Man who changed Ferranti’s fortunes

Chronicle business editor MARTYN TORR meets the man who has devoted 10 years of his life to revive the fortunes of an iconic firm.

TERRY Scuoler has called time on his tenure in Oldham and is returning to his home in Hertfordshire.

And he does so with a heavy heart having invested more than 10 years of his professional life in helping rescue one of the borough’s industrial giants and iconic names.

The word “helped” is inserted here at Terry’s insistence — he is a team man to his Scottish roots and during the two hours we spent in his office and the canteen at Cairo House in Waterhead — including a sumptuous curry lunch — he continually emphasised the role played by the management team and staff in rescuing Ferranti Technologies Ltd.

When he arrived in Oldham, way back in June 1999, the electronics components business wasn’t ready for the knacker’s yard but it was on its last legs.

Only five years previously, his predecessor as managing director, Trevor Tuckley, had rescued the business from administration when the once mighty Ferranti empire hit not only the rocks and the skids but just about every conceivable barrier.

Trevor steadied the ship on behalf of the receivers and five years on the business was put on the market.

With his background in aviation engineering at BAE Systems, Terry and investments partners ABN Ambro took on what is best described as an ailing industrial giant with a declining business, profit and employment base.

He recalled: “When I came in, the business was on a weaker footing than I had realised. That obviously begs the question of why, then, did I want to take it on?

“Well, it also has an obvious answer — I wanted to run my own business, I wanted to be master of my own destiny. I was in my late forties and I was taking a very substantial risk, but I looked at the business and at the people and looked beyond the immediate future. Looking back I have to be honest and say that what I did was a gamble — but it was a thoroughly thought-through gamble.

“At no point did I ever think that this business could not be turned around.’

The early days were painful. Ferranti Technologies employed 210 people when Terry took on the biggest challenge of his life. Within 18 months the workforce had reduced to 150. Turnover was stagnant at £10 million.

When he leaves in the middle of the month, the employment figure will be 195 and turnover in excess of £30 million and, since, July, 2007, under new, secure ownership — Elbit Systems, based in Haifa, Israel.

ABN Ambro was closing the fund that helped Terry and his management secure the business in 1999 and wanted out. Elbit, a quoted company on the Tel Aviv and New York exchanges, was introduced by one its group companies, Elisra, with whom Ferranti Technologies had been working for six years and a deal was done.

“In the past three years they have kept every strategic promise they have made — they have been very good for this company,” said Terry as he looked nostalgically on what I can call his legacy but what this unassuming man will call his contribution.

His future lies in London, working less than an hour’s travelling distance from his home in Old Welwyn, as chief executive of the Engineering Employers’ Federation.

He has sat as a non-executive member on the EEF board since May of last year and when it announced it was seeking a new CEO his hat, so to speak, was thrown into the ring.

“I just thought to myself ‘Why not?’ — one final challenge is just what I need.”

The federation has 40 full-time staff at its headquarters in Westminster and 500 staff at regional offices. Engineering still represents 13 per cent of the country’s gross domestic products so there is a big challenge for the man from Ferranti who must also maintain the organisation’s £1 million plus turnover from commercial activities including training, health and safety, human relations and legal and consultancy and advice.

And, of course, there is attraction of living once more at home. As much as he has come to love Oldham and his apartment in Greenfield, which has been a four-nights-a-week home for 10 years, Old Welwyn, his wife and daughters beckon.

A fastidious man — his contribution to dress-down Friday is to arrive at work without his tie — he will be much missed. Not least by those he calls colleagues at Ferranti Technologies which he leaves in robust health.