Fortune Favours a Bieler by Philippe Bieler

Fortune Favours a Bieler:  Adventures in Life, Love, and Business is the colourful story of Philippe Bieler’s life and his long journey through the eventful twentieth century and beyond. It begins with his escape from war-torn Europe in 1941. Hand in hand with a number of prominent trailblazers, he went on to carve out a career in industry, banking, farming, and even politics. The tale transitions from aluminum in Canada to cranberries in Quebec and vineyards in France. Frequent failures are compensated by good cheer and some impressive successes.

Read an excerpt from this new book below.

Chapter 8- Singer: 1964-1969

On return from our honeymoon, Faith and I settled in an old apartment building in the shopping district of Montreal. Marc had sold me his share of Gregg Hill in order to purchase a large apple orchard. I was missing Marc’s herd of cattle at Gregg Hill, and he was enjoying his new apple-farming venture though concerned about the growing apple concentrate shipments from Poland and elsewhere. I joined him in the creation of an apple juice company to help maintain his prices. We were still recovering from the shock of Jack Kennedy’s assassination, but delighted with Pierre Trudeau’s rapid rise on the Canadian political scene. Tim Porteous and Donald MacSween had both been offered important positions in Ottawa.

The venture into cable television turned out to be the best part of my years at Woods Gordon. The management consulting business boomed, and Woods Gordon hired some more competent colleagues who had years of management experience. I had become respected by the partners and found myself advising clients well beyond my own experience and judgment. I spent six months in Toronto helping restructure the nursing function at Toronto’s leading hospital. I had no knowledge of hospital administration, let alone the medical profession. It didn’t make sense; it was time to review my professional goals.

As my experiences in engineering, stockbroking, and management consulting had not proven too satisfying, I began to search for yet another new direction. I was reminded that the Gazette had been a good source in the past. Perhaps I should look more carefully at the recruitment ads. I noted that the Singer Corporation was looking for an assistant to the president of the Canadian division. A senior management position in Montreal with a leading international company might be an answer. They responded immediately and arranged an interview in New York.

Figure 1. Miami University Libraries – Digital Collections.

Singer’s headquarters were on the thirtieth floor of the Rockefeller Center. On arrival, I was told that in the absence of the Canadian president, I would be interviewed by the company’s director of long-range planning, a Mr Millard Pryor. I was surprised to find a charming and welcoming man, not much older than me. He explained that Singer’s new president, Donald Kircher, had just established a corporate long-range planning function and that he had been asked to put it in place. The Canadian division had been chosen as the guinea pig, and he was recruiting the right person to become both assistant to the Canadian president and a member of the planning committee in the corporate headquarters, reporting to him. I was most impressed with everything, and especially with Millard himself. My colleagues at Woods Gordon were surprised by my departure, but I don’t think very disturbed.

I had a shock on my first day at Singer, as I was told that Donald Kircher had decided to replace the aging Canadian president with Jack McConnaughy, the current chief financial officer of the US division. Millard assured me that Jack would be a far superior boss and more knowledgeable about long-range planning.

Jack, barely in his forties, had the reputation of being a good leader and a brilliant financial executive. He welcomed me with open arms and said that we would bring the key executives closer together and install clear and strict financial controls. Also, he was keen on long-range planning.

After almost ten years of distancing myself from my humdrum professional environment, I was at last motivated. Jack thought I needed some line experience and sent me to sell and repair sewing machines in the Montreal suburbs. An old family friend was shocked that my mother’s son had come to repair her sewing machine. As I moved up the ladder to become a store manager, I was confronted with some new challenges. I fired a dishonest mechanic, and he was so angry that he got up and threw a sewing machine at me, which narrowly missed my head. I learned a lot during that first year, and even Donald Kircher thought that some of my long-term ideas were useful. The Canadian division soon generated its first profit in years.

Faith and I enjoyed a quiet life in Montreal, seeing a good deal of my family and friends and resting from our hectic trips to Stowe on weekends. Faith became assistant to the leading Canadian expert on dyslexia. We were blessed with Lilli’s birth in 1966.

Figure 2. Montreal. Sun Life Building, Montreal, Que., the Tichnor Brothers Collection, Boston Public Library.

Montreal’s Expo took place in 1967, prompting the arrival of the beautiful people of the world and coincidently a sudden announcement that we would be moving to Europe. Singer’s European division had been losing its market share and generating substantial losses. Kircher had removed Singer’s European president and asked Jack to replace him. Jack asked me to join him.

Faith was as excited about the prospects as I was, and we decided to have a final celebration before making the big move. Ben Webster suggested we come and visit him in Bermuda, and Faith’s parents offered us a booking at the Elbow Beach Surf Club. It turned out to be a grand and colourful Christmas holiday. We swam in the ocean, we enjoyed the feasts at the club, and I even played squash with Ben.

We soon packed our bags, said farewell to Montreal, and arrived in Great Britain.

Our first professional task on arrival was to establish a European headquarters. Jack had entrusted me with deciding where it should be. He had been assuming that I would choose Geneva and was surprised when I suggested London, with its English-speaking advantage and its proximity to financial institutions. We chose a new building in Ealing, a middle-class western suburb that was close to the airport and on the route to the beautiful countryside of Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire.

INSERT FIGURE 3

Planning

Figure 4. Singer’s main factory in Clydebank.

Jack’s success in Canada had been based on close relations with the managers and an excellent and detailed financial reporting system. We implemented a similar program, and we had the additional advantage of directing Singer’s most important manufacturing operations. Jack focused on developing a relationship with the managers and improving the product line. I was essentially the social messenger, promoting Jack’s strategies to the general managers and, with the help of Millard in New York, maintaining good relations with the corporate vice-presidents.

