Barbara Cassani
Encyclopedia
Barbara Ann Cassani, CBE
, (born July 22, 1960) is an American
businesswoman. She was the founder under British Airways
of budget airline Go Fly
and was the first leader of London
's bid for the 2012 Summer Olympics
.
, graduating magna cum laude
with a BA (Hons) international relations
in 1982; and is also a former trustee of Mount Holyoke. Cassani earned a master's degree
, again in international relations, from Princeton University
's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs
. She was awarded an honorary degree from Cranfield University
in 2004.
Barbara Cassani married British investment banker Guy Davis in 1985. The couple have two children, Lauren and James. She is a keen horse rider
, and competes in showjumping and dressage
events. Since stepping down from the Olympic bid Cassani has been working on plans for a new startup company
, and appears as a business and management speaker on the public speaking
circuit.
. There she worked in sales
, marketing
, and on the team that integrated Dan-Air
into BA's business.
In 1997, facing increasing competition from low cost airlines Ryanair
and EasyJet
, British Airways decided to found its own budget offering, to be known as 'Go'. Chief Executive Bob Ayling
selected Cassani for the task, giving her only £25 million in seed capital. The company began operations in 1998 and reached profitability two years later. In 2001 Cassani led a management buyout
of the company (with most of the funding coming from venture capital
firm 3i
), and became its first Chief Executive.
In 2002, Cassini won the Veuve Clicquot Businesswoman of the Year award. Later in 2002 the airline was bought by rival EasyJet (a move bitterly opposed by Cassani) and she was not offered a position in the merged company. She next released a book detailing her experiences at Go; Go - An Airline Adventure (ISBN 0-316-72662-1) won a number of business publishing awards the following year.
In October 2003 Cassani became a non-executive director
of retailer Marks & Spencer
, a position she relinquished when she accepted the olympic position. After her Olympic tenure she was one of the executives mooted as taking over as the struggling company's Chief Executive.
In June 2003 she was appointed to chair London's bid to host the 2012 Summer Olympics. The organizing committee felt that her business background would give the bid a badly needed professionalism; the organizational reputation of British sport had already been tarnished when it won the right to host the 2005 World Athletics Championships
but was forced to withdraw when the promised stadium could not be built.
Cassani's selection surprised many commentators, as she was unknown in the highly political world of Olympic sport. Although she was married to a Briton and had lived in the country for more than a decade, her American nationality also raised some eyebrows. She led the bid through the first phase of the two-stage bidding process. During her tenure the newly formed bid corporation grew to a staff of 80, with many large institutional backers, and gained increasing buy-in from a skeptical British public and political class. Her team created the bid's master plan, which detailed where events would be held, what infrastructure would be built, and provided an overall budget projection for the games. This was submitted to the International Olympic Committee
in the spring of 2004, and on the strength of it London was selected as one of the five candidate cities.
In March 2004, the Daily Telegraph diary printed claims that Cassani had been highly critical of Tony Blair
, saying "To be frank he wasn't very bright ... the subject he got most animated about was beach volleyball
". Cassani sued for libel saying that the story was not only completely without foundation but also highly damaging to the bid; on April 21 the Telegraph admitted that she had made none of the remarks attributed to her, and agreed to apologise in print, pay her costs and make a donation to the Olympic bid committee.
In May 2004 Cassani announced she was stepping down as chairman in favour of Olympic gold medallist and politician Lord Coe
, saying that she felt the bid had reached a stage where his track record in the Olympic movement would be more useful to the bid than her technical and managerial experience. Some commentators felt, however, that her departure had been precipitated by internal politics in the British sports establishment. Pierre-Yves Gerbeau
, whom she had appointed as the bid's ambassador, quit the effort shortly after she stepped down, saying the way Cassani had been treated was "shocking."
Cassani stayed on with the bid, serving under Coe as Vice Chairman responsible for technical aspects of the bid. She continued to serve on the board (working unpaid one day per week); the IOC awarded the XXXth Olympiad to London on July 6, 2005.
