Steve Walton, Chief Executive of Sunderland AFC

Sep 27 2010 by Karen Dent, The Journal

HE WAS the banker who loaned Newcastle £15m to buy Alan Shearer, became the club's chief executive and now holds the same role at Sunderland AFC - the team he’s supported all his life. Karen Dent meets Steve Walton, the man Freddy Shepherd calls "the Mackem bank manager".

WHEN Steve Walton left his 30-year-plus career with Barclays Bank to take up the reins as the Magpies' chief executive, he already knew his days were numbered.

The guitar-playing policeman’s son from Sunderland, who became the banking world’s “Mr Football’, accepted the job from Freddy Shepherd and Douglas Hall in 2007.

“They were quite keen on me coming and getting involved with the club and paradoxically, there were a number of people interested in buying the club,” says Walton, 56.

“I’d seen so many corporate takeovers in my banking career that I knew what the fate was of a chief executive in those scenarios.

“Freddy and Douglas sat down and said ‘there isn’t anybody out there, we are going to run the business, will you come on board?’ So I took the plunge.

“It wasn’t a big decision to move into Newcastle United; it was a massive decision to leave Barclays. It was a huge wrench.”

But the day of his Barclays leaving do everything changed.

“That was the day that Sir John Hall sold his shares to Mike Ashley. So it was actually the day of my leaving do that I knew pretty much that I was going to be out of work,” says Walton.

“The next two months was spent effectively not really running Newcastle United but running the takeover, because unfortunately Freddy Shepherd was rushed into hospital with a collapsed lung. The Halls had already sold to Mike Ashley – and Newcastle was a plc at the time – so I found myself not running a football club but running a corporate takeover, dealing with Mike, and knowing pretty much that I would be surplus to requirements at the end of it, because that’s what happens.

“I was actually five months at Newcastle, all told. I always said I could write a book on the 10 or 12 years I was working in football as a banker; I could probably write two on that five months – which I never will!

“But it was a fascinating five months and it was something I wouldn’t have missed for the world. I’m not sure that my wife would say the same ...”

Married to Janet, with a son and daughter working for Barclays – “I’ve got a banking dynasty” – a toddler grandson and two sons from his previous marriage, Walton has been Sunderland CEO since March 2009.

“I’m at the stage in my career now that the bottom line is I couldn’t top it and I certainly would have no interest in going to a ‘bigger’ – in inverted commas – club, so if Manchester United or Real Madrid or whoever came calling, which is pretty unlikely, I have to say – I wouldn’t be interested.

“I’m a Sunderland lad, I’m a North East lad, I love the area, I’m massively proud of my area and my football club.”

Brought up in Seaburn, not far from Roker Park where his dad worked the matches as a policeman, Walton is actually a scientist by education and worked for Camerex Paints in Sunderland after university.

One of his first jobs was creating anti-theft paint which is invisible to the naked eye but shows up under ultraviolet lighting.

He said: “The problem was that I could never go in a discotheque because my arms were fluorescent and I had spots on my face...

“That wasn’t quite why I left that but for me I wasn’t cut out to work in a lab. I was humming and hawing for something to do, and I was in a pub and my then girlfriend worked for Barclays Bank. I was chatting to her branch manager and he said ‘why don’t you come and work for Barclays?’

“I started at Barclays Bank in 1973 and I stayed there for 34 years. It’s less possible now in banking but it was possible to do a job from cradle to grave and have lots of different experience. About 15 years ago, I found myself as a corporate banker in Newcastle asked to look after the larger connections in Newcastle.”

He had a “large and strange” portfolio; rather than run-of-the-mill businesses, he looked after “all the funny ones”, including Newcastle United.

“The Halls and the Shepherds had just wrested control, Kevin Keegan came in. I lent Newcastle the money to buy Alan Shearer, which at the time it was a world-record transfer of £15m,” says Walton.

“I learned my trade as a banker in football with Newcastle. In the early days some of it was very interesting ... quite hairy at times as well.”

He also looked after both the city’s universities and built up a string of Northern universities. He became the banking world’s specialist in education and football.

“Because I was dealing with Newcastle, Bob Murray was trying to sort the financing out to build the Stadium of Light, and I was asked by the bank if I would be prepared to go and talk to Sunderland,” says Walton.

“Now Bob was really worried about this. How could a banker who looked after Newcastle get involved in Sunderland?

“The gist of what we agreed with Bob was I would come down as a trial and see whether or not it was workable and that he was happy that I could keep the confidences between the two clubs.

“So I ended up becoming the permanent banker to Sunderland and thereafter, I just collected football clubs.”

Eventually, his portfolio included half of the 20 Premier League clubs.

“If you’ve got 10, you’ve got a 50-50 chance that three will get relegated every year. I used to think I was genius because for about four or five years, none of my clubs got relegated ... it must be down to me!

“The one season, I got three and in three seasons, we had a load, and that’s when I really, really learned my trade. That’s when you really get down and dirty, sleeves rolled up and involved in trying to sort the finances out.”

Football, says Walton, is not the gigantic business that people assume.

“It’s not true now, but only four or five years ago, the average Premier League football club turned over less than the average BMW dealership.

“We will turn over around £70m at Sunderland this year. In the scheme of things that’s not a huge, huge number and our former club sponsor Reg Vardy turned over around about £1bn, and they were taken over by Pendragon who are bigger again.

“But the profile and the PR around it is just totally out of kilter with the size of it and it just shows what the passion there is for football.”

Walton went to his house in France with his wife and his guitar when his NUFC tenure came to a premature end.