When his fiancee left him two weeks before his wedding, David James's despair led him to stake almost a year's salary on a horse. He won that bet and, while he insists he is not a gambler, he is about to embark on the riskiest step in his career.
The new executive chairman of the London's troubled Millennium Dome - its third chairman in its short life - is used to challenges. He is not bothered by being in the limelight as long as he is allowed to get on with the job, he says. That job is to ensure the Dome, the centrepiece of the government's millennial celebrations and intended as a mecca for tourists, trades as a solvent company until the end of the year and to be assured he has the money to get through to that point.
When the Dome asked for another £47 million sterling (€77.12 million) last week - its fourth such request, taking the total in unexpected grants and advances to £179 million - the Millennium Commission, the lottery distributor, made installing Mr James as executive chairman a condition of the grant. It is not hard to see why. Mr James oozes a brisk efficiency and a sure grasp of corporate survival tactics.
His assignments have included helping to structure the rescue of the Lloyd's of London insurance market; uncovering fraud at collapsed mini-conglomerate Eagle Trust; unwinding the global freight group LEP with £750 million of debts; discovering the Iraqi supergun at a company he chaired; and negotiating the release of British engineering consultants in Libya. As someone newly catapulted into the Dome, he can afford to be straight-talking about where the problems lie, but will not apportion blame. That, he says, is for the National Audit Office.
"The problem is the failure to look at the overall strategic issues. The complexities of the close-out were almost completely ignored. It's like starting a landslide and then not having a plan with which to stop the damn thing," he said. Nine of the 12 board members are non-executive. Surely they should have spotted the problem? Mr James concedes: "This was not set up as if it were the board of a public company, as it should have been. This is a Companies Act company, not a government department and it was not set up with a board structure you'd expect in a public listed company. If it had been, a lot of these problems would have gone a different way."
Very little of the extra £47 million sterling is due to an overrun on operating costs, he insists, but is needed to close off contractual liabilities.
"I think I've got those adequately covered. We've got a small contingency of £5 million written in to cover things I haven't thought of - that's my comfort zone." Closing the Dome early would cost an extra £40 million-£50 million, an amount that will fall by about £8 million a month. The main costs would relate to potential claims from caterers and shopkeepers due to the loss of trading revenue by terminating their contracts before the end of the year. Can he be sure, then, that he will not need to ask for any more cash from the commission that has already raised its funding from £449 million to £628 million? "If I had to go back to the commission for more money, I'd swim from Greenwich - and I'm a rotten swimmer." That appears to be a gamble he is not prepared to take.
