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redsoapbox · 8 years ago

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The Phil Silvers Show

The Phil Silvers Show, better known here in the UK as Bilko after its larger-than-life central character, though originally titled “You’ll Never Get Rich”, ran for four seasons on CBS between 1955 and 1959 racking up, in that short space of time, a mind-boggling 142 episodes before the station’s management decided to cash in on the show's lucrative syndication rights by de-mobbing it’s Emmy award-winning comedy crew once and for all. Over half a century later The Phil Silvers Show, arguably the greatest of all television sitcoms, is sadly neglected in the United States.

The show was devised and scripted by Nat Hiken, a young pretender who began to make a name for himself in the comedy business as a writer working up material for radio comedian Fred Allen, and then as the senior gag man for headline acts like Milton Berle and Martha Raye. Incredibly, Hiken also produced, directed and partly scored The Phil Silvers show. By the time his career was over, and he was only 54 when he died, he’d racked up a personal total of eight Emmy’s and given career-changing roles to the likes of Fred Gwynne, Alan Alda and Dick Van Dyke. When CBS offered Silvers the opportunity to develop a half-hour comedy show, it was the chance to work alongside Nat Hiken that finally sold him on making the move to television that he had long resisted.

Phil Silvers, born in Brooklyn in 1911 to Russian-Jewish immigrants, Saul and Sarah, made his Vaudeville debut as part of Gus Edwards’ protégé’s of 1923 and over the course of the next decade or so, in the company of Ray Bolger and Eddie Cantor, earned himself a crust by combining small parts in touring variety shows, while perfecting his stand-up routine on the legendary Borscht Belt circuit. He also found himself dodging fruit at Minsky’s Burlesque House on 42nd Street when times were particularly tough. This all proved an invaluable training ground, though, for the novice comedian, as he readily acknowledged - “The only chance you had for individuality was your own improvisation - new facets of character, or voice, bits of business.” Silvers big break came in 1939 when he landed a small role on Broadway in Yokel Boy, resulting in MGM’S studio head Louis B Mayer tying him to an exclusive seven-year contract.

Silvers, in the part of Breezy Jones, with Jane Wyman and Jimmy Durante in the prophetically titled You’re in the Army Now (1941).

Twenty-five films into his Hollywood career, however, and Silvers had become thoroughly disillusioned with the movie business:“I was always cast as ‘Blinky’, the hero’s best friend. He always comes in and shouts ‘It’s gonna be alright I’ve got the money’ or I’d tell Betty Grable ‘I mean it, honey, he really loves you, he told me’. And always they made me use my tag phrase, ’Gladaseeya’. Understandably constrained and frustrated by the formulaic nature of his parts in Hollywood, Silvers found consolation and creative release on stage. His success in the Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne musical, High Heeled Shoes, was followed in 1951 by his Tony award-winning performance as Jerry Biffle (a loose parody of his great pal Milton Berle, the then undisputed ‘King of Television’) in Broadway smash Top Banana. Unfortunately, this didn’t translate into better roles on screen, “It made me a ‘Blinky’ again - but on a higher salary” Silvers moaned.

That’s when Hiken came calling and soon the newly formed partnership had the germ of an idea - a con man on the make, but they were stumped for months by the context. Initially dismissing an Army Camp setting, they worked up scripts with Silvers as a racetrack tout, a baseball manager, and even a Turkish baths attendant before revisiting the idea of Bilko as a Master Sergeant in the United States Army.

Phil Silvers and Nat Hiken working their way through another script.

Rehearsals for the show took place (not entirely by chance), at Nola studios, located above one of Silvers favourite haunts, Lindy’s Restaurant, while the series itself was filmed at the Du Mont Studio’s on New York’s east 67th Street. Word soon got around that a sensational new show was in the works and the likes of Cary Grant and Jack Benny could be spotted at the live recordings. Nevertheless, a full twenty episodes were in the can before CBS finally decided to broadcast the series. The Phil Silvers show aired for the first time on September the 20th 1955 at 8.30pm. It may seem an unremarkable time and date, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. To Hiken and Silvers dismay CBS had scheduled the series in the “Death Valley slot” opposite the Milton Berle Show, the variety spectacular which had topped the Tuesday night ratings for years. For three weeks the numbers favoured Berle by two to one, but the platoon’s appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show changed sitcom history. Within months Bilko was netting 23 million viewers and Silvers great friend Berle was propelled into semi-retirement!