On September 24, 2007 Cassani became the new chairman of the board at Vueling Airlines
, replacing Jose Miguel Abab Silvestre, who resigned abruptly citing "managerial differences." Vueling is a three year old airline
based in Barcelona
, Spain
, whose share value in the stock market had dropped by 30% earlier in 2007. Board members Jose Creuheras Margenat and Ferran Conti Penina also resigned.
Barbara Cassani was appointed Executive Chairperson of Jurys Inn hotel
s in 2008.
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
, (born July 22, 1960) is an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
businesswoman. She was the founder under British Airways
British Airways
British Airways is the flag carrier airline of the United Kingdom, based in Waterside, near its main hub at London Heathrow Airport. British Airways is the largest airline in the UK based on fleet size, international flights and international destinations...
of budget airline Go Fly
Go Fly
Go Fly was the name of an award-winning British airline. It was purchased by EasyJet.-History:Bob Ayling, ex-chief of British Airways, approached EasyJet's founder, Stelios Haji-Ioannou, to ask whether he could visit claiming that he was fascinated by how the Greek entrepreneur had made the budget...
and was the first leader of London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
's bid for the 2012 Summer Olympics
2012 Summer Olympics
The 2012 Summer Olympic Games, officially known as the "London 2012 Olympic Games", are scheduled to take place in London, England, United Kingdom from 27 July to 12 August 2012...
.
Personal life
Barbara Cassani was born in Boston to James and Noreen Cassani. She studied at Mount Holyoke CollegeMount Holyoke College
Mount Holyoke College is a liberal arts college for women in South Hadley, Massachusetts. It was the first member of the Seven Sisters colleges, and served as a model for some of the others...
, graduating magna cum laude
Latin honors
Latin honors are Latin phrases used to indicate the level of academic distinction with which an academic degree was earned. This system is primarily used in the United States, Canada, and in many countries of continental Europe, though some institutions also use the English translation of these...
with a BA (Hons) international relations
International relations
International relations is the study of relationships between countries, including the roles of states, inter-governmental organizations , international nongovernmental organizations , non-governmental organizations and multinational corporations...
in 1982; and is also a former trustee of Mount Holyoke. Cassani earned a master's degree
Master's degree
A master's is an academic degree granted to individuals who have undergone study demonstrating a mastery or high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice...
, again in international relations, from Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs
Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs
The Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs is a professional public policy school at Princeton University. The school has granted undergraduate A.B. degrees since 1930 and graduate degrees since 1948...
. She was awarded an honorary degree from Cranfield University
Cranfield University
Cranfield University is a British postgraduate university based on two campuses, with a research-oriented focus. The main campus is at Cranfield, Bedfordshire and the second is the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom based at Shrivenham, Oxfordshire. The main campus is unique in the United...
in 2004.
Barbara Cassani married British investment banker Guy Davis in 1985. The couple have two children, Lauren and James. She is a keen horse rider
Equestrianism
Equestrianism more often known as riding, horseback riding or horse riding refers to the skill of riding, driving, or vaulting with horses...
, and competes in showjumping and dressage
Dressage
Dressage is a competitive equestrian sport, defined by the International Equestrian Federation as "the highest expression of horse training." Competitions are held at all levels from amateur to the World Equestrian Games...
events. Since stepping down from the Olympic bid Cassani has been working on plans for a new startup company
Startup company
A startup company or startup is a company with a limited operating history. These companies, generally newly created, are in a phase of development and research for markets...
, and appears as a business and management speaker on the public speaking
Public speaking
Public speaking is the process of speaking to a group of people in a structured, deliberate manner intended to inform, influence, or entertain the listeners...
circuit.
Professional life
Upon graduation in 1984 she worked as a management consultant for Coopers & Lybrand before moving to work in the US operation of British AirwaysBritish Airways
British Airways is the flag carrier airline of the United Kingdom, based in Waterside, near its main hub at London Heathrow Airport. British Airways is the largest airline in the UK based on fleet size, international flights and international destinations...
