Examination of Witnesses (1-19)
16 SEPTEMBER 2003
MS BARBARA
CASSANI
Q1 Chairman: Good morning, Ms Cassani,
I should very much like to welcome you here today. This is the
first of what will almost certainly be an occasional series of
checking sessions, in which we follow what is being done with
regard to the Olympic bid. When our Committee did their report,
which you have perhaps seen, we said that bringing the Olympics
to London would be a very good thing. We expressed a number of
concerns and issues which we thought ought to be considered and
those are the things we should be very interested to hear from
you about. I understand, which is of course acceptable to us,
particularly since this is your first appearance before us, that
you would like to make an opening statement and we should be very
happy to listen to that.
Ms Cassani: Thank you very much.
Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to come here
today and talk to you a little bit about what we are doing and
what our plans are and, as you said, I hope over the coming months
and the next 18 months I shall be able to meet frequently with
you to update you on our progress. The first thing I should like
to say is that I have been in the role six weeks and that explains
my sitting here by myself at the top. The role was offered to
me and I accepted it on 1 August and we have been working very
hard. What I should like to do is to give you a little bit of
an idea who I am and why I have taken the job and what my philosophy
is for the bid, update you on my initial thoughts and reactions
to the work which has been done to date and to give you a sense
of the progress we have made in six weeks, talking a little bit
about the future beyond that. My motivation to take on this role
comes from a number of areas. The first is that I was very lucky
and was able to start up an airline in London called Go. I hope
some of you were customers. I had the great fortune of working
with tremendous people and having an enormous number of customers
in this area. The business did very well, it was a tremendous
opportunity for me. I really feel I have something to give back
to London and that is part of my motivation for being here. The
second one is a much more emotional issue. I believe in the Olympic
endeavour, I have believed in it since I was a child and I was
lucky enough to attend one Olympics; I was at Atlanta. I believe
in it being one of the few things in the world which is actually
positive, where countries compete equally, where it is about the
individual or team pursuit, so it has always been something which
has been very inspirational to me and I should love to bring it
to London. The third thing is that I think the time is right for
London. I have said to a few people that the stars are aligned.
We are in a position where we have a mayor who is supportive,
we have a government which is supportive, we are in a good time
for the country to get behind an Olympic bid and that was important
to me as I considered taking on the role. Finally, I felt, as
far as I and my role with the bid were concerned, that my business
background could be useful. I have quite a tough business reputation,
tough but fair. I believe that when you make commitments you keep
them. I believe in very strong financial management, I believe
in hiring capable people from diverse backgrounds and then leaving
them alone to get on with it. I believe in good principles behind
management. I am new to your world, I am new to this world, I
am doing my very best to learn as much as I can about both the
responsibilities and privilege of being in a position where we
are using public monies to do something like win the Games and
I am doing my best to fulfil my obligations. Really the backdrop
is that I believe in the Games, I believe in London, I believe
we can win. Those are the three things which motivated me. I am
bringing that business philosophy to the bid. I am learning enormously
about supporting people, supporting organisations, about the IOC
itself. How do we go from here? In building the team I am first
drawing upon the experience and the expertise of the people who
have done work up until now in the DCMS, in the GLA, at the BOA.
I had agreed with them that we will create an entirely separate
team, a team of people who will be focused entirely on winning
the bid, and that we will rely on support from each of those organisations
to help us work through issues which arise as they normally do
arise in these things. Work had been done before I arrived, but
it was a different stage of work from what we need to do today—and
I shall go into that in a moment. The bid itself was in the Arup
report and the DCMS report and was at a very high level. We are
now starting from the bottom up as opposed to the top down and
that is why, when I go on to tell you a bit more about what we
are doing, you will see it is very detail oriented. We are in
a competitive process and that is something I have to keep repeating,
not just to you, but to myself and to everyone we work with. There
are nine of us going for the Games. This is not simply a case
of saying that if we do it well, if we tick all the boxes, we
will win. That is not the case. I do believe though that when
you live in a world class city, going up against other world class
cities creates a worthy competition. We really are going for the
world championships of the Olympics in this bid. Never before
have there been so many world class cities going for the bid,
which is why I am approaching it in the way that I am. I also
have begun to understand the IOC and have been very encouraged
by the early pronouncements and my early brushes with the organisation.