All great sitcoms simply have to have a great central character. It’s impossible to name one that doesn’t-whether it’s Anthony Aloysius Hancock, Norman Stanley Fletcher, Liz Lemon, Homer Simpson or, indeed, the incorrigible cardsharp with a heart of gold, Ernest G. Bilko. Even the choice of name itself was inspired; Webster’s Dictionary defines the word Bilk as ‘to deceive or defraud, to leave in the lurch, to give the slip to, to thwart an adversary, to bilk a creditor’.

And there you have the essence of Ernie Bilko, a man who sees the raw recruits assigned to his Motor Pool not as young soldiers to be molded into fine men, but as suckers who he can part from their army pay in record time. As soon as Bilko catches sight of the enlistees the army cap is replaced by the poker visor, not that Bilko had to rely on anything as mundane as a game of cards to part a fool from his money.

In ‘The Horse’, an early episode that rates highly with aficionados of the show, Bilko smuggles an injury prone thoroughbred into Fort Baxter. He promptly requisitions a truckload of oats, stations a handful of men to guard the horse around the clock and secretly gallops it past the Colonel’s quarters at night in readiness it for its racecourse debut, all the while managing to drive a sleep-deprived Colonel Hall (Paul Ford) to the brink of a nervous breakdown. In another celebrated first season episode ‘The Twitch’, Bilko makes a book on how many times Captain Whitney’s wife tugs at her girdle during her lecture on ‘Beethoven, The Man and His Music’. Baffled, but delighted, by the sudden surge of interest in the camps long neglected Cultural Improvement Evenings, Colonel Hall’s joy turns quickly to dismay as he cottons on to Bilko’s diabolical ruse to make a fast buck out of the Captains wife, when he witnesses row upon row of Uncle Sam’s finest unable to resist the urge to shout out a running tally with each tug of the good ladies undergarment. In ‘The Stomach’, the Army’s champion eater (played brilliantly by Fred Gwynne), is tragically off his food just prior to a high-stakes eating contest, so Bilko begins a ruthless campaign to render him depressed enough to embark on a comfort eating binge, thereby ensuring that his bet pays off.

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Fred Gwynne, momentarily happy, in The Stomach

If he isn’t trying to make money, Bilko is trying to wangle his way to a spell of undeserved rest and recuperation. In ‘Hollywood’, Bilko manages to get himself temporarily posted as a technical advisor on the making of a big-budget war movie, ��Love in a Foxhole’, where he soon has the hunky leading man replaced with a weedy, balding and bespectacled double of himself. If, by any chance, he is confined to barracks he does his level best to avoid anything that looks suspiciously strenuous. In the splendid ‘Bivouac’(aka ‘Sick Call Ernie’), he fakes his annual fatal illness to avoid going on manoeuvres only to outsmart himself when he ends up really believing that he is dying.

In virtually every episode he engages in head to head combat with the seriously mismatched Colonel Hall. One of the show’s running gags has the Colonel staring vacantly into the camera, muttering quizzically, ‘What’s Bilko up to now’ as the Machiavellian Master Sergeant embarks on another crafty scheme to make money at the Colonel’s expense. Another source of deep frustration for the Colonel is the way his wife Nell (Hope Sansberry) is forever succumbing to Bilko’s all too obvious flattery. On seeing Mrs. Hall, Bilko’s default setting is to lay it on thick; comments like Colonel will you introduce me to Miss Taylor, or is it Elizabeth to you Sir”, or “Mrs. Hall, if you get any younger we’re going to lose you to Elvis Presley” are re-hashed through the four seasons of the show.

Colonel Hall and Sgt. Bilko engage in head to head combat in a bid to decide, once and for all, who really runs Fort Baxter.

The quality of the scripts remained exceptionally high until Hiken’s departure at the end of the second series when, despite the addition of future Oscar-winning screenwriter and Broadway playwright Neil Simon to the writers’ pool, the content became somewhat patchy. There were, though, so many wonderful shows in those first two years that it’s hard to reach a consensus as to which was the single greatest episode. David Thomas and Ian Irvine nominate episode 49, ‘Bilko Gets Some Sleep’ co-written by Hiken, Tony Webster, and Billy Friedberg, in their book The Fort Baxter Story.

