Paul Dollman might have had need of a few drams of his favourite Highland malt nine months ago.
Since John Menzies, his employer, had scrapped the role of chief executive in 2006, it was down to him, as both finance director and the man in charge of corporate head office, to get the business out of the mess it was in.
The share price of the 140-year-old, Edinburgh-based newspaper distribution and aviation business had plunged from 560p to 43p. The group had been laid low by its huge debt mountain and by a dizzying fall in demand for airline travel and freight services — Menzies provides ground and cargo handling for airports worldwide — and falling magazine and newspaper circulation.
“It was just an awful, awful situation,” Karl Green, the Altium analyst, said. “There was too much debt and it wasn’t at all clear they would be able to get it down quickly. It was about as big a test as you could get.”
The share price has since soared back to 348p as Mr Dollman and his two managing directors — David McIntosh (distribution) and Craig Smyth (aviation) — set about selling and leasing back aviation equipment, offloading freehold properties and cutting costs.
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Mr Dollman, 53, was able to underline the group’s recovery yesterday with a trading statement that declared full-year profits would be “well above market expectations”. The distribution unit is benefiting from an easing in the rate of decline in magazine circulation, as well as from new contracts won from Dawson Holdings, a rival that had to put its own distribution business into administration.
Mr Dollman’s task may have been made easier by Menzies’ unusual collegiate corporate structure. He has equal ranking on the board with the two divisional heads but is in charge of capital allocation between the two. “It works very well,” he has said. “The three of us get on and it’s cheaper than having a chief executive.”
He joined Menzies seven years ago from William Grant & Sons, the privately owned whisky distiller that produces Glenfiddich and The Balvenie. As would be expected for an alumnus of the University of St Andrews, he is a keen golfer. But the past few months can have left little time for that.
The expectation of many is that Menzies will eventually split its two, unrelated businesses. But Mr Dollman says that this will not be necessary so long as the company’s share price reflects the true value of both halves.