Juergen Maier is recalling a withering comment on his school report. His eyes light up: “If Juergen put as much effort in the classroom as he did fighting in the playground, then everything would be fine.” Laughing, he turns to his colleague Rachel, who is in charge of recruitment: “You would absolutely not have recruited me!”
Juergen is proof that CEOs come in all shapes and sizes. He is far from being an elusive figure shrouded by hierarchy and he’s certainly not a hoodie-wearing Silicon Valley type. To be in his presence is to feel at ease. That’s partly because he’s a naturally relaxed person; it’s also because he knows that inauthenticity is a barrier. It’s something UK society has a habit of sniffing out and it’s why current political apathy hinges on how convincing leaders are. An adopted Mancunian, when he shrugs that he “prefers pubs to poncey cocktail bars” it’s not spin, it’s real.
Folded into his jacket pocket is a blue handkerchief, stitched with Edelweiss; a nod to his Austrian roots; Juergen’s family came to the UK when he was 10. His mother was remarrying, and that meant a new life in 1980s Leeds where there were “shootings down the road, cars on fire, a burned-out marketplace — and no council budget to rebuild it.” Back in Karlsruhe, Germany, they’d lived in a block of flats with a close community, and Juergen and his brother were allowed to take the tram into town alone to buy ice-cream.
When we meet it’s almost one year to the day that Britain voted to leave the EU. Regardless of one’s stance, one thing can be agreed upon; Britain is at the edge of a momentous moment in history. But amid the uncertainty, Juergen is strikingly pragmatic — especially for an Austrian, who has adopted Britain as his home.
“Uncertainty is going to be around for a pretty long time,” he says. And so it’s something we ought to get more comfortable with. Over the years he’s experienced enough turmoil to have a confidence in things working out: “People often think the world’s going to collapse, but we’re incredibly resilient. I’m not a panicker. I know we’ll sort this out.”
“14,000 lorries come to the UK every day — I only learned that this morning — now, imagine we leave the European Single Market, and every lorry needs it’s contents checked, so tax duty is paid. We’d have lorries parked from Dover to Birmingham and the Channel blocked with everybody waiting.” He believes it’s simple practicalities such as this, which will ultimately dictate change, rather than government policy.
Whether he’s talking about global commerce, jobs in Hull, Prime Minister Theresa May and Labour’s Leader of the Opposition Jeremy Corbyn, or the pub, his opinions are underpinned by honesty, responsibility and tolerance. He’s driven to “do the right things for society,” something he learned at school.
When the other kids picked up on the fact that he was not only “foreign” but also gay, they thought they’d spotted a vulnerability. The only way to stand up for himself was to fight. “I thought ‘This cannot be the way a society is meant to run.’” So instead he organized. He formed school clubs and joined a Young Conservatives debating society, in support of the centre-right party he felt would drive much needed change. This was much to the chagrin of his stepdad, a lifelong supporter of the opposing party. Then, in 1988 Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher passed Section 28, an amendment stating that schools should not “intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality.”
“It was a horrific piece of legislation. Shocking. I was a gay man supporting the party, wanting the country to get better, but they passed this legislation which said I wasn’t allowed to be talked about. I left the party. I had no option.”
It was a definitive moment, which taught him to follow his convictions. That firmness of feeling is something that draws people towards him: when David Cameron was deciding whether to call the EU Referendum, he called on a group of business advisors, to ask their professional opinion. Juergen was one of those figures and, though the group’s advice was eventually disregarded, his influence is clear.
Responsibility, he says, is about doing the right things for other people. “We live in a society, you can’t always have it your way,” he says. “That’s what was great about growing up in a block of flats — it teaches you about living within a diverse community.”