. There she worked in sales
Sales
A sale is the act of selling a product or service in return for money or other compensation. It is an act of completion of a commercial activity....
, marketing
Marketing
Marketing is the process used to determine what products or services may be of interest to customers, and the strategy to use in sales, communications and business development. It generates the strategy that underlies sales techniques, business communication, and business developments...
, and on the team that integrated Dan-Air
Dan-Air
Dan-Air was a leading private, independentindependent from government-owned corporations airline based in the United Kingdom....
into BA's business.
In 1997, facing increasing competition from low cost airlines Ryanair
Ryanair
Ryanair is an Irish low-cost airline. Its head office is at Dublin Airport and its primary operational bases at Dublin Airport and London Stansted Airport....
and EasyJet
EasyJet
EasyJet Airline Company Limited is a British airline headquartered at London Luton Airport. It carries more passengers than any other United Kingdom-based airline, operating domestic and international scheduled services on 500 routes between 118 European, North African, and West Asian airports...
, British Airways decided to found its own budget offering, to be known as 'Go'. Chief Executive Bob Ayling
Robert Ayling
Robert John Ayling is a British businessman who has been involved in many high profile companies and organisations. Perhaps most notably, he was chief executive of British Airways from 1996 to 2000.-Career:...
selected Cassani for the task, giving her only £25 million in seed capital. The company began operations in 1998 and reached profitability two years later. In 2001 Cassani led a management buyout
Management buyout
A management buyout is a form of acquisition where a company's existing managers acquire a large part or all of the company.- Overview :Management buyouts are similar in all major legal aspects to any other acquisition of a company...
of the company (with most of the funding coming from venture capital
Venture capital
Venture capital is financial capital provided to early-stage, high-potential, high risk, growth startup companies. The venture capital fund makes money by owning equity in the companies it invests in, which usually have a novel technology or business model in high technology industries, such as...
firm 3i
3i
3i Group plc is a multinational private equity and venture capital company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It has offices in 13 countries across Asia, Europe and the Americas and had total assets under management of £12.7 billion as at 31 March 2011...
), and became its first Chief Executive.
In 2002, Cassini won the Veuve Clicquot Businesswoman of the Year award. Later in 2002 the airline was bought by rival EasyJet (a move bitterly opposed by Cassani) and she was not offered a position in the merged company. She next released a book detailing her experiences at Go; Go - An Airline Adventure (ISBN 0-316-72662-1) won a number of business publishing awards the following year.
In October 2003 Cassani became a non-executive director
Non-executive director
A non-executive director or outside director is a member of the board of directors of a company who does not form part of the executive management team. He or she is not an employee of the company or affiliated with it in any other way...
of retailer Marks & Spencer
Marks & Spencer
Marks and Spencer plc is a British retailer headquartered in the City of Westminster, London, with over 700 stores in the United Kingdom and over 300 stores spread across more than 40 countries. It specialises in the selling of clothing and luxury food products...
, a position she relinquished when she accepted the olympic position. After her Olympic tenure she was one of the executives mooted as taking over as the struggling company's Chief Executive.
In June 2003 she was appointed to chair London's bid to host the 2012 Summer Olympics. The organizing committee felt that her business background would give the bid a badly needed professionalism; the organizational reputation of British sport had already been tarnished when it won the right to host the 2005 World Athletics Championships
2005 World Championships in Athletics
The 10th World Championships in Athletics, under the auspices of the International Association of Athletics Federations , were held in the Olympic Stadium, Helsinki, Finland , the site of the first IAAF World Championships in 1983. One theme of the 2005 championships was paralympic sports, some of...
but was forced to withdraw when the promised stadium could not be built.