The premise here is an extremely funny one-Bilko has become a first-rate insomniac, prompting him to consult Fort Baxter’s psychiatrist. His diagnosis that Bilko is suffering from a guilty conscience and that his only chance of a cure is to go straight is a perfect set-up for the writers to exploit and they certainly don’t miss their cue. As soon as Bilko quits gambling and behaves like a regular G.I.Joe, he feels fine, but everyone else in camp is thrown into trauma, spending sleepless nights wondering just what on earth Bilko is up to. Private Fender gives vent to the camps disquiet, ‘Boys. I think what we’ve been afraid of for the last couple of years is finally going to happen, he’s going to sell us into slavery.’

Some of the exchanges Between Colonel Hall and his nemesis Bilko in this episode are riotously funny. Bilko has been seen riding around town in the Colonels jeep one too many times, prompting the mild-mannered Colonel to finally draw the line by declaring ‘I’ve reached a big decision. I’ve decided to relieve you of command of this post and take over myself.’ Bilko, of course, attempts to soft soap him ‘you have the legs of a man in his twenties, legs of steel and yet with the spring of a panther, and why? Because you do more walking than any other Colonel in the United States Army.’

Mid-way through this episode, Phil Silvers delivers a stream of consciousness master-class, a soliloquy delivered at supersonic speed, without pause, that gives the audience a crash course on the history of Psychiatry, taking in Freud’s famous debates with Spinoza, as well as Schopenhauer's theory of the Oedipus complex. His raging row with Freud is given the Bilko treatment – “Sigmund, you’re insane!” Freud came right back and said, Barry listen to me I know what I’m saying.” Silvers gives us a crash course on psychiatry, which takes in everything from sadism and inner masochism, to the libido and the id, before unveiling his diagnosis, ‘The men salute. Salute, salute ….what is that salute, Sir, It’s a symbol of insecurity. Don’t you see what it says in essence? ‘Love me, I love you, want me, I want you. It’s a bedlam of inner conflict, the id complex versus the alter-ego, the manifestation of the theory of the hedriogentian cycle.’

There isn’t much that can compare with this tour de force in sitcom history; an extended set piece that simply delights in the rhythm of language, of wordplay, almost for its own sake, although some of the duologues David Nobbs crafted for Leonard Rossiter and Geoffrey Palmer in ‘The Fall and Rise Of Reginald Perrin’ come to mind.

Thomas and Irvine are also right to shortlist ‘Bilko Goes South’(Hiken, Freidberg and Meltzer) in which the platoon believe they have volunteered to enter a singing contest in sun-drenched Florida when, in reality, they have subscribed to sacrifice their lives by signing up to be bitten by a killer Mosquito carrying a fatal disease, in order that the U.S. Army can fast-track a vaccine. Blissfully unaware of the misunderstanding and busily rehearsing their number, they innocently swat each of the rare mosquitoes released into the observation room, causing pandemonium amongst the sobbing scientists.

The Phil Silvers Show.com web site declares ‘The Court Martial (aka ‘The Case Of Harry Speakup’), to be the show's greatest 25 minutes, a view supported by Ron Simon, curator of the New York Museum of Broadcasting, who confirms the episode as the most requested in their mammoth collection.

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The greatest Bilko episode ever - The Court Martial

Whilst it may not have the highest ratio of razor sharp one liner’s in any given Bilko episode, it can boast the most wonderfully preposterous plot in the show's history. The episode opens with Colonel Hall giving a pep talk to his officers about their plan to ‘process, uniform and induct over 300 recruits into the army within the standard limit of three hrs’. Capt Barker, in an attempt to impress the fearsome General Rogers, has a plan to eliminate red tape and repetition and cut the induction time down to two hrs. The secret he says is’ to keep the men moving, moving, moving, moving, moving’ through the physical, psychiatric and intelligence tests. Colonel Hall offers promotions up and down the line if they can pull it off. They very nearly manage to make the impossible happen, unfortunately instead of inducting 309 men into the army, they manage to induct 308 and a monkey. The Colonel contemplates his long career ending in dishonour-

‘Will they remember me as a West Point Officer who was cited twice for bravery? No, they’ll remember me as the man who opened the doors of the Army to the animal kingdom’.

