Few individuals who span the worlds of business and sport have travelled a journey as exciting and varied as that of our chairman, David Buchler.
Those of us who know David well and have worked with him over much of that journey often forget what a great ride it’s been. A new interview with entrepreneur, writer and podcaster Lord Russell Baker is a great reminder.
The podcast and YouTube video are entitled Buchler Scores for Tottenham Hotspur, referencing David’s long history with the leading football club. However, it demonstrates that our esteemed colleague has seen success in several fields, often far less green than White Hart Lane’s, over six decades.
David entered the accountancy profession at the beginning of the 1970s, ending those years as an insolvency partner at Arthur Andersen. In 1988, he launched Buchler Phillips with his long-time business partner Peter Phillips, undertaking several high-profile corporate recovery assignments, including the receivership of Robert Maxwell’s private estate. Buchler Phillips was acquired in 1999 by global consulting firm Kroll Inc after which David Buchler became the group’s chairman for Europe and Africa until 2003.
Five years later, as the global financial crisis was gathering pace and he was operating from his own independent business, DB Consultants, David joined with founder Jules Kroll to buy the eponymous form from its then parent, Marsh & McLennan. They were outbid, $1.2bn to $800m, by a major private equity group. After another daring but unsuccessful bid later that year for stricken high street retailer Woolworths, David spent 10 years focusing on a diverse portfolio of complex restructuring and turnaround assignments, notably leading the fraud investigation at Langbar International chairing sports management group CSS Stellar and restructuring former e-security group Baltimore Technologies.
Returning to football, David has been involved in club restructuring since 1992 when Buchler Phillips was appointed administrator to Wealdstone FC. During the 1990s, he advised Luton Town, Millwall, Oxford United. Swindon Town and Barnet, before joining the board of Tottenham, where he was vice-chairman from 2001 to 2006.
A lifelong opera fan, David Buchler joined the board of the then financially troubled English National Opera in October 2006. Within months, he became Deputy chairman, a position he held for 10 years. He remains ENO’s Chairman of Directors Emeriti and in June 2017 David Buchler launched Opera Spy, a website to chronicle his personal reviews of performances all over the world.
All these activities are just the tip of the iceberg, as Russell discovers in his interview. We won’t spoil it any more – just listen, watch and enjoy!
Buchler Phillips is a UK based independent boutique firm with an impeccable Mayfair heritage, specialising in corporate recovery, turnaround, restructuring and insolvency.