When Sir Christopher Gent's mobile phone rings, it plays the Scott Joplin rag that was the theme tune to the film The Sting.
Its plot centres round a confidence trick that deceives the audience as well as the fictional victim.
Meeting Sir Christopher for the first time is a bit baffling too. His public image is clear. He was the chief executive of Vodafone and masterminded the largest deal in British corporate history when the group paid £101 billion for Mannesmann in 2000. He has now taken on the onerous task of chairing GlaxoSmithKline.
A swashbuckling dealmaker; a larger-than-life businessman who took a £10 million (€14.5 million) bonus for the Mannesmann deal; a pin-striped, red-braces City type. The impression is of an arrogant, loud and domineering executive.Sitting in his spacious and elegant office in GSK's town house in London's Mayfair, Sir Christopher fails to play up to that unattractive image.
True, he is wearing the striped suit and braces - but the latter are a discreet dark navy not a bull-enraging red. He speaks quietly, talks freely and largely without boasting, and is modest about many of his achievements.
He is convincingly passionate that people ought to engage in politics as a way of bettering the lives of ordinary people. As chairman of the Young Conservatives, he learnt that you cannot lead a voluntary organisation by bullying people.
He is believable about the need for "corporate social responsibility". He expounds on GSK's decision to be as open as possible with its research findings, to be ethical in its sales techniques and to develop and deliver drugs to combat the diseases endemic in less-developed countries.
He is ready for all the questions about the challenges he faces in his new role, coming up with plausible, if platitudinous, answers.
Asked how GSK will reverse the trend that resulted in 70 per cent of group turnover last year coming from products whose sales are in decline, he talks persuasively about how the strength of GSK's mid-term research pipeline will end its recent, rather barren, period.
Only occasionally does he let a glimpse of another Sir Christopher show through.
He folds his arms in a defensive posture and answers carefully when questioned closely about the £10 million "Mannesmann bonus" he received at Vodafone and the controversial salary deal that Jean-Pierre Garnier, GSK's chief executive, had been granted and was forced to amend before Sir Christopher joined the GSK board.
His £10 million bonus, he insists, "was about execution of the strategy rather than recognition of one particular transaction".
As for Mr Garnier's deal, he says, "funnily enough I actually said at the time that I thought there were aspects of J-P's package which were difficult to comprehend, which was one of the little things we had to sort out when we first met".
He goes on to explain that, naturally, he is not motivated by money - "I've done what I've done, not because of what I've been paid" - but because chief executives must have high salaries to create a hierarchy so that people lower down are well-enough remunerated not to be poached.
It is a somewhat flawed justification. Cannot other people also be motivated by rewards other than money? And could not a particularly valuable person - a multi-PhD research scientist, say - be paid more than the chief executive?
Sir Christopher concedes that, at Lehman Brothers, the investment bank where he is a non-executive director, "there is somebody who actually earns more than the chief executive".
He is also sensitive on the "destruction of shareholder value" issue. Some assert that Vodafone's series of acquisitions, paid for with shares inflated during the telecommunications sector's boom, which peaked at about the time Vodafone was bidding for Mannesmann, destroyed billions of pounds of Vodafone investors' money.
Sir Christopher disputes the charge, and has many supporters. "Why did the share price come down? Well, it was overvalued at the peak. There's every good reason to use overvalued shares to make a purchase. Mannesmann was overvalued as well."
Having paid with shares, he points out, Vodafone sold assets for real money and the enlarged company is now generating "astonishing amounts of cash".
He concludes, with a note of triumph, that "you won't find that destruction of value thing being alleged by the shareholders".
Well, actually, as Sir Christopher might say, you will. As one leading institutional investor puts it, issuing so much paper certainly did destroy value. But he forgives Sir Christopher, saying he cannot be blamed for the rapid and "mega flow-back" of shares, nor for the fact that the "UK institutions lapped them up - more fool us".
Vodafone has given him plenty of experience relevant to GSK - an understanding of how regulators work, a knowledge of doing business in many different countries and of running a company that has been transformed by mergers.
He has understood fully the need to communicate well with shareholders - whether the subject is business strategy or executive remuneration.
Most important, though, is that there is enough truth in the public image of Sir Christopher for GSK shareholders to feel reassured that he will provide the necessary counterweight to a strong chief executive.
If the rest of that image is true, Sir Christopher is clever enough to hide it. But, then, in the best confidence tricks, the victims never realise they have been conned. - (Financial Times Service)