They are trying to change the nature of the Games, they are trying
to change the nature of bidding. There have been some issues in
the past which we know about and they want to transform the organisation,
both from the way they work but also in what they ask us to do
to prepare a bid. They insist upon the legacy issues for each
venue being thought through. They are eager to make the Games
more contained; they do not want them to grow ever bigger and
bigger. Those are all issues which I believe work in favour of
a bid like London, because we too, because we live in a cosmopolitan
democratic country, will have lots of people with competing interests
and we must be efficient and we must do the right thing for the
people in sport and for the country. The early feedback I received
from the IOC members when I went to the meeting in Prague was
very positive. It was a bit open, in the sense that they are very
open to understanding what we are doing, but very positive that
we have a chance to win and that was important to me. What have
we accomplished in the first six weeks? The first priority deadline
that we all need to keep in mind is 15 January. We need to submit
our applicant questionnaire by 15 January. It is a deceptively
simple document which actually requires quite a lot of work underneath
it. We have to answer some very simple questions about the venues
and how we will be approaching the Games and where they will be,
etcetera. In order to complete that questionnaire and to move
through into the next stage—and we will hear on that sometime
early next spring—we are undertaking a number of pieces
of work. We are building the team. I have spent more of my time
on interviewing people and hiring people than on anything else
up to now. I have hired a combination of people with sporting
experience and people with Olympic experience and people who come
from business. My chief operating officer, whom I hired about
a week ago, starts next week and he is a guy called Mike Power.
He spent 32 years at Proctor and Gamble, worked all over the world,
Japan, Germany, the US and Britain and he will bring a tremendous
amount of organisational skill, structure, ability to work with
complex projects and deliver. He has a background of that. Mike
will be a tremendous asset. Roger Jackson and Dick Palmer are
both Olympic experts; they are working right now on the technical
bid. They are people who understand the ins and outs of what the
International Olympic Committee want and ultimately they are the
group we need to satisfy. David Magliano has joined me as the
director of marketing. He has a track record in building brands
and in creating exciting communications around ideas and that
is precisely what we need. I am still in the middle of the search
for the chief executive. I have interviewed about ten or so people.
I have a group of executive search people who have probably interviewed
20 people, but it is important we find the right person. I am
confident that I will do so very shortly. I should love to sit
here today and have him or her beside me, but I am still in the
middle of that process.
Q2 Chairman: May I say that we have
a lot of members who want to question you, so what I suggest is
that if you could draw your remarks to a close now, I am sure
you will be able to get in anything else you have to say in response
to questions. Thank you very much indeed.
Ms Cassani: Certainly.
Q3 Michael Fabricant: There has been
a lot of speculation about Seb Coe. Perhaps you can say today
who your vice chairman will be.
Ms Cassani: Today we are announcing
that I am bringing on board three vice chairmen. I believe that
the bid needs strong leadership figures in addition to myself
who can complement each other in the bid. I have asked Lord Coe
to be one of the vice chairmen, particularly since he has taken
the role with the IAAF and because of his relationships around
the world and he can be of tremendous assistance with the bid.
The second person I have invited to be a vice chairman is Alan
Pascoe. Alan also has a world wide reputation but it is slightly
different from Lord Coe's. Alan is known as a very strong sport
administrator as well as having been a terrific athlete and he
has agreed to work with us very closely on the technical bid to
make sure we really take on board all of the learning there. The
third person is Charles Allen. Charles Allen, as I think many
of you know, was the Chairman of the Commonwealth Games Committee
and also Chairman of the Granada Group. He has already given wise
counsel to me personally and I look forward to him providing that
role to me and the board going forward.
Q4 Michael Fabricant: On the subject
of chief executive, you said you have interviewed ten people and
you still have not found the right person. What about you? You
have the enthusiasm, you have the drive, you ran Go, you are working
three days a week as chairman, why not do five days a week as
chief executive, working closely with Mike Power and the others
you mentioned?
