Private eye comes into focus
Putting an accountant in charge of a detective agency seems a bit of a disappointment.
Some of the headline-grabbing jobs handled by Kroll Associates in recent years include investigating the mysterious hanging under London's Blackfriars Bridge of the Italian banker Roberto Calvi, hunting for Saddam Hussein's assets and assessing corruption charges brought against Fernando Collor de Mello, Brazil's former president, and his campaign manager.
Simon Freakley, Kroll's new chief executive, is a long way from the “hard and shifty” Sam Spade, Dashiell Hammett's fictional private detective. Instead, he speaks softly and has a non-confrontational manner redolent of the British expatriate. He believes that managing does not require much alchemy it is much more straightforward. “If you have the right team together and you get the right people, then a whole bunch of things take care of themselves,” he says.
His interest in the business was piqued early. After growing up on a boatyard in England, he went to work for a competitor in Cambridge at his father's suggestion. That business was then restructured and he became intrigued by what happened next. “I got to meet all of these restructuring guys. I thought what a fascinating job.”
Mr Freakley, 43, joined Kroll in 1999 after Jules Kroll, the company's founder, bought Buchler Phillips, the corporate-recovery business he was running.
In recent years, through a string of acquisitions, Kroll has successfully shed its “private eye” image in favour of a more humdrum one as a risk-management specialist. “There has been a shift in emphasis,” Mr Freakley says. While forensic work and investigative consulting still account for about 38 per cent of Kroll's annual revenues of about $750m, corporate restructuring now comprises about 23 per cent, checking the backgrounds of government workers and employees for Federal Express and similar companies makes up about 24 per cent of the business, and helping companies process data comprises about 15 per cent.
Kroll made a lot of money in the 1980s doing investigative work on corporate raiders such as Sir James Goldsmith and Victor Posner. Nowadays, with less hostile takeover activity on Wall Street, it looks to high-profile restructurings such as that of Enron and Federal Mogul for revenues.
Last year, Marsh & McLennan, parent of the troubled insurance brokerage, bought Kroll for $1.9bn in cash to exploit links between the business of selling insurance and advising clients on risk. As a result, Mr Freakley climbed the ladder quickly at the company.
After Eliot Spitzer, New York's attorney-general, accused Marsh of rigging bids on insurance contracts, Michael Cherkasky, Kroll's chief executive officer, was elevated to the helm at Marsh & McLennan. Mr Freakley replaced Mr Cherkasky at the end of lastyear.
Kroll has managed to stay the course during the crisis, which caused Marsh & McLennan's shares to lose as much as 40 per cent of their value. “Business hasn't stalled at all,” says Mr Freakley, pointing as proof to the company's acquisition last month of Talbot Hughes McKillop, the UK restructuring business. In the three months since he took the job, he has been concentrating on refining strategy, and has particularly focused on clarifying the distinction between Marsh and Kroll. His goal is for Kroll to operate as a separate business in the same way that Mercer, the consulting division of Marsh & McLennan, and Putnam, its mutual-fund arm, do. Kroll has merged with Marsh's existing risk-consulting businesses and the combined group produces annual revenues of about $1bn.
Yet despite these clear plans, Mr Freakley comes across as a dreamy humanist not a calculating tactician and admits to a disdain of management theories. “Some of that stuff is quite repetitive,” he says. Having read Steve Covey's management bestseller The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, he disagreed with the suggestion that managers should make lists and complete them daily, monthly and annually. He recalls challenging the author at one of his retreats: “I said, ‘this all sounds fantastic, Mr Covey, but my life isn't like that. All of a sudden it's five o'clock and my day is gone'.” The writer's retort was withering: “Just remember: we are dealing with the habits of effective people.”
So if Mr Freakley is not managing Kroll's 4,000 employees with the help of a management guru, where does he look for inspiration? “I'm always interested in people who have done extraordinary things,” he says.
He cites Robert Swann, the first man to walk unaided to both the North and South Poles, with whom he worked on a fundraising effort last year. “[Swann] did it with a wristwatch and a compass no satellite telephone, no GPS navigation. He walked 800 miles across the Antarctic,” says Mr Freakley. “Those kind of stories of human endeavour are just extraordinary.”
Turning to his long-term plans for Kroll, Mr Freakley seems consumed by the idea that the brand is far bigger than its business. “I think Kroll could be two to three times bigger than it is,” he says. “The brand has fabulous credentials. The question is: how do you build the business to fulfil the brand?”
Risk management is the centre of Kroll's business, but the company has four areas of interest and thus four areas where it believes it can grow its market. It does have some competition: on the forensic side of the business, Huron Consulting in Chicago poses a threat, as do the big four accounting firms. Control Risks is its principal rival in the market for security consulting and ChoicePoint, a credential-verification company, is considered another big competitor.
For Mr Freakley, the priorities are to make Kroll's disparate businesses work more closely together as well as to acquire more clients and distinguish Kroll from its competitors. But for him, this is all straightforward: “I don't think there's any alchemy to it. We are going into 2005 in very good shape. We have a very good pipeline of work,” he says. “The rest is about gathering the team, working out what the best strategy is and going for it.”
