stadium a couple of years ago, however, he is reported to have mused that he should perhaps switch his allegiance to his local club. Mr Chancellor, in anticipation of where the lunchtime conversation might lead, it gives me immense pleasure to present to you Mr Peter Erskine for the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Laws of this University. .

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