London's rising stock
It was a newly ebullient Clara Furse who greeted luncheon guests on the day the London Stock Exchange issued the parting shot that felled its would-be suitor, Australia-based Macquarie Bank. "Maybe we should discuss who we should be buying," Ms Furse was said to have told her guests, flushing after having delivered the knock-out punch against a bid for which she expressed little but contempt. Practically bouncing in her seat, Ms Furse exuded a confidence that was almost unimaginable a few years ago when the LSE was under siege from its customers, shareholders and the Office of Fair Trading.
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Ms Furse, 48, has had a rough ride as chief executive of the LSE since her appointment five years ago. The past 15 months have been spent seeing off larger and stronger competitors bent on acquiring Europe's biggest cash equities market. And while Ms Furse's exertions may have involved an unusual degree of luck - the first and probably most formidable suitor, Deutsche B?rse, was forced to retreat under a withering attack on its chief executive by its own shareholders - they surely also involve no small degree of skill, grit and determination.
Today, LSE shares are worth more than twice what they were two years ago before Deutsche B?rse made its first, public approach, and the exchange's market capitalisation has soared to more than ￡2bn. It remains an independent company and its management retains the confidence of its shareholders.
As the first female chief executive of the LSE in what is still a male-dominated world, Ms Furse was bound to stick out. The start was rocky. She became chief executive in January 2001, just as her father, whom she adored, was dying. He pronounced himself "thrilled" at her appointment. On her second day as chief executive, she excused herself to attend his funeral.
Ms Furse, who is not given to talking about her private life, had a privileged childhood. Born in Canada to Dutch parents, she is the second of five children, the first four of them girls. The siblings have chosen diverse paths - her brother is a professor of philosophy at the University of Leyden in the Netherlands while one sister runs the only premature baby unit in Palermo, Sicily - but Ms Furse has said she believes she was born to be a banker. On family holidays, she once recalled: "I was always the one looking up the exchange rates."
Her father was an engineer and ran international operations for Alcan. When she was three, the family relocated to Cali, Colombia. By the time she was five, she and her siblings were fluent in Dutch, English and Spanish. All attended the local American school. In 1969, the family relocated once again, this time to Copenhagen, and shortly after her parents decided that British boarding schools were best. From school, she attended the London School of Economics where she read, yes, economics.
Ms Furse has said the repeated upheavals of her childhood were not unsettling. "We thought we were privileged and we were," she once recalled. However, her ability to remove herself from one attachment and settle into a new one is reminiscent of what several former colleagues have described as a "compartmental" approach to her life.
"She's very disciplined, very structured, very brilliant, but not good at stepping outside the box," a former colleague from UBS said of her. "She's a process machine. If you took a staff situation to her that had an emotional problem, she would delegate."
Putting her life in separate boxes and managing each section brilliantly, former colleagues say, was how she became a successful female manager in an industry not short on testosterone.
After university, Ms Furse entered the derivatives industry, trading agricultural futures at Heinold. She eventually found herself one of two women on the floor of the London Metals Exchange. In the open-outcry system, a woman's softer voice is a disadvantage. She changed her pitch to stand out above the men.
Ms Furse has said that she has never felt overawed by her male counterparts in the City. "I don't do intimidated," she is fond of saying. In private conversations, Ms Furse remains almost frighteningly on-message, demonstrating a single-mindedness which must have seen her through the rough and tumble of the City. She spares few sympathies for her competitors and is known to revel in lurid tales of their personal foibles.
Her family is clearly in one box. Her husband of 25 years, Richard, and her three children, aged 19, 13 and six, absorb all her time outside work. During the frenetic bid talks last year between the LSE, Deutsche B?rse and Euronext, the one sacrosanct rule - "I keep family holidays as family holidays" - was bent. Therefore, victory over the LSE's pursuers, bolstered by the company's strong share price performance and growth prospects, must be all the sweeter now.
When Ms Furse arrived at the LSE, it was not a happy ship. The previous summer, Gavin Casey, her predecessor, resigned following the botched merger between the LSE and the Deutsche B?rse.