Cassani's selection surprised many commentators, as she was unknown in the highly political world of Olympic sport. Although she was married to a Briton and had lived in the country for more than a decade, her American nationality also raised some eyebrows. She led the bid through the first phase of the two-stage bidding process. During her tenure the newly formed bid corporation grew to a staff of 80, with many large institutional backers, and gained increasing buy-in from a skeptical British public and political class. Her team created the bid's master plan, which detailed where events would be held, what infrastructure would be built, and provided an overall budget projection for the games. This was submitted to the International Olympic Committee
International Olympic Committee
The International Olympic Committee is an international corporation based in Lausanne, Switzerland, created by Pierre de Coubertin on 23 June 1894 with Demetrios Vikelas as its first president...
in the spring of 2004, and on the strength of it London was selected as one of the five candidate cities.
In March 2004, the Daily Telegraph diary printed claims that Cassani had been highly critical of Tony Blair
Tony Blair
Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is a former British Labour Party politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007. He was the Member of Parliament for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007...
, saying "To be frank he wasn't very bright ... the subject he got most animated about was beach volleyball
Beach volleyball
Beach volleyball, or sand volleyball, is an Olympic team sport played by two teams of two players on a sand court divided by a net.Like volleyball, the object of the game is to send the ball over the net in order to ground it on the opponent’s court, and to prevent the same effort by the opponent....
". Cassani sued for libel saying that the story was not only completely without foundation but also highly damaging to the bid; on April 21 the Telegraph admitted that she had made none of the remarks attributed to her, and agreed to apologise in print, pay her costs and make a donation to the Olympic bid committee.
In May 2004 Cassani announced she was stepping down as chairman in favour of Olympic gold medallist and politician Lord Coe
Sebastian Coe, Baron Coe
Sebastian Newbold Coe, Baron Coe, KBE , often known as Seb Coe, is an English former athlete and politician...
, saying that she felt the bid had reached a stage where his track record in the Olympic movement would be more useful to the bid than her technical and managerial experience. Some commentators felt, however, that her departure had been precipitated by internal politics in the British sports establishment. Pierre-Yves Gerbeau
Pierre-Yves Gerbeau
Pierre-Yves Gerbeau is a French businessman, based in the United Kingdom.-Early life:Gerbeau was born into an affluent Parisian family, where his parents ran an office supply company...
, whom she had appointed as the bid's ambassador, quit the effort shortly after she stepped down, saying the way Cassani had been treated was "shocking."
Cassani stayed on with the bid, serving under Coe as Vice Chairman responsible for technical aspects of the bid. She continued to serve on the board (working unpaid one day per week); the IOC awarded the XXXth Olympiad to London on July 6, 2005.
On September 24, 2007 Cassani became the new chairman of the board at Vueling Airlines
Vueling Airlines
Vueling Airlines SA , commonly shortened to Vueling, is an airline based in El Prat de Llobregat, near Barcelona , where it maintains its main operating base...
, replacing Jose Miguel Abab Silvestre, who resigned abruptly citing "managerial differences." Vueling is a three year old airline
Low-cost carrier
A low-cost carrier or low-cost airline is an airline that generally has lower fares and fewer comforts...
based in Barcelona
Barcelona
Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...
, Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
, whose share value in the stock market had dropped by 30% earlier in 2007. Board members Jose Creuheras Margenat and Ferran Conti Penina also resigned.
Barbara Cassani was appointed Executive Chairperson of Jurys Inn hotel
Hotel
A hotel is an establishment that provides paid lodging on a short-term basis. The provision of basic accommodation, in times past, consisting only of a room with a bed, a cupboard, a small table and a washstand has largely been replaced by rooms with modern facilities, including en-suite bathrooms...
s in 2008.
External links
- http://jurysinns.com
- Observer biography
- Mount Holyoke College alumnus biography
- BBC report of Cassani's opposition to the EasyJet merger
- Department of Culture, Media, and Sport's announcement of Cassani's selection to lead the Olympic bid
- Interview with Barbara Cassani
- Guardian report on Cassani's replacement by Coe