Peter Sutherland: The charming enforcer
Peter Sutherland has never walked away from a fight. As a rugby prop forward and a barrister in Dublin, as a European Commissioner and as a crusader for trade liberalisation, the Irishman has always challenged his adversaries head-on. Most of the time, he has emerged on the winning side.
So when Lord Browne was summoned to Mr Sutherland’s office a week ago, BP’s respected chief executive probably knew what was coming. Mr Sutherland, chairman of the oil group for the past nine years, had lost patience with persistent suggestions that Lord Browne might stay on beyond his scheduled retirement date.
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There are several different accounts of what the two men said to each other. But a few days later Lord Browne publicly confirmed that, as expected, he would be stepping down in 2008. Mr Sutherland had won again.
Mr Sutherland’s influence is hard to pin down. He is often described as a consummate politician, though he has never held elected office and lost the only election he ever fought, for a seat in the Irish parliament in 1973. He is a cigar-smoking industrialist with powerful positions at BP and Goldman Sachs, yet has never run a company. He is on first-name terms with ministers and leaders of state around the world even though it is more than a decade since he left his last big international job at the World Trade Organisation.
What is clear, however, is that he has considerable clout in the sphere where governments, global corporations and international organisations meet and overlap. Indeed, last week he was as likely to be found discussing the failure of the Doha round of trade negotiations as the management turmoil at BP.
People who have worked with Mr Sutherland say his style can be traced back to his days as a young barrister in Dublin. He is quick to grasp an issue and overcomes opposition with force of personality and strength of argument, laced with a dash of humour and charm. He inspires loyalty in those around him and expects their loyalty in return. However, if he feels a confrontation is necessary he will not walk away from it.
“When he decides to be difficult he can be very difficult and extremely direct,” says one person who knows him well.
This approach was perhaps best suited to his spell as director-general of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which later became the WTO. During less than two years in charge he charmed, cajoled and bullied governments into signing an agreement that brought down trade barriers and provided the legislative basis for globalisation.
Mr Sutherland would be the first to admit he did not do it alone. The previous director-general, Arthur Dunkel, had overseen much of the detailed preparation but lacked the international clout to engineer a compromise. But the European Union and the US were known to be broadly in favour of a deal, so Mr Sutherland made direct contact with ministers and heads of government
