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Clearly Gyllenhammar is no run-of-the-line auto magnate. He came to Volvo without any experience in manufacturing of any kind. He studied at both the University of Lund and London University, spent five months in 1960 with a law firm in Manhattan, then joined a small Swedish insurance company. He later followed his father as managing director of Skandia, Sweden's largest insurer. He is married to the daughter of the former Volvo chief executive, but no one in the company doubts that Gyllenhammar would have made it to the top without his family ties. Generally acknowledged as the country's brightest young business leader, he works a twelve-to 14-hour day and spends half his time traveling to some of the more than 100 countries where Volvo does business. Says Gyllenhammar: "If you put me in a suburb and gave me a six-hour day, I'd have a heart attack."
Company Capturer
Jim Slater was known to few outside British financial circles until Bobby Fischer threatened to boycott his world championship chess match with Boris Spassky. Slater put up the $125,000 in additional prize money that helped bring Fischer to the table. The 43-year-old investment banker has a passion for chess; he keeps a board in his London office and, until recently, had a correspondence match in progress at all times.
Slater says that chess has taught him much about winning in business. He built a fortune by becoming a master of the corporate takeover, analyzing companies' strengths and weaknesses, then moving to capture them by means of quick, surprising purchases of stock. Though his Slater, Walker Securities Ltd. was founded only eight years ago, his takeover tactics have made it one of the largest investment-banking firms in Europe. It owns major or controlling interests in 200 companies and, Slater insists, "half of them do not even know about it." Slater, Walker has assets of some $800 million; last year it earned $23 million. Slater himself has a personal net worth estimated at $20 million.
Lately he has been streamlining his approach. Now he typically buys a minority interest in a company, then acts as its banker and financial adviser in helping it expand. He collects fees from the company for his services and, usually within a year or two, sells out his appreciated holdings for a profit. When a reporter noted that all this sounds as easy as winning in a game of Monopoly, Slater replied, "Well, it is—it is."
Slater started as an accountant with Leyland Motors. In 1964 he bought a real estate company and, together with a partner, Peter Walker, renamed it Slater, Walker Securities. They sold its shares to the public and started acquiring companies. (Walker quit the firm two years ago to become Britain's Minister for the Environment.) Today Jim Slater is looking into takeovers of firms in most Common Market countries. His stake in Canadian industry is worth $50 million. He regards Canada as a test area for his planned move into takeovers in the U.S.
A Man of Much Taste