***

London presented Faith and me with a considerable challenge. I had no experience with British business, and neither of us had any close friends living nearby. We found a nice flat in Kensington. I took the Underground to work, and Faith pushed the pram to Waitrose on Cromwell Road, and meanwhile, we missed the countryside. During a laundry room chat, one of our neighbours mentioned to Faith that we should meet a schoolmate who lived in Buckinghamshire. Within a few weeks we had met Gilly Newbery, and she found us a perfect rental in the next village. Unfortunately, the owner wouldn’t rent to foreigners. The principle annoyed me, and I decided to arrange the help of a proper Englishman. My old friend Marilyn Kearley was always talking about the influence wielded by her father, Lord Devonport, so I decided to call him. He was receptive to our wishes and invited us to his rural retreat. We spent a lovely evening, interrupted only by a scramble to find the proper dinner attire and by a call from Gilly telling us that she had found a much superior house. Lord Devonport smiled and gave his approval for our eventual purchase of Flint House. Gilly became Faith’s best friend.

Flint House was a charming nineteenth-century house in the midst of the Chiltern Hills on the outskirts of the tiny village of Ibstone. Faith referred to the children’s screams across the street from the village school as “music to her ears.” To the west was the charming Wormsley Park, the future residence of the Gettys, and to the east was David Brown’s immense estate, where many of Britain’s leading equestrian events were held. It was English countryside at its best and an exceptionally simple commute to London. Barbara Castle, the labour minister at the time, lived in the village and had influenced the construction of the newest British motorway, the M40. It meant a thirty-minute commute to Singer’s future headquarters in Ealing. Later on, our neighbour Angela Abecassis, David Brown’s daughter, was to drive Lilli to her boarding school in her Aston Martin at 125 miles an hour.

France was Singer’s biggest European division, and it had been run by several generations of the Ehrsam family just as if it had been their own firm. Jack asked me to focus on finding ways to reunite the division with its parent. Jacques, the current Ehrsam general manager, admired Jack’s new programs and was I think relieved to eliminate his relationship with the distant New York managers. So, having just arrived in Britain, I was already spending all my time in Paris. Jacques was an intelligent and charming man, and I enjoyed working with him. I never forgot the highlight of my stay. Following an invitation to visit Jacques’s friend Charles Ritz, we climbed the stairs up to his hotel’s huge attic. There in front of us, endless electric train lines were laid out. The sound and whistles of an approaching train would be heard before an engine appeared from behind a seventeenth-century beam. We didn’t sell many sewing machines that day, but I got a lot closer to our general manager.

Jack was worried about the German business and couldn’t understand the language, so he decided I should replace the general manager. As my German was almost non-existent, I enrolled in a crash Berlitz course. Several weeks later I reported to Jack and with a smile he said: “Sorry, Phil, but Germany will have to wait as there’s some important business in Spain, and I would like you to go to Madrid to meet with our general manager.”

Not many hours later I found myself on the night train to Madrid, loaded down with Spanish newspapers. I knew no Spanish but realized it was easier to read the front page of the Spanish paper than the Berliner Zeitung I had left behind! On arrival in Madrid the next morning, I was surprised to be greeted by an armed guard. He took my bags and led me to a crowded exit. I asked him where he was taking me, and he replied, “The American ambassador is waiting for you, Mr Kennedy.” I had been mistaken for Bobby, once again.

The Spanish general manager explained that Singer was losing market share to two Spanish competitors. He thought the time was right to try to acquire the Sigma Sewing Machine Company, but his superiors in New York had been unable to get sufficient valid financial information. Their only source was Singer’s sales manager, a former Sigma employee. It struck me that I should try to meet with this man and unearth any useful leads.

I flew up to Barcelona to meet him and we had a good chat, during which he suggested that I join him on a trip he was making across the country. It was an unusual and very interesting month, and I gathered a good deal of basic information about Sigma. Kircher and the Singer staff were reassured, and were about to engage the legal team, when somehow my trip was discovered. The Sigma shareholders had been warned, and decided to do another deal.

And there were storm clouds on the horizon. Donald Kircher’s executive vice-president, Al di Scipio, who was the titular head of sewing-machine-related businesses, convinced Kircher that the European factories should report directly to him. That sharply undercut the European division’s profitability. Jack had essentially been robbed of his masterful turn-around of the factories. He asked me to join him on a visit to New York to attempt to reverse Al’s takeover. Jack was to see Kircher while I talked to the staff vice-presidents. We arrived at headquarters at nine one morning, and by noon Jack had resigned and I had been fired for insubordination. I took the elevator down to the twenty-fifth floor and sought refuge in Millard’s office.

Millard was dumbfounded. He was an admirer of both Jack and his boss. A few months later he learned what had happened.

Jack had been meeting with Wilbur Ross, a partner at Rothschild’s New York office. Wilbur was doing a deal that involved the merger of several companies in a new pollution-control business called Peabody Galion and was looking for a CEO. Jack had the qualifications, and the circumstances presented a good excuse for Jack. He resigned, and di Scipio refused to retain his henchman. I was fired. Eighteen months later, Kircher fired di Scipio and wrote me a nice letter. “I am personally sorry that you are no longer here, Donald P. Kircher, President,” he explained. Jack remained a friend and adviser. Had Wilbur not recruited Jack, I might have ended my career, many years later, as a boring vice president of Singer.

Philippe Bieler is an entrepreneur whose career focused on the restructuring of businesses in Canada, the US, and Europe. The author of Onward, Dear Boys: A Family Memoir of the Great War, he lives in Wales.