TORONTO — Paul Tellier’s mission at Bombardier Inc. is much more daunting than simply piloting the transportation giant through a period of financial turbulence, the Globe and Mail reported.
Mr. Tellier, 63, the company’s new president and chief executive officer, is chairman Laurent Beaudoin’s best hope to preserve the wealth and legacy of the Bombardier family.
The paradox is that it will mean further distancing the controlling family from the Montreal-based maker of airplanes, locomotives and leisure vehicles.
Mr. Tellier, credited with turning around another icon, Canadian National Railway Co., hinted yesterday of the challenges ahead by pinpointing the need for financial clarity and strengthened governance.
A common perception, he said, “is that maybe corporate governance is lagging behind at Bombardier. I want to address this.”
It was a frank statement for an incoming CEO, striking at what many see as the heart of Bombardier’s problems — a board dominated by family and friends that needs to be reinvigorated.
It will be fascinating to watch the tough, action-oriented Mr. Tellier, who enjoyed considerable latitude as a senior civil servant and CEO of a widely held company, as he functions in a company where a controlling family has been intensely involved.
In management style, Mr. Tellier is disciplined, decisive and “very direct,” says Michael Sabia, CEO of BCE Inc. and Mr. Tellier’s friend and protégé, having served under him as a senior civil servant and executive at CN. But Mr. Sabia says Mr. Tellier has shown skill in working with a strong controlling shareholder, including in the 1980s, when, as Clerk of the Privy Council, his “shareholder” was the prime minister. He then worked with Ottawa through the highly successful privatization of CN.
“This guy is a master of being able to work in that kind of situation,” Mr. Sabia says, adding that his friend is able to determine the vital interests of the shareholders, work with them to adjust expectations and then get the job done.
Mr. Tellier, a Bombardier board member, has clearly been given assurances of independence by Mr. Beaudoin, architect of Bombardier’s past glory years. He spoke yesterday of being wooed intensely by Mr. Beaudoin, son-in-law of founder Joseph-Armand Bombardier, after it became clear president Robert Brown would be leaving the company.
Mr. Tellier solves a big problem for Mr. Beaudoin, 64, who has undergone heart surgery in recent years but has stayed much more involved in troubled Bombardier than he would have liked. Mr. Tellier allows him to settle more comfortably into the non-executive chairman’s role while Mr. Tellier runs the company.
“Laurent Beaudoin has put his succession in place. He has a strong person who has run large organizations,” says Marcel Côté, a founding partner of the Montreal management consulting firm Secor Inc.
Even though the new CEO is about the same age as Mr. Beaudoin, Mr. Tellier is in excellent shape. “He doesn’t have an ounce of fat on him,” Mr. Côté says.
Mr. Sabia says Mr. Tellier’s knowledge of how government works would be an advantage in any business. But it is particularly important in Bombardier, given that international trade and government support issues are critical to the company’s future.
Indeed, Mr. Sabia, Mr. Tellier and Bombardier’s departing CEO, Mr. Brown, belong to that quintessentially Canadian category — the public-private manager, who easily crosses the borders between big government and big nationally important industries.
Mr. Brown, for example, was a senior bureaucrat with the old Department of Regional Industrial Expansion in the mid-1980s, when he was wooed by Bombardier, which at the time was buying the Canadair aerospace business from the government.
Mr. Brown informed his superiors about the wooing. One of those bosses was the then Clerk of the Privy Council, Paul Tellier. Mr. Tellier’s advice was that, while Mr. Brown was well respected, he could give no assurances on his career prospects.
“As head of the public service, I should have tried to keep him. But on a personal level, I knew this was a golden opportunity for him,” Mr. Tellier said in a later interview.
Mr. Brown moved to Bombardier and enjoyed an impressive 15 years leading the company to great heights in the aerospace sector. But now, on his way out, he passes his old boss Mr. Tellier coming in.
“Canada is a small place,” Mr. Sabia commented on the irony.
Besides Mr. Tellier’s knowledge of government, “he is very good at looking beyond the bark on the trees to see the shape of the forest,” says Mr. Sabia, who admires his ability to absorb detail but apply it to the broader picture.
Mr. Côté says Mr. Tellier’s role in Bombardier is more the product of his management ability than his government background. “He is well organized, focused and he gets strong people around him.” He describes him as “a tough guy” who never gets mad.
Born in Joliette, Que., Mr. Tellier has a BA and a law degree from the University of Ottawa, plus a degree in public administration from Oxford University in England. He joined the federal government in 1967, working his way through senior jobs and rising to Clerk of the Privy Council in 1985, where he worked with the Conservative government of Brian Mulroney. He left in 1992 to become the president and CEO of CN and led it through privatization and a strategic shift to becoming a north-south continental railway.
He showed a willingness to dismiss and recruit managers, based on his assessment of their abilities.
“If he doesn’t feel they are competent, he will move people in,” says Karl Moore, professor of strategic management at McGill University in Montreal. Prof. Moore says that, despite Mr. Tellier’s age, he will not cruise to retirement. “He’s done his thing at CN and for his last big position, he takes a challenging role at a bigger, more important company.”