The camp is locked down to avoid the scandal reaching the Pentagon. After much consternation, the top brass decides the only way to lawfully rid themselves of Zippo (or to give him his proper name and rank Private Harry Speakup), is to Court Martial him. Bilko, as a punishment for his perceived role in the debacle, is appointed as the monkey’s legal counsel. It is during the Court Martial scene that one of Silvers most celebrated ad libs supposedly takes place. Midway through his impassioned defence, the monkey suddenly scampers out of his seat and starts playing with a nearby phone, at which point Silvers interjects with ‘Just a minute, Sir, I think he’s calling for another lawyer’. Who could argue with comedian Alan King when he claims it as ‘one of the great ad lib’s of all time’?

It is worth focusing on Phil Silvers performance as an actor and just how much this contributes to the success of the show. His Bilko is a force of nature; from the fast-paced patter and the machine gun delivery to the manic roll-call growl, he refuses to take a breath. The years of quick-fire sketches in Vaudeville, the five-minute routines squeezed in between the strippers at Minsky’s and the now you see him, now you don’t film cameos all came together in the whirlwind approach Silvers took to creating the character of Bilko. The decision to film the early episode before a live studio audience also allowed Silvers to re-create the adrenaline rush he received on stage and in stand-up.

It may be a one-note performance, with no place for subtlety, and Silvers is certainly guilty of mangling his fair share of lines, but the helter-skelter approach does bring Bilko vividly to life. Importantly, the furious pacing of his performance, and therefore of the programme itself, works in the shows favour today. A modern-day audience, without prior knowledge of the show, would undoubtedly be surprised at the irrepressible vigour of such a vintage comedy.

Interestingly, acting ability seemed to be the last thing on the producer's mind when casting the show. Paul Ford, a latecomer to the acting world, always appeared on the precipice of forgetting his lines, his trademark look of bewilderment was clearly not always a response to Bilko’s machinations, while stand-up comedian Joe Ross’s stuttering Ooh,ooh,ooh’s were a ruse, partly cooked up by Silvers, to buy the struggling actor time to recall his lines.

Hiken was clearly more interested in the comic appearance of his supporting characters than their ability to deliver word perfect performances. It may be an exaggeration to say that the band of brothers that made up Sgt Bilko’s motor pool, Paparelli, Fleischman, Doberman, Fender, Honnergan, and Mullen constituted a gallery of grotesques, but not much of one. Indeed, in the season two episode, ‘The Face On The Recruiting Poster,’ the prospect of Doberman ( the rigged winner of Bilko’s best-looking soldier in Fort Baxter competition), appearing on 5,000 Army posters almost causes a meltdown in Washington. Colonel Hall, sensing he will soon be under siege, can only comment “They’ll flock from miles around to see what the rest of us look like”.

Maurice Gosfield played the legendary Duane Doberman in The Phil Silvers Show , before voicing the part of Benny the Ball in the animated spin-off Top Cat.

Whilst Bilko is at the centre of each and every episode, indeed Silvers is barely off screen for the whole of the show's run, there was still room for a number of excellent comic cameos. Aside from Paul Ford’s Colonel Hall, the character the of slow-witted super-slob Private Duane Doberman (Maurice Gosfield) proved to be a huge hit with fans, ensuring that he was featured as an unwitting stooge in many a memorable escapade. Perhaps the most unforgettable of these is the intricately plotted ‘Dobermans Sister’: Fort Baxter has an annual tradition that every soldier takes a fellow soldier’s sister out on Fort Baxter day. As might be expected, there aren’t too many volunteers ready to date Diane, the sister of the plug-ugly Doberman. Bilko, determined to save Diane’s honour, invents Mussellman’s law, which can be expressed as ‘The uglier the brother, the prettier the sister’, to conjure up a suitor in time for Diane’s visit. The payoff has Bilko, falling for his own propaganda, nervously waiting, flowers in hand, at the train station for Diane’s arrival. It’s one of the great moments in the show's history when Diane emerges and is revealed to be Duane’s twin (played of course by Gosfield). The season one episode, ‘Mardi Gras’, is almost as funny, with Bilko somehow managing to transform Doberman into an international playboy complete with his own specially composed calypso ‘The Fascinating Duane’!

