Flying High, My Story Read online

  Part of getting that deal was down to showmanship, and wanting to prove my original bank wrong. I had been with NatWest bank since my Epsom days but had only picked them because they sponsored cricket (a branding lesson which wasn’t lost on me when it came to AirAsia).

  They were one of the first banks I approached for a mortgage but the bank manager just laughed at me. I don’t necessarily blame him now but I was really angry and decided that if they didn’t want my business I’d take it somewhere else. I was told that Coutts was the most prestigious bank in England so, wanting to show my importance to the world and prove a point, I tracked down the nearest branch of Coutts to the university. I’d heard that it was almost impossible to get an account if your family hadn’t banked with them before or if you weren’t a member of the Royal Family – they are the Queen’s bankers after all.

  A week after I’d decided NatWest had failed the test, I walked to the Fleet Street branch of Coutts. There was a doorman stationed outside – a Coutts tradition – and I felt I had to make my case to him before I was allowed in. Then, inside the wood-panelled office, I sat in front of an intimidating elderly man in a dark grey suit and tails, the epitome of a banker. I told him about all of the business ideas Mick and I had dreamed up over the years in Notting Hill. I must have come across as determined because I ended up with a Coutts bank account and, most importantly, a chequebook. In the eighties, Coutts’ chequebooks were bigger than any other bank’s, which always impressed people. When I got to Streatham, I pulled out the chequebook and I could see the broker’s expression change: this guy is a player, it said. So by the time I was twenty, I owned my own home. I have been buying and selling property regularly ever since.

  At some point over the course of the three years, I must have turned up at university because I remember sitting my finals and scraping a pass grade. Once again, my dad was getting anxious back in Malaysia. He had sold the house we grew up in, in part to finance my studies, and, by now frustrated with me, issued an ultimatum.

  ‘Anthony, either you study to qualify as an accountant or you come home and work in Kuala Lumpur. I won’t continue to fund you to do nothing.’

  That did the trick. I immediately enrolled to study accountancy at the London School of Accountancy (LSA) on Marylebone Road. To become an accountant I had to pass a number of exams. But at least it would mean a guaranteed job; accountants are always in demand. I didn’t take my studies seriously there either but somehow I managed to pass what were called my Level 2 exams. I then decided to go for my Level 3, which would put me in a better position for a job, so I signed up to the Emile Woolf School. The lectures were the first (and last) in my higher education career that I enjoyed – possibly because I could see how the skills and knowledge I was acquiring might be used in the real world. I instinctively understood the financial management modules in particular.

  Even so, I found myself with a month to go before my Level 3 exams in a blind sweat. If I didn’t pass I’d be going back in shame to Kuala Lumpur, leaving my London life behind for ever. I locked myself away at the University of London’s Senate House Library and worked from 9.00 in the morning until it closed. Three months later, I was in my aunt’s house in Aldermaston when the results came through. I was so nervous that I ran to the bottom of the garden to open the envelope alone.

  PASS

  PASS

  PASS

  PASS

  I was elated. I had qualified as an accountant: the first time I’d achieved anything academically.

  Dad was chuffed too when I told him the news – he hadn’t thought much of my degree, but this was an achievement. The next stop was to enter the world of work.

  I applied for jobs at small companies, got several offers and settled on an accounting firm called Brewers. They loved me, but I hated it. It was the worst job I’ve ever had. From the moment I arrived I could see my life stretching ahead like one long boring prison sentence. I was the junior auditor and basically my job was to photocopy. The hardest part of it was filling out the timesheets because you had to account for every fifteen minutes of your day – most of the time I did nothing so it was a challenge to think of things to write. Within a few weeks I came to the decision that I would look for an accountancy job in the music industry. I wrote to every record company asking about positions there and every single one rejected me.

  I persevered – as I always do – and eventually an ad appeared in the newspaper for a job as a financial manager at Virgin Television. I applied, thinking that it was my last shot. When the letter arrived inviting me for an interview I felt that my life was at last about to get better.

  By this time, at the end of 1987, I was married, I owned a house which I was renting out and I was a qualified accountant, a career that wouldn’t bring disgrace to my family. My now ex-wife and I had met during my party years and settled down quickly in Muswell Hill, but in order to respect her privacy I won’t go into further details.

  So my Wilderness Years were the making of me. Epsom had been character-building but I was living in a protected environment – food, shelter and money were all things that I didn’t really need to worry about. Leaving school and striking out without support taught me some fundamentals about the world and how I wanted to live my life. I learned that if you want something, you have to keep at it until you succeed. I’d never have got the mortgage if I hadn’t chased down every lead and written to every broker I could find until I met the guy at Irish Life. Sometimes you have to put on a bit of a show – or in this case, a Coutts account – if you want to reach something that’s meant to be beyond you. I also grasped that I’m a very hands-on learner. Being told something in a dry, academic situation doesn’t appeal to me. I’ve got to see how it works and the effect it has in the real world before I fully understand it.