Coincidentally, the post-millennium savage bear market in equities was under way as Ms Furse came to the helm of the exchange. Months later, the LSE made its ill-fated attempt to buy Liffe, the futures exchange where she was once a board member and deputy chairman. The LSE lost the coveted acquisition to Paris-based Euronext. She and her chairman were heavily criticised for their tactics in the bid, which robbed the exchange of its best chance of getting a strong platform in the fast-growing derivatives market.
Since then, four factors have helped her to build a stronger business and, ultimately, to see off the Australian bid: first, she invested in building a high-speed electronic trading programme which has led to a surge in volumes; second, against the opposition of the City's retail stockbrokers, she broadened the range of securities traded on the electronic platform; third, she cemented the Aim market as the premier launch pad for smaller companies; and, fourth, her efforts to win foreign listings from places such as Russia and China have borne fruit. The strong climate for equities trading has helped bring about a huge re-rating of the shares in the past year, though that has also helped other exchanges.
All this has transformed the old, defensive Clara Furse into a highly rated chief executive. The challenge now is to deliver on her promises to achieve still higher trading volumes and diversify the exchange's businesses. "Hell," said one colleague. "They've seen off the Germans, they've seen off the Australians and the shares are 833p. What could be bad?"
伦敦证交所的女强人
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伦敦证券交易所(LSE)抡出最后一记重拳，击败麦格理银行(Macquarie Bank)竞购的那一天，该交易所首席执行官克拉拉?弗斯(Clara Furse)兴高采烈地向出席午宴的嘉宾致辞。据说，弗斯表示：“或许，我们该讨论收购谁了。”在对麦格理竞购报价致命一击后，弗斯显得相当兴奋。麦格理银行总部位于澳大利亚，对伦敦证交所提出收购要约。弗斯对此表示极为蔑视。
弗斯十分自信，她几乎都坐不住了；仅在数年前，伦敦证交所处在客户、股东和英国公平贸易局(Office of Fair Trading)的围攻之下，这种自信几乎令人难以想象。
弗斯今年48岁，五年前获任伦敦证交所首席执行官。从那以来，她经历一段艰难的路程。在过去的15个月中，一些规模更大、实力更强的竞争对手，纷纷出价收购这家欧洲最大的股票交易所，却都以失败告终。弗斯可能运气不同寻常，但她的运作无疑具备极高的技巧、勇气和决心。比如，德意志证交所(Deutsche B?rse)是出价收购伦敦证交所的始作俑者，可能也是实力最强的一个收购方。然而，其首席执行官在股东无情的攻击下，被迫退出竞购。
