Joe Plumeri, playing in traffic: with his quest for adventure and 'just go for it' philosophy, the CEO of insurance broker Willis Group Holdings has got the competitive spirit kicking in again at this 175-year-old company.

• Author: Kristie, James
• Position: LEADERSHIP - Interview - Cover Story

IN MARCH 2004 global insurance broker Willis Group Holdings unveiled the design of its new headquarters in London--a stunning showcase building that promises be an architectural icon (see illustration on page 20). To say that this announcement was a satisfying moment for the company's chairman and CEO, Joe Plumeri, would be a supreme understatement. With characteristic frankness, Plumeri remembers only half-humorously that when he took the reins of Willis three and a half years ago, "We couldn't buy a candy bar, let alone build a building."

At the time, in October 2000, Willis was a private company owned by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts. Plumeri was a free agent, having just wrapped up 32 years working side by side with Sandy Weill in creating an ever-expanding financial services juggernaut. This was an arc of a career that took Plumeri, who was born in Trenton, N.J., from a Manhattan stock brokerage office in the 1960s to a job running the domestic banking business of Citigroup before retiring in early 2000. A chance meeting with Henry Kravis while on vacation in Paris led to an offer to take the helm of Willis, a firm that was founded in 1828 and is the insurance industry's third-largest broker.

Following a formula of building a sales culture, growing revenues, maintaining expense discipline, and expanding margins, Willis has booked 17 consecutive quarters of record results. Its revenues in 2003 were $2.1 billion, up from $1.3 billion in 2000. In a robust first quarter of 2004, revenues increased 20 percent year over year to $665 million, and long-term debt has been whittled down to $300 million from $1.2 billion when Plumeri arrived at the company. The company had returned to the public market in a June 2001 IPO--the third-best-performing IPO on the NYSE that year--and with subsequent secondary offerings KKR's ownership is now at 5.5 percent. Willis is also expanding with selective investments--increasing its stakes in global brokerages in which it already has an investment position and with such purchases as a 50 percent stake in China's leading insurance broker. A dividend initiated in February 2003 and raised by 15 percent earlier this year, and an increase in the stock buyback authorization, have also been part of the revitalization story at Willis.

"Who could have imagined that within just a few years we would have performed so well and grown so fast that we would be moving into what will be one of London's most impressive landmarks?" Plumeri remarked when the plans for the building were announced. While his initial assessment of the company's situation may have been solemn, the "will to succeed" spirit that he brought to Willis and infused throughout the organization, as illuminated in the following interview with DIRECTORS & BOARDS Editor James Kristie, shows that the answer to the above question, at least in his own mind, was never in doubt.

DIRECTORS & BOARDS: Would you be sitting here now as chairman and CEO of Willis Group if you had not run into Henry Kravis on the street in Paris?

Joseph Plumeri: No, not at all. When I left Sandy Weill and Citigroup in January 2000 I had no job. I had an office and an assistant, Dee, and I remember her saying to me in the first days, "What do we do now?" And I said, "I don't know." Well, within about a week my schedule started at seven in the morning and went till ten at night. I don't take many vacations, but finally my wife suggested that we go to France. I was walking on the Rue St. Honore, which is where our hotel was, when I ran into Henry. He asked me what I was doing and I told him, "I'm looking for my next adventure." My wife kiddingly said to him, "Find him a job." He called me a couple of weeks later and said, "I have just the job."

That's what you could call a serendipitous moment.

You call it serendipitous. I call it the law of playing in traffic. In life you've got to be out there playing in traffic. Something will usually happen. You might get hit, and that's okay, but you might also run into something good. I've had two such encounters. That was my second. The first lasted 32 years.

Tell us about that.

It was when I was in law school and looking for a job. I was going around knocking on any door that had three names on it, because I thought that if a firm had three names it was a law firm. So I paid a call on Carter Berlind & Weill. When I asked the receptionist who I could see about a job, she said the firm was very small and that they didn't really have anybody for me to talk to. But I persisted, and she eventually said that a Mr. Weill would see me. I went into a whole speech with him about how I wanted to learn about the law. He said, "That's a great idea, but what makes you think you'll learn the law here?" I said, "Well, this is a law firm." And he said, "No, it is a brokerage firm." Mr. Weill, of course, was Sandy Weill, and he hired me part-time. I was there all the way as Carter Berlind & Weill ultimately became Citigroup.

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I teach at Temple University, and I tell the students about the value of serendipity--about being open to it lest you miss a great opportunity.

You also have to have a sense of childlike enthusiasm about everything you do. The problem with adults is that the childlike enthusiasm goes away because you become easily embarrassed or intimidated. Children don't have that kind of fear. I don't think you can put yourself into what you call a serendipitous situation unless you have that childlike...