  I also learned about the importance of listening and talking to people with genuine interest. You could drop me anywhere in the world and I’d immediately start chatting to anybody and everybody around me.

  In business, and in life, getting on with people is about making them feel comfortable and finding common ground. Knowing something about their culture helps a lot and it’s a shame too many businesses embrace only their own national culture and are narrow-minded in their outlook. Business is global now. My travels went a long way to ready me for business adventures still to come.

  4. My Life in Music

  Soundtrack: ‘Thank You for the Music’ by ABBA

  The interview at Virgin was very short.

  ‘Why do you think you’re suitable for this job?’

  I talked about my love of music, how I was impressed by Richard Branson’s approach to business and the success of Virgin overall, but I had nothing to point to that I had achieved that would make them think I could add anything to the job or the company.

  ‘Well, that’s all very well, Mr Fernandes, but what experience do you have that makes you qualified to work here?’

  That was the problem, I didn’t. I left the interview crushed. This had been my one chance to get close to the music business and I’d messed it up. A lifetime of work at Brewers stretched before me. As I stood in the foyer deciding what to do, Richard Branson walked in. It was a true Sliding Doors moment – my life could take one of two directions depending on how I dealt with this. I realized I could be a pussy, smile at him and walk on, or I could actually say something to him that would get his attention and make him interested in me. So I said, ‘Hey, Richard, I’m from Malaysia.’

  That was enough of a hook for him to try to find out more.

  ‘Why are you here?’

  ‘Came for a job but I messed the interview up.’

  ‘Oh.’ He looked me up and down. ‘Let’s have a coffee.’

  It’s hard to overestimate the importance of that moment on the rest of my life.

  Since then, one of my guiding principles has been that if you see a chance, a flicker of an opportunity, you have to take it. If nothing comes of it you haven’t
lost anything; but you might just change your life if you have a go. If I hadn’t stopped Richard that day I’d never have got into the music business, and who knows what path I would have taken.

  Over coffee we chatted about Malaysia, my family, my passion for music and about what I wanted to do with my life. Once again all those fantasy businesses I’d dreamed up with Mick McBryde proved useful.

  At the end of twenty minutes, Richard said: ‘There’s something about you. I’ll talk to the head of department and you can have another interview.’ He was as good as his word and I found myself working at Virgin TV a month later.

  Richard Branson’s approach impressed me. That style of going with your gut – thinking that as long as someone fits the culture, they’ll find a role – is something I have followed in business.

  At Virgin Television I was given the job of accountant. Looking back, Virgin was definitely ahead of its time. There were three parts to the TV arm: a post-production company (called 525 – where I ended up working), a design company and Music Box, a competitor to MTV that changed into something called Super Channel, a satellite channel intended to compete against Sky (and co-owned with a lot of the ITV companies); but while the idea was visionary, the technology lagged so far behind that you’d have needed a satellite dish as big as a house to receive it. I think it was the first company to have CGI graphics as well – again, the computer was as big as a block of flats but the idea was inspired.

  I loved the culture at Virgin – so refreshing after the stuffiness of Brewers. No one gave a damn what I looked like or when I turned up to work. It was friendly and inclusive, and the pace was laid-back but creative. After six months I was spotted by the head of 525 and moved there as financial manager. The atmosphere was so chilled that 525’s cash book had ‘marijuana’ as an entry, and the balance sheet didn’t balance! I’m not sure if the two were connected.

  This was a radical culture for the eighties, even if now it seems sane and rational. There was also the inspiring ‘screw it, let’s do it’ approach to innovation. Even today I come across companies that get so bogged down in spreadsheets, projections and forecasts, they sap the life out of new projects or initiatives – I call it ‘analysis paralysis’. But often if it feels right, it is right … no amount of Excel-pounding will get you to a better decision. Virgin certainly planted the seed of that approach and attitude all those years ago.

  At first I couldn’t make head or tail of the books; I would ring up my girlfriend and ask her questions about what numbers should go where. Then, one day, everything clicked. I started on a full clean-up of the accounts, which I enjoyed – much to my surprise.

  I had been there two years when Richard announced that he was interested in starting an airline. And, though it makes us both laugh now, I thought he’d lost it. I was convinced he was going to sell the music business to finance it, which I would have hated. So I started to look around for another job – although my role in the Virgin Group was on the television side, I was still hoping to work in the music business eventually. If Virgin sold its music business then I would be even further away from my dream career.