与两年前德意志证交所首次公开收购计划时相比，伦敦证交所如今的股价已经上涨一倍多，市值也已飙升至逾20亿英镑。它仍是一家独立公司，而且股东仍对管理层保持信心。
起步艰难
在这个仍被男性主导的领域里，作为伦敦证交所历史上首位女性首席执行官，弗斯势必与众不同。她的起步阶段非常艰难。弗斯于2001年1月成为首席执行官，正值她所敬重的父亲病危。这位老先生称，对女儿获任首席执行官感到“激动”。然而，弗斯就任首席执行官的第二天，就告假去参加父亲的葬礼。
不愿讲述个人生活的弗斯，拥有一个得天独厚的童年。她出生在加拿大，父母是荷兰人。家中有五个孩子，最小的是男孩，弗斯排行第二。孩子们选择的道路各不相同：她的弟弟是荷兰莱顿大学(University of Leyden)的哲学教授，而一个妹妹则在意大利西西里岛的巴勒莫经营着当地唯一的早产儿保健所。弗斯曾说过，她认为自己生来就是个银行家。弗斯有一次回忆道，在合家度假时，“查汇率的总是我。”
弗斯的父亲是一位工程师，负责加拿大铝业(Alcan)的国际业务。三岁时，弗斯全家迁居哥伦比亚的卡利。在她五岁时，几个孩子都会讲荷兰语、英语和西班牙语。他们都在当地的美国学校就读。1969年，全家再次搬家，这次迁到哥本哈根。之后不久，她父母认为英国寄宿学校是最佳选择。再后来，她考上了伦敦经济学院(London School of Economics)，没错，在那里她主修的就是经济学。
弗斯表示，童年时代的一再迁徙并不会令人不安。她回忆道：“我们认为自己是受到特殊优待的，事实的确是这样。”然而，弗斯离开一种环境、迅速融入另一种环境的能力，使人联想到她以前几位同事对她的描述：即弗斯把生活进行“区划管理”。
闯金融城
“她十分自律，有条不紊，才华横溢，可就是不擅于跳出框架，”她以前在瑞银集团(UBS)的一位同事这样说道。“她是个流程机器。如果你让她解决职员的情绪问题，她会委派别人去做。”
弗斯以前的同事们表示，她把生活划分成各个不同的部分，并出色地逐一管理，在一个男性比比皆是的行业内，这就是她何以成为一名成功女性经理人的方法。
大学毕业后，弗斯进入衍生品行业，在Heinold公司从事农产品期货交易。最后，她成为伦敦金属交易所(LME)两位女性场内交易员之一。在这种公开喊价的场所，女性柔和纤细的声音处于弱势。为了盖过男性交易员，她改变自己的音高。
弗斯曾表示，她从未被金融城的男性交易员吓倒过。她总是喜欢这么说：“没人能吓倒我。”在私下的谈话里，弗斯几乎仍然是那么话如其人，彰显出她的执著。而正是这种执著，支撑着她走过金融城里的风风雨雨。她对竞争对手毫不留情。据说，弗斯以关于对手弱点耸人听闻的传言为乐。
家庭显然是她生活的一个部分。她与丈夫理查德(Richard) 结婚25年，育有三个孩子，年纪分别为19岁、13岁和6岁。丈夫和孩子占去了她工作之外的所有时间。去年，在伦敦证交所、德意志证交所与泛欧交易所(Euronext)狂热的竞购谈判期间，“我会让家庭假日名符其实”的神圣规矩被打破了。因此，在强劲的股价和增长预期的推助下，伦敦证交所击败了收购方；对她而言，这一胜利现在更有意义。
弗斯初到伦敦证交所时，这里的问题可不少。此前夏季，伦敦证交所与德意志证交所合并计划失败，她的前任加文?凯西(Gavin Casey)随后辞职。
与此同时，弗斯接手执掌伦敦证交所之际，正值股票市场遭遇千禧年之后的严重熊市。数月之后，伦敦证交所试图竞购伦敦国际金融期货交易所(LIFFE)未果，让总部位于巴黎的泛欧交易所赢得了那笔令人垂涎的交易。她和伦敦证交所董事长为此受到指责，称他们在此次收购中采取的策略有误，导致该证交所错失一次在发展迅速的衍生品市场中获取一个强有力平台的良机。弗斯曾任伦敦国际金融期货交易所董事及副董事长。
增强伦敦证交所实力
自那以后，她从四个方面着手，增强伦敦证交所的实力，并最终击退麦格理银行的收购攻势。首先，她投资打造了一个高速电子交易系统，令伦敦证交所交易量大幅飙升；其次，她顶住金融城内散户股票经纪商的反对，拓宽电子交易平台上的证券交易种类；其三，她巩固了另项投资市场AIM作为小企业上市首选平台的地位；最后，她大力吸引俄罗斯和中国等地外国企业在伦敦上市，其努力已经结出硕果。在过去一年中，强劲的股票交易大环境使伦敦证交所的股票评级被大幅调高。当然，其它证交所也被股票交易惠及。
所有这一切，让过去那个、自卫心理极强的克拉拉?弗斯变成了一位享誉极高的首席执行官。如今，她要兑现使伦敦证交所交易量进一步扩大并实现业务多元化的承诺。这是弗斯面临的挑战。一位同事说：“已经赶跑了德国人，逼退了澳大利亚人，目前股价达到833便士。还有什么做不到的吗？”