The introduction, in season two, of nightclub comedian Joe E Ross, as the biggest chump in the armed forces, Mess Sgt Rupert Ritzik, added another richly comic character to the cast. With each easily predictable reversal, at the hands of the crafty Bilko, he can only reproach himself with a monotone “I knew it, I knew it, I knew it”.

Perhaps I should have declared an interest right at the outset of this article:I grew up watching Bilko, a dedicated enough fan to home tape a handful of shows on C60 audio cassette, and when the British Phil Silvers Appreciation Society launched in 1984, I was quick to enlist. The show was one of my late father’s favourites, and we always made a point of watching it together as a family, which wasn’t always easy. The BBC had a habit of scheduling the show at all times of day or night. It was as likely to turn up at 10.00am on a Saturday Morning on BBC1 s it was to appear, apparently out of nowhere, at five after midnight on a Tuesday or Thursday on BBC2. Episodes were routinely shown out of sequence and weeks might appear between individual airings. Nevertheless, in the Beeb’s defence it did show the programme, on and off, for decades. Sadly, the show is currently only being shown here on Forces TV, although, thankfully, a twenty disc box set, Sgt Bilko-The Phil Silvers show- complete collection has now been released on DVD.

The show resulted in a number of interesting spin-offs. Renowned animators, Hanna-Barbara, based their cartoon series Top Cat on the show and even cast Maurice Gosfield himself as TC’s Doberman-like stooge, Benny the Ball. Silvers reprised the character of Bilko in the guise of factory foreman Harry Grafton for the New Phil Silvers Show, which ran for just one series and 30 episodes through 1963 and 1964. As for Steve Martin’s movie portrayal of Ernie Bilko, the less said the better. Strangely, the programme’s reputation has not fared well in the States, with the show failing to make the shortlist for Vanity Fairs 2012 Greatest Sitcom Poll, nor did it appear in the Top Twenty greatest comedies, as voted by the readers of Christian Monitor. Seinfeld, incidentally, topped both polls. Thankfully, Bilko has maintained its legendary status on these shores, ranking 6th in Channel fours ultimate sitcom poll of 2006 (Frasier came out on top), and winning the Radio Times TV Comedy poll in 2003.

Given that the first American TV sitcom, Mary Kay and Johnny, aired just a few years before Bilko, in 1947, Nat Hiken and Phil Silvers can be said to have helped lay much of the groundwork for “classic” situation comedy, undoubtedly helping to define the conventions of the art form in its first golden age. Today, The Phil Silvers Show, largely due to the breakneck pace at which it is played, it’s high gag count, and Silvers’ towering central performance, remains supremely fresh (the fact that it isn’t bogged down with endless back-story romances surely helps), and it remains wildly funny too, sixty years after it was first broadcast.

As for Silvers, he never bounced back from the cancellation of the show, suffering long periods of depression and ill-health following a minor stroke in 1972. Like his most famous creation, ‘Philly’, as his friends called him, was a compulsive gambler, squandering his vast earnings from Bilko on crap game after crap game. Even that addiction was grist for the mill, though, with Silvers famously joking that the men’s room in Caesars Palace had slot machines in them ‘so you could get washed up and cleaned out at the same time’.

Phil Silvers died in his sleep on the 1st of November 1985, his friend and colleague Mickey Freeman quipping that ‘had he been awake I’m sure that he would have talked his way out’.

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courtneytincher · 5 years ago

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The Tory Rivals Jockeying to Become Britain's Next Chancellor