  I was skimming the jobs in The Times one morning on my way to work. It was busy on the tube and I hadn’t been able to open the newspaper fully because there were too many people wedged around me. I was about to turn to the sports section when I saw the Warner Music logo. Warner was the epicentre of the music business as far as I was concerned. So many of my most-played records came from Warner – Chaka Khan, Fleetwood Mac, Joni Mitchell, Madonna and Prince. I also knew a bit about Steve Ross, the CEO for many years. His leadership style – a hands-off approach that devolved responsibility down the ranks to people who knew the job inside out – was ahead of its time. He was also a visionary within TV, creating channels that served a particular interest and audience, MTV, Nickelodeon, etc. Finally, industry legends like Mo Ostin and Ahmet Ertegun, who’d found and nurtured so much musical talent, were embedded within Warner. Between them they had provided the soundtrack to my life so far, including Ray Charles and all the old Atlantic soul records. Warner probably contributed 75 per cent of my music collection. I got off the tube at the next stop to study the advert.

  The role was financial analyst in the Warner International division – a step down from the financial manager position at Virgin, but I didn’t care. I got an interview through a headhunter and found myself sitting in front of a man called Don Sweeney, who was the assistant financial controller for Warner Worldwide in their Baker Street offices. The job was to write reports on the financial performance of each country in your allotted territory.

  I celebrated big style when I was offered the job. I was still young – twenty-six or so – and had made it into the music business. Granted, I was in finance rather than A&R; but I’ve always believed that if you want to work in a particular industry you just need to get your foot in the door. It doesn’t matter about the specific job because once you’re on the inside you can figure your way forward from a much stronger position. Something, by the way, I’ve always encouraged in AirAsia.

  From day one I got really stuck into it. The countries in my portfolio were Scandinavia, Italy and Germany. I read my predecessor’s reports and had a look at what some of the other analysts were doing and it struck me that they were just parroting the obvious – putting into words what the numbers were already showing. There was no real analysis, just commentary. So I started to dig into the stories behind the numbers. I’d fly out to Stockholm or Rome and try to understand what was going on in the local market so that the reports would be more useful.

  The perks were fantastic. I would drop into the marketing department and walk away with CDs that hadn’t even been released yet; my music collection was growing faster than ever. And tracks were always playing in the office so it was a perfect place for me to be.

  But the work I was actually paid to do – writing these pointless reports – was driving me mad. Even with the extra information and insight I was getting from people ‘on the front line’, the reports looked like something from the sixties. I went to my boss and asked whether I could change the format and style, knowing it was a big risk. He was adamant that I shouldn’t; it was the way it had always been done and it was how the president wanted to see the numbers presented and analysed. I still thought it was backward.

  I bought a copy of Harvard Graphics spreadsheet software, added graphs and charts to my report, and included extra local market analysis and insights. I sent it out late one evening, thinking that I’d be sacked as soon as my boss saw it. I loved being in the music business but, frankly, my day-to-day job sucked. So I figured I had nothing to lose in trying something different.

  The next day I got into the office and saw my whole department crowded around one computer staring at the screen. I approached and realized they were looking at my report. I thought, ‘OK, that really is it. I’d better collect my things and leave.’ I asked why they were all looking at it.

  ‘The chairman says it’s the best he’s ever seen,’ one said.

  Stephen Shrimpton – number two at Warner Music at the time – asked to see me. Stephen was already a legend at Warner and he rose to become chairman and CEO of Warner International; he was also an intimidating guy. He was known to have a temper and would scream, shout and throw things at people, in the way that senior people could get away with back then. But Stephen took a real liking to me.

  Some actions in your career either give you a leg up or hold you back; sending out that report was a moment when I got a massive boost.

  Just before I had sent the report I’d had a holiday in Malaysia. While I was there I had dropped in on the CEO of Warner Malaysia, an Austrian guy, Günther Zeiter. When we met we’d talked about the possibility of my returning to Malaysia to help out there. So when I saw Stephen we talked about Malaysia and he suggested that one day I could go back there as general manager. Two years later he mentioned it again and I leapt at the chance – I didn’t bother
to ask about the ‘package’, I just said ‘yes’. There are moments when you’ve got to seize the opportunity presented to you and Stephen wasn’t someone, I guessed, who’d be impressed by hesitation. So I went for it and it changed my life.

  My then wife and I packed up and travelled to Malaysia in style – I bought first-class round-the-world tickets with Continental Airlines. We flew to New York, Florida, San Francisco and then to Malaysia. It was an emotional departure from Gatwick because I’d always thought I’d end up living in England permanently – I’d felt at home there since a few weeks into my first term at Epsom. I had so enjoyed the English way of life and sense of humour; my friends even called me ‘The Brown Englishman’ because I had adopted so many of their ways.