Ms Cassani: We had a bit of a
laugh at the breakfast table this morning. There was something
on the news and my children said "Three days a week? It's
seven". I am putting in all hours of the day, night, week
in order to make it happen. I would like to stick to the three
days a week for personal and other professional reasons. I believe
that the bid needs more people representing the leadership of
the bid and I think there is room for a chairman as well as a
CEO. I am unable to meet with all the people I need to because
I am trying to run the bid, hire people and act in the role of
chairman. I appreciate your confidence in me, but I assure you
that I will certainly be around. The best thing for the bid would
be to hire a full-time British chief executive.
Q5 Michael Fabricant: You have quite
rightly pointed out that you have a tight deadline. You mentioned
15 January for the submission of a response, but we have to get
the bid in by 15 November 2004, so we have to get a move on. Do
you think enough time has been spent schmoozing so far with the
IOC? The other cities have been doing that.
Ms Cassani: It is a very interesting
question because ultimately, as everyone here knows, the success
of our bid lies in the hands of the IOC members who will be voting.
I have already taken the opportunity to meet probably about half
of them during my Prague trip and at every international sporting
event I have attended. I have taken the view that our very strong
IOC members themselves, particularly Craig Reedie, are doing a
very good job of keeping the bid in the eyes of the IOC members
in the manner that is intended with the IOC. There have been issues
and changes to the rules as to how I can interact, and anyone
on the bid can interact with the IOC. For example, I may not take
any of them to lunch. That is simply one of the rule changes:
it is important that they are not entertained. The time will come
for us to sit in lobbies and to try to catch IOC members as they
go by, but I am a great believer that in order to sell something
you have to have the product in absolutely top-notch shape. I
believe that in attending the world rowing championships and sitting
with the leadership and asking them how absolutely top class rowing
championships are held, doing the same thing with a number of
other sports, it is sending a signal that our Games are primarily
about sport, but they are also about all of the other wonderful
attributes that the Olympics bring. That is part of my philosophy
and in fact I have had several IOC members ring me in response
to a number of articles in papers saying "Forget it. You're
doing fine". It is one of those judgment calls. I feel comfortable
though with the approach we are taking.
Q6 Michael Fabricant: How damaged
is our product? How damaged is our reputation because of the Picketts
Lock disaster which did not go down at all well with the International
Athletics Federation?
Ms Cassani: I think we made a
good comeback with the indoor championships in Birmingham, the
Commonwealth Games, but there is still a residual question mark.
Obviously I asked that question in the privacy of the lounge area
to as many of the members of the IAAF governing board that I met.
It was about half and half. Half of them said it was all over
and half said they would want to understand that we are really
serious. We are building in that need for more specificity, particularly
on the stadium and what we shall be doing with it, as we are building
up our plans. We have made some strides, but we must take seriously
that we do have some ground to make up.
Q7 Derek Wyatt: Good morning. May
I just press you? Are the newspaper reports true that two people
were offered the post of chief executive and turned it down?
Ms Cassani: No one has been offered
the position. It has been fascinating watching this process unwind
in the press. I have interviewed about ten people; two people
were invited for additional chats with some of the stakeholders
but to neither of them did I make an offer.
Q8 Derek Wyatt: May I ask for your
thoughts about Iraq and the Moslem vote on the IOC? Given that
the French have a Moroccan Moslem international footballer called
Zinedine on their bid, how are we going to cope with the Moslem
vote on the IOC. Who on your committee is targeting that vote?
Ms Cassani: We have 126 people
to identify the right approach for selling the London bid. The
strategy for selling the bid is something that will be our priority
over the next couple of months. We have not identified someone
for each of those groupings at this stage, but we are beginning
to do so. I feel that one has to be very careful when one refers
to an IOC member by either their religion or by their nationality.
Many of them see themselves first as a sports person or as a leader
of a sporting federation, so there is much work to be done in
understanding how each person sees themselves, because that is
the first step in helping to present our bid in a positive way.
We are beginning to do that work. We will in due course have recruited
members to speak in a way which is meaningful to every IOC member,
but at this stage we have not chosen someone in that way.
Q9 Derek Wyatt: Just looking at the
assembly of people you have, who has had bid experience for an
international sporting event?
Ms Cassani: Alan Pascoe certainly
has bidding experience.
Q10 Derek Wyatt: For what?