(Bloomberg) -- As Jeremy Hunt and Boris Johnson enter their final weeks of campaigning to replace Prime Minister Theresa May in No. 10 Downing Street, speculation is mounting over who would take up residence next door as Chancellor of the Exchequer.While neither Hunt nor Johnson say they have promised the job to anyone yet, both have been preparing their transition teams ahead of the result on July 23. A number of names have been circulating, including Sajid Javid, Amber Rudd and even Hunt himself -- if he loses to Johnson.The new chancellor will have a packed in-tray when he or she starts. Incumbent Philip Hammond is leaving some key decisions to his successor, including picking the new Bank of England governor and deciding the scope of the upcoming spending review that sets limits for government departments.There’s also Brexit to consider. Both Johnson and Hunt have said they will pursue a no-deal exit from the European Union if an agreement can’t be reached. As Johnson has made it clear he will not allow dissent in his pro-Brexit Cabinet, current europhile ministers such David Gauke have said they are unlikely to be offered a position.So who is vying for one of the most powerful jobs in government?Sajid Javid The bookmakers’ favorite for the job is Sajid Javid, a 49-year-old former Deutsche Bank trader, business secretary and Treasury minister. Currently the home secretary, Javid has similar spending ambitions to Johnson on infrastructure and housing.He is the son of a Pakistani immigrant bus driver and would be Britain’s first chancellor from an Asian background. Pro-Israel and socially liberal, Javid is seen as fiscally tough and intellectually euroskeptic, positions that are popular among rank-and-file Tories. Crucially for Johnson, Javid is prepared to leave the EU without a deal and has now publicly backed the Tory front-runner.Jeremy HuntIf Johnson wins the Tory leadership race, he could make a bold offer to his defeated rival and give the chancellor’s job to Hunt. The foreign secretary has repeatedly noted his shared positions on Brexit with Johnson and both candidates have promised generous spending plans and tax cuts.The herbal tea-drinking Hunt is a polite multimillionaire, who likes to remind voters that he started his career as an entrepreneur. Even so, putting Hunt in the Treasury would be a dramatic peace offering to a rival who has done his best to undermine Johnson’s chances.Liz TrussLiz Truss has been a loyal supporter of Johnson since the early days of his campaign, which could put her in pole position for a key role. As the current chief secretary to the Treasury, she’s nominally in charge of the government spending review -- though she has clashed with Hammond on key policies including the divisive HS2 north-south high-speed rail project.While Hammond wants to keep HS2 on track, Truss has sided with grassroots Tories who complain it will cut through the picturesque counties surrounding London. Johnson has spoken of the need for another review of its economic benefits, while Hunt has given the project his full support.Truss, 43, doesn’t enjoy as much support in the party as other candidates. Some of her public appearances have attracted mockery, particularly when in a 2014 speech to the Tory annual conference she declared: “We import two thirds of our cheese. That. Is. A. Disgrace.”After growing up in a left-wing household in Yorkshire, northern England, Truss rebelled and joined the Tories. In the Thatcherite tradition, the pro-Brexit Truss advocates deregulation and hard work, and was co-author of a 2012 book claiming British workers are among the world’s most idle.Matt HancockThe ambitious 40-year-old Matt Hancock threw his weight behind Johnson after quitting the leadership race at an earlier stage. That surprised some of his fellow moderate Tories, given the health secretary took aim at Johnson’s anti-business rhetoric and has said he would vote to remain in the EU if given the chance in another referendum. Yet Hancock’s ability to defend government policy -- whatever it is -- will be useful to whoever wins the contest.Hancock has won a horse race as a jockey and played cricket in the Arctic. More relevantly, he’s worked as an economist at the Bank of England and as an adviser to former chancellor George Osborne.It may not be smooth sailing if Hancock gets the job. He and Johnson disagree on so-called sin taxes on sugary drinks and unhealthy foods. Hancock sees the taxes as key to tackling obesity; Johnson has pledged to review the levy. Johnson also rowed back a pledge to end a public-sector pay freeze, just hours after Hancock announced it -- apparently on his behalf.Amber RuddAmber Rudd has been talked of as a potential chancellor for years. As home secretary in 2017, she was rumored to be in line to replace Hammond if May won a landslide election victory. May failed, and Rudd stayed at the Home Office until she was forced to resign over the department’s mishandling of legacy immigration issues.It’s Rudd’s stance on Brexit -- and her past criticism of Johnson’s character -- that will weigh against her this time. As one of the most high-profile pro-EU members of Cabinet, Rudd has threatened to quit if a no-deal Brexit becomes government policy, making her an unlikely Johnson appointee.During the 2016 EU referendum, she questioned Johnson’s reliability, saying while he was the life and soul of the party, he “was not the man you want driving you home at the end of the evening.”Rudd, 55, is also one of the most vocal backers of Hunt, saying he’ll be able to best unite the divided Tory party. The work and pensions secretary is a leader of the One Nation Conservatives group backing “good regulation” and free enterprise.Best of the RestIf Johnson or Hunt decide to fill their Cabinet with Brexiteers, there are a number of contenders who could be in line for top jobs. They include Environment Secretary Michael Gove, and former Cabinet ministers Andrea Leadsom and Priti Patel.Cult figure Jacob Rees-Mogg could be a wildcard candidate for chancellor. He shares a number of similarities with Johnson, his fellow Old Etonian. The 50-year-old euroskeptic is a figurehead for the Tory party’s staunchest Brexit backers, and has supported Johnson from the start.Rees-Mogg is an arch critic of Bank of England governor Mark Carney, accusing him of interfering in Brexit and of a “panic interest-rate cut” in the wake of the 2016 vote to leave the EU.The father of five is sometimes jokingly called the “member of Parliament for the 18th Century.” He’s admitted to never changing a diaper, wore suits as an undergraduate at Oxford University, and was interviewed by the BBC at the age of 12 about his investments in industrial giant General Electric Co. He said he wanted to be managing director of the company by the age of 30.To contact the reporters on this story: Jessica Shankleman in London at [email protected];Kitty Donaldson in London at [email protected] contact the editors responsible for this story: Tim Ross at [email protected], Stuart BiggsFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

