City profile

Keith Hellawell As chairman of controversial retailer Sports Direct, Keith Hellawell has become “a lightning rod” for shareholder concerns about corporate governance, said BBC Business online. Yet once again, the former chief constable of West Yorkshire police has “narrowly survived an attempt to oust him”. At last week’s AGM, independent shareholders voted 53% in Hellawell’s favour – defying a concerted attempt by several big institutions to bring about his removal. As was the case last January, Hellawell, 75, “survived by the skin of his teeth”, said Royal London’s Ashley Hamilton Claxton. He lives to fight another day. Hellawell “is nothing if not a survivor”, said the Daily Mail. His childhood featured “a sadistic aunt who made him walk to school in the snow barefoot” and a “louche-sounding” mother who “shackled him to a table leg when she went out dancing”. After five years down a coal pit, he went on to a glittering police career in which he revelled in his tough guy image. “Tall, broadshouldered with a gimleteyed gaze, his soup-strainer moustache bristled with pent-up aggression.” He then did a stint as New Labour’s “drugs tsar”. Yet his reputation as a boardroom “enforcer” has been far from stellar, and some “gamey employment practices” forced a parliamentary enquiry. “Some suspect him of being little more than CEO Mike Ashley’s appointed stooge.” Most top-flight chairmen claw their way to the top after a long career in executive roles, said Management Today, “but there’s a lot to be said for alternative experience.” Or possibly not.