Ms Cassani: For major world championships
and for rugby, etcetera. We have Roger Jackson, who is on my team,
who was one of the three people responsible for the Calgary Winter
Games. He has also worked with Commonwealth Games bids, he has
worked with a number of summer Games bids as well. It is a combination
of people who have actually staged events as well as people who
have been part of bidding.
Q11 Derek Wyatt: One of the things
which Manchester did eventually was to take quite a lot of people
from Sydney and that was felt to have been very beneficial. Is
it your intention to take anybody from the Sydney bid team?
Ms Cassani: We are in fact interviewing
a few people right now from Sydney. It is interesting. The bid
team was a long, long time ago, but the Games were much nearer.
It is a challenge finding the right combination. I have been in
touch with probably all of the people who are responsible for
the Sydney bid and they have been useful and helpful, but there
is no clear role for any of them.
Q12 Derek Wyatt: When we were in
Los Angeles for our film inquiry the French Open was on one of
the sports channels. The French had put a Paris 2012 logo
in the right-hand side, right across their semi-finals and finals.
I wondered whether that was legal and what discussions have been
had with the BBC to do that. Then I was in New York and, just
to give you an idea what the television broadcasters are doing,
NBC is the broadcaster and in Fifth Avenue there is an NBC shop
and the front window is the Olympic bid. They do not say Olympic
Bid on their goods, but they have luggage racks, T-shirts,
lapel badges.
Ms Cassani: It is in Bloomingdale's
as well.
Q13 Derek Wyatt: It seems to me that
we are just marginally behind what the Paris and New York bids
are doing. Is there a conversation going on with the BBC and who
is handling that liaison with the BBC?
Ms Cassani: In some ways you are
right, we are behind Paris and New York, for a very good reason.
Paris has already bid for the Games before and they have a start.
They also have a history and a legacy of a failed bid, so they
have different issues. New York had to participate in a national
competition and ultimately won against San Francisco, so all of
their branded materials were created for that domestic competition.
We are in the process, tomorrow in fact, of launching a logo and
design competition here in London. We have taken one of the largest
cinemas in Leicester Square and we have over 700 people in design
coming to our competition. You can win £10,000 if you design
the logo which is chosen. We plan to have branded materials. We
are beginning discussions with retailers, with other organisations.
We have had discussions with the BBC from the very highest levels
through to the people who can actually help us stage the Games
well. We are beginning all of those discussions right now. Specifically
on the question of whether it is legal to have 2012 on the screen,
my understanding is that it is not. However, for example, we probably
pushed a little bit when we sent all of our team to the World
Athletics Championships in Paris with 2012 T-shirts. We judged
that was a risk worth taking. It is very difficult understanding
the precise rules which have been written by the IOC. We will
stay in touch with them to make sure we do as much as we can to
promote the bid without harming either the reputation or receiving
any sort of reprimand from the IOC.
Q14 Derek Wyatt: With respect to
our Foreign Office and our British Council overseas, do we have
a designated ambassador for the Olympics in Paris, Berlin, New
York, already appointed internally in the FCO? I think the British
Council have 108 offices and are our ambassadors overseas. Are
they signed up and are they a stakeholder and will they be part
of this process?
Ms Cassani: We have begun discussions
with the FCO and those are all wonderful suggestions which I plan
to implement. I have a meeting myself with the Permanent Secretary
in a week or two to promote that. I met with the Consul General
in New York to ask someone on the ground what it is like being
there, how they can help us out, what they can see about the New
York bid and that needs to be replicated in all the cities with
their bids. There is certainly a role for bringing in information.
We have recently received a communication from the IOC where they
have asked that ambassadors not be used to approach IOC members.
Every time we begin to find a new avenue for creating the right
environment, we are receiving guidance, so we will use that guidance
and respond to it, but also use these terrific groups around the
world.
Q15 Derek Wyatt: When push comes
to shove, because in a sense Atlanta was such a disappointment
and then Sydney was such a wonderful event, Athens looks to me
to be an Atlanta. That place is pretty rock and roll at the moment
with lots of things still not finished and the stadium is an issue
still. When the IOC members look at our presentation eventually,
we will have no stadium built for that presentation, yet we have
Wembley, which probably will be built. Do you think politically
that will be a sensitive issue in that we have IOUs, we are going
to do this, we are going to do these things, but nothing has actually
been built? Do you think that will count against us?