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mikemortgage · 6 years ago

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‘I feel good about the progress we’ve made’: How CEO Roy Gori is working to reinvigorate Manulife

Roy Gori doesn’t expect to be able to turn Manulife Financial Corp.’s stock performance around overnight.

The insurance and asset management giant’s chief executive, who has been in the job for just over a year, says he’s pleased with progress the company has made pursuing his strategic initiatives, such as rolling out consumer-friendly and cost-saving technology, and the redeployment of capital into higher-return businesses.

But as to whether they will be enough to bring back investors — who have been waiting since the financial crisis for shares that closed Thursday at about $21 to regain their pre-crisis heights — he has no illusions.

“The honest truth is there is some skepticism as to whether we can continue to execute,” Gori said in a wide-ranging interview with the Financial Post this week.

“We can’t just do that over the course of three quarters. We need to do that consistently over many quarters.”

Changes at Manulife more than cosmetic as insurance giant looks to simplify

Manulife reinsuring business, hiking dividend, buying back shares

Manulife shares climb 7 per cent as CEO scorns hedge fund's claims as 'commercially absurd'

For Manulife, it hasn’t been an easy road since the post-crisis days of 2009, when over-exposure to interest rates and equities forced the firm to shore up capital through measures that included cutting the quarterly dividend in half.

The subsequent years of historically low rates that followed combined with increasing longevity to drag on returns.

By design, the Manulife that Gori inherited is far less sensitive to interest rates and equity markets than it was then.

As CEO, Gori has already led the company to realize more than two-thirds of a pledge last year to free up $5 billion from underperforming “legacy” businesses by 2022, through a combination of stronger accountability, cost management and new strategic opportunities.

But for the Australia-born 49-year-old, who took over as CEO in late 2017 after a quick introduction to Manulife via its Asian operations, not everything has gone according to plan.

This past October, the short-seller firm Muddy Waters targeted Manulife with the suggestion the Toronto-based company could lose a court case in Saskatchewan, which would put it on the hook for billions of dollars. Shortly after, Manulife issued a statement refuting the report’s conclusions, and added that it believed the position advanced in the lawsuit by hedge fund Mosten Investment LP was “legally unfounded.”

Despite the company’s defence, Manulife shares fell 5.7 per cent in the two days following the short report, dipping from $23.19 to $21.86, before sliding below $20 as markets in general tanked that month.

Gori: “We remain highly confident we’re going to prevail in the matter. This is not going to have a material impact on our business…”

In the interview this week, Gori reiterated the company’s position and characterized the attack as being among the sort of “unexpected challenges (that) are par for the course for any big company and any CEO.”

Though the court case described in the short-seller’s report had not been disclosed in the company’s financial statements, he noted that it had already been “in the public domain for a long time.” A story in the Financial Post last February detailed the fight at the heart of the case over side accounts on certain life insurance products that allowed investors to hold money at guaranteed interest rates.

“This is before the courts and that process often can take time, but we feel very confident about our position and where this will ultimately end,” Gori told the Post this week.