金融业“福尔摩斯”
让会计师主管侦探社似乎有点令人沮丧。
近些年来，克罗尔公司(Kroll Associates)接手了多个引人瞩目的重大任务，包括调查在伦敦布莱克福利亚斯桥下神秘上吊的意大利银行家罗伯托?卡尔维(Roberto Calvi)、搜寻萨达姆?侯塞因的资产、评估针对巴西前总统费尔南多?科洛尔?德梅洛(Fernando Collor de Mello)及其竞选经理的腐败指控。
克罗尔公司的新任首席执行官西蒙?弗雷克雷(Simon Freakley)远不如达希尔?哈米特(Dashiell Hammett)小说中私家侦探萨姆?斯佩德(Sam Spade)那样“冷硬而诡秘”。相反，他话语轻柔、举止平和，英国气质十足。他相信管理应直截了当，而无需太多法术。他认为：“如果团队齐心协力，人选得当，许多事情便会迎刃而解。”
他对商业的兴趣由来已久。他在英格兰一间船坞长大，后来在父亲建议下去剑桥一个对手公司工作。当公司业务重组时，他为随后发生的事所吸引。“我认识了所有进行重组的人，我觉得这是一件有趣的工作。”
43岁的弗雷克雷于1999年加入克罗尔公司，当时，他所经营的企业复苏业务布切勒?菲利普公司(Buchler Phillips)被克罗尔公司创建人朱尔斯?克罗尔(Jules Kroll)收购。
近年来，通过一系列收购，克罗尔公司已成功摆脱“私家侦探”形象，而成为更为平稳的风险管理专家。弗雷克雷表示：“公司重点有所改变。”虽然法务会计和调查咨询工作仍占克罗尔公司7.5亿美元年收入的38%左右，但公司重组业务也占到约23%，对政府工作人员和联邦快递及类似公司雇员进行背景调查大约占业务量的24%，帮助公司处理数据业务占大约15%。
80年代，克罗尔公司对詹姆斯?戈德史密斯爵士(Sir James Goldsmith)和维克托?波斯纳(Victor Posner)等“公司突袭者”进行调查，并因此大赚一笔。如今，随着华尔街恶意并购活动减少，公司将眼光盯上安然(Enron)和联邦默高公司(Federal Mogul)之类引人瞩目的重组业务。
去年，麻烦重重的保险经纪母公司美国马什?麦克伦南公司(Marsh McLennan，简称马什公司)以19亿现金收购克罗尔公司，以利用保险销售业务与向客户提供风险建议之间的联系。结果是弗雷克雷在公司得到迅速提升。
在纽约首席检察官艾略特?斯皮策(Eliot Spitzer)指控马什公司操纵保险合同竞标之后，克罗尔公司首席执行官迈克尔?彻卡西(Michael Cherkasky)获提拔掌管马什公司大权，但在去年底由弗雷克雷接替。
指控危机使马什公司股票价值缩水40%，但克罗尔公司却在危机中稳步发展。弗雷克雷声称：“公司业务丝毫没有受阻。”为证明此话，他援引公司上月收购英国重组业务塔尔博特?休斯?麦基洛普(Talbot Hughes McKillop)一事。在上任三个月中，他一直将注意力集中在改进策略上，并且特别注意区分马什公司和克罗尔公司。他的目标是将克罗尔公司办成一个独立业务公司，如同马什公司下的默瑟(Mercer)咨询业务和普特南(Putnam)互惠基金业务一样。克罗尔公司已与马什公司现有的风险咨询业务合并，合并集团年收入约有10亿美元。
不过，尽管计划明确，但弗雷克雷看上去更像一个喜欢憧憬的人文学者，而不是一个精于算计的谋划家，承认自己鄙视管理理论。他指出：“有些管理理论是重复的。”在读过斯蒂夫?科维(Steve Covey)所著管理学畅销书《高效人士的七个习惯》(Seven Habits of Highly Effective People)之后，他对其中一条建议表示异议，即管理者应当列出工作清单，并每日、每月、每年依照清单完成工作。他记得曾在一次休假时质问过作者，“我问：‘科维先生，这听起来很棒，但我的生活并非如此。5点忽然来到，我的一天便结束了。’”作者的反驳很尖刻：“记住：我们谈论的是有效人士的习惯。”
如果弗雷克雷不借助管理大师来管理克罗尔公司4000名雇员，他的灵感来自何处？他解释说：“我对取得非凡成就的人一直感兴趣。”
他提到去年合作进行筹款活动的罗伯特?斯万(Robert Swann)，斯万是独自步行到南北极的第一人。“(斯万)借助手表和指南针完成这一壮举，而不用卫星电话和全球定位系统。他穿越北冰洋步行了800英里。” 弗雷克雷说：“这类事迹就是非凡的。”
在谈到克罗尔公司的长期计划时，弗雷克雷似乎特别强调品牌甚过业务这一观点。“我认为克罗尔公司规模可以达到现在的两到三倍，”他表示：“品牌具有令人难以置信的潜力。问题在于如何发展业务，使其与品牌相称。”
风险管理是克罗尔公司的业务重心，但公司相信可在四个领域扩展市场。竞争的确存在：在法务会计业务方面，芝加哥的休伦咨询公司(Huron Consulting)构成威胁，此外还有四大会计公司。控制风险公司(Control Risks)是安全咨询市场上的最主要对手，资历认证公司“选择点”(ChoicePoint)则是另一大竞争对手。
对弗雷克雷而言，工作重点在于使克罗尔公司的不同业务更加紧密合作，并争取更多客户以使公司区别于竞争对手。但在他看来，这一切都应是直截了当的。“我不觉得存在任何法术。我们以绝佳状态进入2005年，公司有许多计划中的业务。”他表示：“剩下的便是集合团队，制定最佳策略，并全力以赴。”
