Summary
The view from the top of business. Presented by Evan Davis, The Bottom Line cuts through confusion, statistics and spin to present a clearer view of the business world, through discussion with people running leading and emerging companies. The programme is broadcast first on BBC Radio 4 and later on BBC World Service Radio, BBC World News TV and BBC News Channel TV.
Evan and his panel talk cars. What road is the automotive industry on? Just where is it headed? They also consider whether it's best to be a wage slave, with a regular salary, or to take a share of the profits of a business.
Joining Evan in the studio are Ken Keir, Vice President of Honda Motors Europe; Nikki King, Managing Director of Isuzu Truck UK; Wol Kolade, Managing Partner of venture capital firm Isis Equity Partners.
Producer: Ben Crighton Editor: Stephen Chilcott.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Thank you for downloading this podcast from the BBC. |
| 0:03.7 | In this edition of The Bottom Line, Evan Davis and his guests swap thoughts on the car industry, |
| 0:09.5 | and the pros and cons of being a wage slave. |
| 0:12.9 | Hello and welcome to the bottom line. |
| 0:15.2 | We're going to talk about cars today, the state of play in the automotive industry. |
| 0:19.9 | You can tell a lot about an economy from its cars, the quality of German engineering, the state of play in the automotive industry. You can tell a lot about an economy from its |
| 0:22.0 | cars, the quality of German engineering, the efficiency of Japanese manufacturing, the style |
| 0:27.4 | of the Italians. And the British, well, our industry is tellingly mostly foreign-owned. |
| 0:33.8 | That's the British way. So where is the car industry going? We have the man running the European operations of one of those foreign-owned British car manufacturers with us. |
| 0:43.6 | And also, how would you like to be paid, a regular salary or a share in the profits of the business you're in? |
| 0:50.3 | But first, let's spend a few minutes meeting each of my guests. |
| 0:53.7 | And first up is Wohl-Col, who's managing partner of the venture capital firm, ISIS equity partners. |
| 0:59.7 | Wall, we call it venture capital. |
| 1:01.6 | But it's also private equity, really, isn't it? |
| 1:03.7 | It's not just about financing startup businesses. |
| 1:07.6 | It's also about restructuring and helping existing businesses. Yes, that's absolutely right. I mean, on the one hand, you've got venture capital, which back start-ups, the name people know, Apple, computer, or Google or Facebook. On the other hand, you've got the very large end, which again is very much in the press. A few years ago, Boots, the chemist, was taken over by KKR, a very large private equity firm. |
| 1:28.9 | And in the middle, you've got this ecosystem of lots of small and medium-sized enterprises |
| 1:33.6 | as being helped to grow, develop restructure by private equity people such as myself. |
| 1:38.0 | But I mean, is it a fault with the venture capital industry in Britain, in Europe, pretty well everywhere, |
| 1:44.4 | in fact, apart from the pretty well everywhere, in fact, |
| 1:49.1 | apart from the United States, that in terms of actually creating new businesses and helping them grow, entrepreneur comes along with an idea, wants some money, that's like, no, we're not |
| 1:54.3 | really interested in that. We'd like sort of helping establish businesses or restructuring them |
... |
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