Gerald Krasner, Partner, Begbies Traynor Group

Jan 4 2010 by Andrew Mernin, The Journal

WORKING as a football chairman brings mass criticism, impossible financial targets and the fire of media snipers from every angle, so why do it? Andrew Mernin talks to Gerald Krasner, an insolvency expert who has done it twice and would do it again given half the chance.

He returned home with the South Coast club after dealing with its administration and Bates’s ban was unable to lawfully stop an opposition director into the ground.

“Bournemouth was very difficult because we needed the funds to keep it going. Every month I’d hold a Press conference and for at least two of them, five minutes beforehand I didn’t know whether I was shutting the club down or whether someone was going to give us a cheque.

“Fortunately someone did give us a cheque, and, although we got a 17-point deduction the club is doing well today.”

Krasner admits his current role in Newcastle gives him little time to explore other pursuits. He does, however, hint that he has unfinished business in football.

“If somebody offered me an administration in football, I’d seriously look at it, subject to one or two matters to be agreed.”

And what of the man at the helm of his second team, Newcastle United?

“I think Mike Ashley was very good at Sports Direct but I think he completely misread the football scene. He’s blown a few hundred million and you can’t knock the guy for that and I think he’s taken the view that if he sits until the end of the season he may get a better offer.”

It seems Krasner will forever be known as the man who would be king of Leeds.

But long before he walked through the doors of the Elland Road boardroom, he became famous far beyond the boundaries of his Yorkshire homeland.

In fact, a combination of perseverance and opportunism made him, for one night only, big in Japan.

In the late 1980s he was involved in a project which bought propellers that had been used on the QE2.

The vast amount of metal was used to make specialist golf clubs which proved internationally popular.

“We sold 2,000 sets in the UK at £1,000 each which was very expensive 20 years ago. In Japan they went for US$10,000 a set. At the Japanese launch event they even gave us a party on the QE2.”

But that was just the beginning of his Japanese adventure for, thanks to an encounter with some Japanese businessmen on the golf course, Krasner made the top story on the Japanese evening news one night in 1989. And it all started with a dinosaur egg.

“We were playing golf with some Japanese businessmen and one of them was setting up a dinosaur theme park, so my mate asked him whether he wanted a dinosaur egg.

“We then found the only person in Western Europe who knew how to get dinosaur eggs and, after nagging him every day, we managed to get three. I got one, the other guys got one and we took the other one through to Japan with us. You can imagine the scenes at Leeds Bradford Airport as we put it through the X-ray machine.

“We radioed ahead to Japan to say we were on our way and when we got there, there were six news crews and we made the number-one item on the news that night.”

Alongside his brief stint as a dealer in dinosaur relics, Krasner’s day job as an administrator has also led him on a varied journey which has often given thrust him into the public eye.

He cites Planet Hollywood as an interesting highlight as well as the liquidation of the Lola F1 team.

“I ended up with two F1 cars. I wanted to drive them from Leeds to London to see how quickly I could get there but you‘re not allowed to take them on the open road. In the end I sold them on.”

It was a blind date which eventually brought Krasner to the North East, and proved the catalyst for his most recent success.

After working for several years in Leeds at what is now known as KPMG, he joined his father at Bartfields accountancy firm.

It was here that he carved out a name for himself in corporate rescue and insolvency matters as the company grew, with the addition of a Newcastle office.

“I came up for a blind date in 1993 and got married – then divorced – but loved it so much that I’ve stayed and home is now here.”

In 2007 Krasner sold part of the business to Begbies Traynor and so he became part of a national operation which has flourished while other sectors have floundered.

“We’re in a boom industry – when everybody is quiet, we are booming.”

As someone whose career is based on the failure, and ultimate rescue, of UK business, Krasner is well placed to judge the outlook for the region’s economy.

While he is hardly brimming with optimism, he feels it is vital to stress just how much worse the economic downturn could have been.

“I don’t think people actually realise how near we came to the death of capitalism in this country. If any of those banks had actually gone under and hundreds of thousands of people couldn’t get money out to buy groceries, you’d have troops defending Tesco, you’d have civil unrest. It would have been meltdown and we came closer than anybody realises.”

Unlike the positive predictions of some business leaders, the straight-talking Yorkshireman believes the nation’s economy is far from over the worst.

“Unemployment is going to go up and we are going to get busier.”

“I don’t see it getting any better. I think we are going to tread water until the election.

“I think people have forgotten that everything that’s being done is geared towards this election, which is why we’re not sorting any problems.

“Whoever does get in, the public spending cuts are going to be severe.

“By 2011 we might see a green shoot – or we might not.”

Dark times ahead there may be for the wider economy, but for Krasner and Begbies, the future looks considerably brighter.