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Challenger syndicate leaders Posted: Tuesday September 24, 2002 3:13 PM
AUCKLAND, New Zealand (AP) -- Biographies of challenger syndicate leaders at the America's Cup. Challenger series racing begins Oct. 1: Ernesto Bertarelli, Alinghi, Switzerland: In 1996, Bertarelli, 38, succeeded his father as the head of a small family owned pharmaceutical concern, first turned it to profit, then transformed it into Europe's largest biotechnology concerns. In 2000 the company, Serono, went public with a US$2 billion global share issue. Bertarelli is a graduate from Babson College and Harvard University's business school. More than an adept businessman, Bertarelli is an accomplished sailor, a four-time winner of the Bol d'Or and of the 12-meter and Farr 40 World Championships. He will likely navigate on his own boat during the challenger races. ---------- Peter Harrison, GBR Challenge, Britain: It is due to Harrison's personal vision -- and his personal fortune -- that Britain has its first America's Cup syndicate since 1987. Harrison was born in Cheshire, England in 1937 and first qualified as a chartered accountant in 1959 before joining the Ford Motor Company in 1961. He moved in 1967 to Firth Cleveland, London and in 1971 to the Crest Nicholson Group where he managed a number of group companies. In 1976 Harrison took a 25 percent holding in the ailing marine instruments company Chernikeeff and in 1979 pledged his family home to buy the remaining 75 percent. In 2000, Harrison completed the sale of Chernikeeff to Dimension Data, having turned the company into a pioneer in the field of computer inter-networking, the internet and e-commerce. He formed the GBR Challenge in Cowes in January 2001. ---------- Xavier De Lesquen, Le Defi, France: De Lesquen, 39, the general director of Le Defi, is a former French naval officer, a naval college engineer and, for five years, a member of the Council of State, the supreme advisory body to the French Parliament. He is a graduate of the Ecole Nationale d'Administration, a college for senior civil servants. In 1996 he joined Mission Deniau, a group formed to study the possibility of a French America's Cup challenge. The work of that group led to the Le Defi challenge in 1999-2000 from which the latest French challenge has bloomed. He has been general director of Le Defi since 1999 and provides management expertise within the current challenge, working closely with honorary president Pascal Herold, technical director Luc Gellusseau and sports director Pierre Mas. ---------- Vincenzo Onorato, Mascalzone Latino, Italy: Onorato, 45, comes from a family and a tradition of Neopolitan shipbuilders and sailors. He operates Moby Lines, a Milan-based shipping company which builds and runs freighters, passenger ferries and cruise ships. His home, with his wife Lara Ciribi and small child, is the Italian island of Elba from which his syndicate has sprung. Onorato began to sail as a child aboard his father's cutter Alcyon, eventually acquired boats of his own and raced them with great skill. His Mascalzone Latino team -- the name translates as Latin Rascals -- is the only one in Auckland not formed specifically for the America's Cup. The team has already enjoyed considerable success in European and world events. ---------- Craig McCaw, OneWorld, Seattle, United States: It may be ironic that the America's Cup, a trophy sought by wealthy men much more for prestige rather than profit, wields an attraction over the reclusive Craig McCaw. McCaw has never been one to welcome the spotlight, to court publicity and it is said among the highest executives of his telecommunications empire, only a handful know him well. He seldom grants interviews nor reads his own press reports and might shun his reputation as the man who invented the cellphone industry. McCaw began in the early 1980s and after graduating from Stanford University to accumulate wireless licences and to acquire existing cellular companies. He had previously, while still in college, built his father's cable television business into a thriving regional player. In 1994 he sold his company to AT & T for US$13 billion but retained valuable equity links with Nextel and Nextlink Communications. ---------- Larry Ellison, Oracle, San Francisco, United States: No one quite knows how to take Larry Ellison, the selfmade head of the Oracle Corporation and the man who revolutionized the business database. He rose from a lower middle-class background in Chicago to become one of the world's wealthiest men. He left the University of Illinois without a degree and worked in several high-tech companies in California before forming his own company, with Bob Miner and Ed Oates, in 1976. His first client was the CIA. In 1981 the company, RSI, released version two of what was then called the Oracle database. By 1984 sales had reached US$24 million and by 1990 the company was worth US$970 million. ---------- Patrizio Bertelli, Prada, Italy: Bertelli was a shoemaker, the owner of a small Tuscan leather concern, when he met and married Miuccia Prada, a political science graduate. His business acumen -- he is described as autocratic and visionary -- and Prada's fashion savvy created one of the world's premium fashion labels. Prada took over a business started by her grandfather who, from 1913, had sold walrus leather suitcases from a shop in Milan's Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II. The success of her understated nylon tote bag led to the founding of 100 boutiques worldwide. In 1983 Prada began making footwear and in 1989 clothes. By 2000 and under Bertelli's stewardship, the company had earnings of US$1.42 billion and profits of US$265 million. ---------- Dennis Conner, Stars & Stripes, New York: Conner is unlike many of his neighbors along Auckland's Syndicate Row -- much more a sailor than a businessman. His enthusiasm for the America's Cup has carried him through nine campaigns since 1974. Born in 1942 and raised in San Diego, California, he joined the San Diego Yacht Club when he was 11. He proved himself a gifted sailor, winning the world Star-class championship in 1971 and 1977, the Congressional Cup 1973 and 1975 and helming the U.S. boat that won a bronze medal in the Tempest class at the 1976 Olympics. Conner is more closely associated with the America's Cup than any other sailor. He was at the helm of the defender Liberty when Australia wrested the America's Cup from the New York Yacht Club in 1983, ending their 132-year tenure. He recovered the Cup only four years later, at his first attempt, and defended it against New Zealand in 1988. He lost the Cup to New Zealand off San Diego in 1995 and, through his Team Dennis Conner -- as Stars & Stripes -- challenged without success in 1999-2000. Conner is known as a fiery character, little given to diplomacy, but he has also used his time in Auckland to raise money for charities and has freely passed on his knowledge to thousands of young sailors. ---------- Mats Johansson/Jan Stenbeck, Victory Sweden: Mats Johansson has been thrust into the role of project manager for the Victory Challenge after the death by heart attack in Paris on Aug. 19 of syndicate founder Jan Stenbeck. Stenbeck, 59, had been the driving force behind the Swedish challenger just as he had driven an inherited Swedish Steel and Forest conglomerate into a new and more profitable media field. He had broad television and newspaper interests throughout Europe. Johansson, 45, has taken Stenbeck's mantle, although the founder's eldest son, Hugo, has also joined to see his father's dream fulfilled. Johansson has been one of the world's top Star class sailors for the past 15 years and a Swedish Olympian on two occasions. He began sailing at 13, learning from his father and has turned in recent years to sailing education, helping youngsters progress from dinghies to keelboats. |
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