Ms Cassani: It is interesting.
You raise Athens, which will be interesting and time will tell
how those Games come to fruition. I have spoken with a lot of
old Olympic hands who told me that an enormous amount can be done
in the last six to nine months. We shall see what happens there.
In every conversation I am having with IOC members, I am asking
very pointedly what it is that they have learned between the bidding
and the delivery process on each of these Games and Athens is
the one which is in everyone's minds. There are some very tangible
things we can do in the bid to help address some of the things
which have been perceived to have gone wrong in Athens. I shall
continue to do that, to learn from the Games where there has been
a bid and a reality and where the gap has been. We need to address
that and we are doing that in the way we are running things. As
far as Wembley is concerned, when a bid is evaluated, it is evaluated
along a number of criteria and they are particular to the IOC
and to the way they make decisions. They very much want an Olympic
zone which makes the Games as special as possible for the Olympic
family. The Olympic family starts with the athletes themselves,
but also goes through to the various officials and members of
the IOC family themselves. They are looking for Games which are
geographically tightly located. The challenge that Wembley presents
is that given its location in North West London and given the
availability of the very large tract of land in East London, it
would not be suitable to use a stadium far away. Obviously there
is a trade-off between legacy and something which can be used
in the long term, versus the proximity of the bid and that is
one of the trade-offs we are having to make. We are in discussion
with Wembley. I am confident that it will form part of the bid,
but it is not in a suitable location to use as our main stadium.
Q16 Mr Bryant: Just on the marketing
issue, should we be expecting Marks & Spencer then to be coming
forward and giving all its windows over to the bid?
Ms Cassani: That is very interesting.
I think you are alluding to the fact that I have just accepted
a non-executive directorship of the company. Conflicts of interests
in people on this bid are going to be something we shall have
to deal with. Should they want to be part of it, I would make
sure I distanced myself from it. They are certainly one of our
national icons and any support they would want to give us would
be welcomed. We would want to be sure we did that in a fair way
and gave all of the retailers a crack at it.
Q17 Mr Bryant: May I just thank you
for the commendable honesty and openness with which you seem to
be addressing all these issues? I think that should stand the
bid in extremely good stead. One of the things you said earlier
was that the one Olympics you have been to was at Atlanta and
somehow that did not seem like a good auger, not least because
of the transport issues. Some of us have memories of the Princess
Royal having to provide a car to get two of our rowers to their
final in Atlanta. As you will know, this Committee has been supportive
of the bid, but sceptical and wanting to be helpful in some of
our criticism about some of the transport issues. How confident
are you that you are going to be able to deliver on those?
Ms Cassani: Transport is clearly
an important issue for us in London, as well as to the IOC. Because
we are a very big city, a very ancient city, a city with a transport
infrastructure that is both the oldest and the most extended,
we wonder whether it is a good thing to say that we have the oldest
infrastructure. It is one of our advantages in that we started
so long ago, but it is obviously one of the disadvantages. What
I am trying to get to the bottom of is the real versus the perceived
transport issues for the bid. I cannot speak for transport as
a whole, for either the country or the city, but I can and will
speak for transport for the bid. What we are doing, as part of
the master planning process, which has been set up to evaluate
the Olympic zone, to place the venues, to understand the Olympic
village issues, the media centre, one of those areas is transport.
We are working very closely with Transport for London and all
of the other transport organisations to work in conjunction and
as we begin to put together the hypotheses for the venues, put
a stadium here, put the velodrome here, put the aquatic centre
here, you begin to overlay onto that the existing plans for transport
enhancements and you start looking in great detail at, for example,
the schedule of events. If you have three timed events in the
stadium, you will have inflows and outflows. We have what appear
to be some of the smartest people in Britain working with us on
modelling all of that. I cannot give you an answer until we have
fixed on precisely where everything is going to be located. We
then hand that over to the transport gurus and they come back
with their assessment. What I can assure you is that I will scrutinise
that work, not just from the perspective of "Does it make
you happy, Transport for London?", but rather I will be sitting
there and saying "Will this make the IOC happy? Will this
be sufficient to bring both the Olympic family to the Games and
back, but also make it an enjoyable spectator experience.".
