The Wizard of Wellcome

"I want to present to you an apparent mystery about Roger. The puzzle is best expressed by quotes I have been given by his friends and family. Let me give two examples:

"He is the only man to have written more books than he has read: the only man who has more honorary degrees than O levels."

Another even more direct characterisation came from a friend when in a group with Roger. A Swiss individual enquired, "Please explain the English expression ‘making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear’." His friend pointed at Roger. Why Roger? He is a prime example.

Roger himself has often muttered about being rather a late developer. So we have a bit of a puzzle: how did Roger develop – was it a true metamorphosis and, if so, of what kind? I have prepared a brief scientific paper on the subject. You have had the Introduction, and the rest is conventionally divided into Results, and then Discussion and Conclusions.

Results: Excerpts from A Natural History of the Development of R.G.G.

Eton: small and hopelessly uncoordinated, no good at anything except tennis, but a keen and enthusiastic participant in virtually all sport. Already, at age 13, there was another sporting interest. A trio of Gibbs, Peter Hill-Wood and Edward Cazalet used to bet on horses. It was Roger who persuaded them to put as much as 10/- on a single horse – at a time when the standard allowance of pocket money for the young gentlemen was £2 per term.

Leaving Eton: left early but not sacked! Housemaster, Jack Peterson, rang Roger’s father, Sir Geoffrey, and said there was not much more the school could do for Roger academically.

Germany: Our intrepid Chairman-to-be then had a rather quiet time between schools. He went to Germany, near Munster, ostensibly to learn German. There is a scurrilous rumour that he only remembers one word – Huhn, the word for hen, because he was staying with a family where his part of the contract was to be an au pair for the chickens on the farm. Some evidence for this is that he was subsequently unsuccessful when he took an O level in German.

Millfield: Within a few days of his arrival, he had struck a deal. The masters and boys were relieved of their newspaper money and the local newsagent agreed to supply a term’s worth at a modest discount, with the bill to be paid at the end of the term. The only flaw in this deal was that its broker had in the meantime invested the funds on the runners and riders at Wincanton and Taunton. As every prudent investor knows, some investments can diminish in value and it was a help to Roger in dealing with the newsagent that the family name meant banking.

His next job was obviously a seminal experience. Briefly, he was a goods porter at Oxford railway station. And then, finally, in 1954, into the City! Starting with Jessel Toynbee. His previous practical experience as a gambler and deal-maker immediately started to pay off – for most of the time guessing changing interest rates. Without tracing all the details of his time in the City, he became in 1975, at the very young age of 40, Chairman of Gerrard & National, where he remained as Chairman until he became Chairman of the Trust in 1989.

He had not lost his enthusiasm for sport when he came to the City. It took similar form to his school days. Let’s start with Roger’s exploits at Haringey. He owned a dog called Hare Sense and this turned out to be a particularly successful investment. Winning quite a few races meant that there was an accumulation of pewter trophies, which he stored at his parents’ home. A few years later, his mother discovered the store without realizing its provenance and selected a fairly dreadful cocktail shaker, wrapped it up and presented it to Roger as a Christmas present. He is reported to have had what my children would call a slight sense of humour failure!

His dog days were more lucrative than pewter implies. He was an assiduous follower of the advice of the doyen of dog-track tipsters, one G V S Trent-Baxter, who wrote in the Sporting Chronicle Handicap book under the by-line "G.V.S. knows all!" As a result, the Gibbs’s coffers and the Gibbs’s reputation both grew. Fortunately, Trent-Baxter is here tonight as the special guest, for his real name is none other than Roger Gibbs.

Another piece of Gibbs prowess: Let me give you a clue to the time, by selecting three of the newspaper headlines:

"Dexter fights on, whilst England despairs"
"Thames freezes over"
"Gibbs wins handicap"

The time is the winter of 1962 – however appropriate the first headline may be to the present day! Roger has been a member of the St Moritz Tobogganing Club – usually referred to as the Cresta Run – for a long time and he organised a handicap race to raise money for a new clubhouse. He was up against the world champion, an Italian called Nino Bibbia. The handicapping was based on past performance and Bibbia was likely to take just over 45 seconds for each of the three runs, while Roger was expected to take 48 seconds. The thought of more money for the Club led Roger to excel himself and manage an average of 47 seconds.

This is not the only example of Roger’s genuine prowess in sport, and his harnessing of it to good causes. Most of you will know that he completed the London Marathon and raised, in sponsorship money, what would be, at today’s value, over £1 million. This was used to provide a scanner for Guy’s Hospital. Occasionally, the Gibbs’s coffers benefited – such as when he won a sizeable bet running from the Bank of England to Charing Cross in less than ten minutes, wearing city clothes and a top hat.

I only want to tell one story about Roger at the Trust – but I think it is the key to why the Trust is where it is today. It concerns the 1992 share sale. Our Investment Banker, Laurence Banks, had been giving us unqualified advice to sell for some time. But what he, Banks, had not spotted was that the Wellcome company had a very stingy dividend policy to its shareholders – principally us. Roger did not, therefore, take Banks’s advice, but waited until a new Chairman and a new Chief Executive were appointed and the Company took on a much more commercial stance, with a considerably increased dividend. This greatly improved the share price and was fundamental to the success of the sale.

Discussions and conclusions
We have to address the issue of Roger’s development. Was it a metamorphosis and, if so, of what kind? There are some metaphors: do they suffice? The transformation of the tadpole to the frog doesn’t seem very fitting. A better one might be the ugly duckling to the swan. But it still doesn’t seem to quite fit the bill. I would like to propose an alternative: that it was not a metamorphosis at all; the mistake made by his friends was to judge him by the ordinary conventions of schoolboy development. Roger is akin to Harry Potter – he is a wizard. Those of you unfamiliar with this recent literary phenomenon may need a little help.

Ordinary humans are, in the books, called muggles. Harry Potter is not a muggle, he is a wizard. But he needs education in the arts of wizardry and that requires special schooling – possibly to the detriment of his success at ordinary schooling. If Roger is judged by muggle criteria, then he certainly is a late developer: but the alternative is that he is, and always has been, a wizard and the excerpts I have presented to you are just examples of his special education. The hypothesis I have offered doesn’t account for his steely resolution. I would like to speculate that his resolve to succeed, both for himself and for others, comes from the likelihood that his family, and he himself, were judging him by muggle criteria. For example, one City person who knew Roger’s economics teacher, John Paxton, at Millfield, said that Paxton was startled that Roger had not been allowed into the family bank "because he couldn’t add up". Paxton said that he had never known anyone with a better understanding of the difference between 7 to 4 and 15 to 8, and that he was a consummate deal maker.

Whatever the explanation, all of us can be immensely grateful that Roger turned out to be such an altruistic wizard who has devoted most of his time and energy, not to enriching himself, but to making many worthy institutions financially more secure.

I ask you all to rise and toast the Wizard of Wellcome."