Head of a global enterprise, hailed as the saviour of at least two national railways and an Ivy League alumnus
it was more than daunting to sit down for an interview with Henry Posner III and feel I had anything like an intelligent enough question to ask him.
However Henry is not what you might expect from that brief CV, he is frank and open about his methods of business, his beliefs and his failures. He is driven by a desire to innovate, find the most unusual niches and see how to make them work
In 1995 at the dawn of the privatisation of the UKs railways Henry was invited over to share his expertise because it was widely believed that the North American model could be replicated here. It couldnt for freight he tells me, in fact what the UK has done for passenger could instead by exported back to the US. But I learned a lot and met some good people.
One of whom was Adrian Shooter, and they first worked together when Adrian joined him as Special Advisor on the HamburgKoln Express. This is where one of Henrys tenets comes into play finding the people you want to work with. His father gave him a maxim: it is better to be in a bad business with a good partner than vice versa. And that means sticking together through the bad times. An example is the Iowa Interstate Railroad of which Henrys company now owns 100%. This had become so marginal that at one point the shareholders were digging deep in their own pockets to keep it going but then came bio-ethanol. Suddenly from loss to profit but only because the team had stuck together through the bad times and been prepared to accept failure.
Henry is not in business for the short haul or quick returns. This is the true American business model, the complete opposite to Wall Street. It is solid and reassuring Henry doesnt want to take the easy buck, he wants to find the real value in something. Where others would fight shy of involvement in Europes railways, Henry is actively investing in France, Belgium and Germany right now and still seeking other ventures in what many believe to be a dying market. But somehow he is finding the niches that exist and the profit that lies within them.
And so to Vivarail
it was a chance to work with Adrian again, he says, when he approached me with the D-Train proposal I could see it was a solid opportunity but also a chance to work with some interesting partners. Logically the D-Trains make good commercial sense and we have total belief that Adrian and his team can make them work.
This quiet man is a risk-taker extraordinaire and who would like to bet against him?