At this stage I have reviewed the information that is in Arup,
I have reviewed everything which is out there and it looks okay.
Frankly all that is just preliminary work until we fix where the
venues are going to be, the timings of them and then we run it
through the model. I will come back to you and let you know what
I think.
Q18 Mr Bryant: May I just push you
a bit more on this? I accept the fact that so far you have been
basing everything on a specimen Games, which is not the Games
you will end up running. You are talking about putting all these
figures together on an actual Games rather than an imaginary,
hypothetical one. We were told that whatever Games you ran you
would have to manage London transport to an unprecedented degree—from
memory I think that is a quote from the original report. That
sounds pretty disturbing. Do you feel that Crossrail is going
to have to be a part of that. Is Crossrail, which does not look
as though it is going to happen by 2012, irrelevant to it?
Ms Cassani: We are planning the
bid on the basis of no Crossrail. If it comes, great, but because
it is in a state of decision making and the timing looks as though
it will occur after the Games anyway, we are leaving it aside.
Traffic management in previous Games has meant things like closing
roads or closing a lane on a road to facilitate access for athletes
to venues. It means moving carriages around on train lines so
that you enhance the length of trains beyond what you would normally
use. It is taking the resources you have and optimising the use
of them. Yes, I do think there is the will to do that and that
is where I feel that having this cross-functional group with all
the roads, the rail, the Tube system, as well as the political
will of both the Government and city, is going to be required
to do what it takes to create the right transport infrastructure.
Q19 Mr Bryant: You talked about the
stars being aligned. Why do you think there is something unique
and distinctive about this bid at this time? If you want to get
the whole of the United Kingdom behind the bid, so that it is
not just a London bid but a United Kingdom bid for London, I wonder
how much you are going to be putting in about training camps and
other events which will not actually be happening in London.
Ms Cassani: You are absolutely
right that the Games have to be for the whole country and not
just for London. I will start with why I think London right now
and I hope you will give me a little latitude because this is
where the old passion comes in. I chose to live in London. Many
of you live here because you were born here, but I am a foreigner;
you may not have noticed the accent! I chose to live in this city,
although I am not actually a city person, but this is the only
city in the world I could live in and be happy, because it has
both the breadth and the ability to get to greenness and water
as well as have the convenience and the culture of being in a
large city. I do not think we should lose that. We have the best
city that is bidding in that regard. I also think the time is
right for London because we have a wonderful mix of old and new
in London which I believe is unprecedented. The traditional venues—across
the street there—the traditional feeling, the whole pageantry
that is Britain's history, is terrific and wonderful, but it is
not enough to win the bid. If you add to that the future and the
excitement, both in terms of our architecture, our design, our
people, our sports people, the way in which this culture embraces
the future, that gives us a very special opportunity to create
a bid which captures both. I do believe we are in a unique position
and what I aim to do is capture all of that in the kind of merchandise
and imagery which will excite everyone to come along with us.
That is just part of it. As far as bringing the rest of the country
along is concerned, I have done a couple of things up front. One
is that we have invited Derek Anderson from the Wolverhampton
Council as well as Howard Bernstein to join the board. We shall
be asking both of them to help us to make the bid as relevant
as possible around the country. I think you know that some of
the sports will be staged around the country, particularly football,
and there is the opportunity to develop training camps for countries
which want to establish themselves in the UK for six to nine months
before the Games. We have a meeting next week with some of the
regional development authorities to begin to help them to start
that process of marketing their territories to the national Olympic
associations around the world. We aim to make Britain the most
welcoming country for training facilities, so we are starting
very early on those issues and aim to bring them to the fore.
I also feel that there is an excitement which comes to the whole
country. It is not a city, it is a national excitement which comes
to bringing the Games. One of the things I shall be doing is starting
up a group which will be called Friends of the Bid. It
will be something where we invite schoolchildren and everybody
in the country to belong. It will be a database via the internet.
It will begin to excite people about our sporting athletes, about
local sport, about participating in sporting activities around
the country. We are just at the early stages, but there will be
lots of activities, not just here in London, particularly as we
develop the cultural programme as well, which can embrace all
of the regions of the United Kingdom.
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