“We remain highly confident that we’re going to prevail in the matter. This is not going to have a material impact on our business, I feel very confident about that.”

Shortly after the Muddy Waters report was published, Saskatchewan amended its insurance regulations to prohibit insurers from accepting deposits above what’s required to pay premiums over a policy’s eligible period. As a result, Manulife said it would seek to have the court dismiss the hedge fund’s claims that life insurers can be compelled to accept unlimited premium payments, adding that the Saskatchewan amendments should accelerate resolution of the principal matters of the case in Manulife’s favour.

In November, the month after the short report, Manulife announced agreements to release more than $1 billion of capital in keeping with its previously announced strategy. This included reinsuring substantially all of Manulife’s legacy U.S. pay-out annuities businesses.

The firm also announced plans to buy back up to 40 million of its own shares and increase its common share dividend by 14 per cent.

Again, these moves had little lasting impact on the direction of the stock.

Creating value for shareholders, and having that reflected in the share price, is “obviously very critical” to his job as CEO, said Gori, who was preparing to leave this weekend to attend the World Economic Forum, which begins Sunday in Davos, Switzerland.

Manulife Financial’s head office in Toronto.

“I feel good about the progress we’ve made (on) an execution front in 2018,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of great, in my mind, proof points that articulate that we can execute the agenda we set and we can achieve the ambition we are setting for the company … but we have to continue to do that.”

One plank in the plan to get there is to focus on areas of growth, such as Asia, where Gori got his start at Manulife after leaving Citigroup to join the Canadian company in 2015.

Despite recent trade and political tension between North America and China, Gori said he is “more excited now about (Manulife’s) Asia opportunity and … business than ever before,” particularly with China’s movement toward more liberalized markets for investment products and the loosening of foreign ownership and control restrictions on insurance companies in China.

“While there is some (recent) tension there … that we’re all seeing, I really don’t see that that will have any effect on our business in a material way, and certainly not one that would derail the progress that we’re making and the opportunity we see,” Gori said.

The company’s beachhead in China is Manulife-Sinochem Life Insurance Co. Ltd., of which it owns 51 per cent alongside partner SinoChem.

Gori said the venture is already in good position to take advantage of a growing middle class and demand for insurance and wealth management products in China, but that it is only a beginning.

“We clearly would like to have a greater interest in China, because we think the opportunity is very significant,” he said.

“We’d love to (have) a greater share of the business, but it’s only an opportunity if we see that SinoChem has a desire to divest and at this point they don’t, and we’ll continue to work with them.”

He said diversification within Asia — in addition to China, Manulife operates in Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan and Vietnam — and across their North American operations gives him comfort the company can ride out any short-term issues.

In recent years, the company has fielded questions numerous times about whether it is considering selling John Hancock, the Boston-based insurance firm purchased in 2004 that doubled Manulife’s size and catapulted it into the upper echelons of Canada’s financial services industry. Some of the U.S. business lines, including variable annuities and long-term care, which face challenges due to longer lifespans and low interest rates, have also been the subjects of sale speculation.

Gori said the U.S. market is the largest for both insurance and wealth management, and while nothing would ever be ruled out as the company looks to get the highest return for capital invested, there is no need to sell Hancock.

“The pivot for us in the U.S. is really to see how we can use digital ways of interacting to transform the (insurance business and) allow us to gain share,” he said.

“So our focus in the U.S. is to really double down on the opportunity we see there and to … complement that with a very strong wealth management business.”

Even in this scenario, there is still room to do more when it comes to dealing with the “legacy part” of the business, Gori said.

“As I highlighted in 2018, we would never take anything off the table.”

Despite the constant talk about dealmaking and pursuing growth in hot markets around the world, Gori says the lasting mark he would like to leave at Manulife during his tenure as CEO has more to do with the corporate culture. He wants the company and its employees to focus on technology and customers, rather than products, and use the digital transformation to make processes more efficient for both the company and customers.

And he wants the value of the company to be evident, even to the skeptics, through consistent performance.

“We have to make sure that quarter in, quarter out, we’re executing against the agenda and that we’re demonstrating that we can deliver against the goals that we’ve articulated for the street,” Gori said. “I believe once we’ve established a credibility against that, we’ll unlock value in the stock price.”

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