Niall Fitzgerald
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DUBLIN
Thursday, 8 December 2022 at 2 pm
TEXT OF THE INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS DELIVERED BY PROFESSOR ANTHONY BRABAZON, Principal and Dean of UCD School of Business on 8 December 2022, on the occasion of the conferring of the Degree of Doctor of Economic Science, honoris causa on Niall FitzGerald.
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Acting President, Distinguished Guests, Graduates, Colleagues, Ladies and Gentlemen
Niall William Arthur FitzGerald grew up in Limerick, attending the Christian Brothers and then Saint Munchin's College.
He graduated with a B Comm degree from University College Dublin in 1969 and particularly remembers Dr Garret Fitzgerald as one of his lecturers with whom he kept in touch over the years.
One lesser-known fact about his time at UCD is that Niall was briefly a member of the Communist Party! Perhaps not a typical organisation for a business student to have joined in the 1960s ... but then again, Niall’s career and global impact have been anything but typical.
Niall spent his executive career with Unilever, through a variety of postings spanning Ireland, the Netherlands, South Africa, the US and the UK, serving as an executive board member for 18 years and as Chairman and CEO from 1996 until 2004.
On his appointment as Chairman of Unilever, Niall was both the youngest and the first non- English person ever appointed to the position.
Unilever’s reach is truly immense. With annual sales in excess of €52 billion and over 150,000 employees globally, its products are available in over 190 countries and are used by over 3.4 billion people daily.
It manages 13 of the world’s top 50 brands.
As a company Unilever is strongly ‘purpose driven’ with a mantra of ‘... making sustainable living commonplace ...’ and an embedded corporate philosophy of having a responsibility to be a force for good in the world.
This corporate philosophy meshes perfectly with that of Niall who is well known for speaking his mind, and being an active and outspoken advocate for responsible management and business as a force for good
In addition to his accomplishments at Unilever, Niall has chaired a broad range of companies and public bodies, including as a small sample, Reuters, Hakluyt, the Nelson Mandela Legacy Trust, the Investment Climate Facility for Africa, the British Museum, the Leverhulme Trust Board, Brand Learning and the Munster Rugby Commercial Board.
He has also served on the Boards of Bank of Ireland, Ericsson, Merck, Prudential Corporation and is Patron of the British Irish Chamber of Commerce.
Niall was made an Honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2002, he has received the Distinguished Service award from the President of Ireland, and holds a number of Honorary Doctorates from American, British and Irish universities. Niall has assured me that his honorary doctorate from his alma mater, UCD, will be the most treasured of these!
Niall has maintained a very active connection with UCD over the years and chaired the Advisory Board of Michael Smurfit Graduate School of Business from 2014 to 2018.
As well as hard work and talent, serendipity can also play a big role in career outcomes – and this was certainly true in Niall’s case as his career with Unilever might easily not have happened at all ....
In the late 1960s, Niall was on his way to play golf in Dublin but stopped off at Lever Brothers while a friend and fellow BComm graduate attended a job interview.
As he was waiting in the reception area, the personnel manager asked Niall if he’d do them a favour and sit in on the interview as they were a person down.
Niall agreed on the condition that he was allowed to participate, commenting that “I was obviously the most relaxed person there because I wasn't after the job. At the end of the day, they asked me if I’d like to join."
He refused the job but had obviously left a big impression because subsequently, the chairman of Unilever in Ireland, Peter Keehan, invited him to lunch and set about persuading him to join the company.
Niall ended up joining Unilever as an accountant and four years later moved to London. He spent several years in the late 1970s based in New York. When appointed to lead Unilever’s operations in South Africa in 1980, Niall FitzGerald ran the company as if apartheid did not exist. He paid employees equal wages regardless of colour or gender and he insisted on integrated facilities at plants.
Unilever's strategy in South Africa was retrospectively endorsed when Nelson Mandela himself asked Niall FitzGerald to head the UK branch of his charitable foundation, the Nelson Mandela Legacy Trust.
Some of the most interesting discussions I have had with Niall over the years have concerned his perspectives on management.
Niall has a strong sense of social justice – and a belief that, a business leader has a responsibility to the broader community. His philosophy in life can be summed up as ... ‘Do unto others as you would they do unto you’.
In interviews over the years, Niall has emphasised the importance of ‘getting involved’, noting that if you want to make a difference you must be prepared to get inside and make the changes and convince people. Niall notes that: “You can’t drive changes from observing on the outside”.
Another key insight from Niall’s perspective on management is the inseparable nature of innovation and risk – pithily summed up by Niall as “Zero risk, zero innovation". Niall is a strong believer in risk taking and risk management—as opposed to risk aversion.
Differentiating between leadership and management, Niall sees managing as coping with complexity and leadership as coping with change, noting that: "Good managers bring a degree of order and consistency. But the leader must allow some chaos - even create chaos - to liberate the risk taker.”
In honouring Niall FitzGerald today, we honour one of the most influential executives that Ireland has ever produced.
We recognise a career of achievement at the very highest level of international business and a man who has made an outstanding global contribution to business and society.
Praehonorabilis Praeses, totaque Universitas,
Praesento vobis hunc meum filium, quem scio tam moribus quam doctrina habilem et idoneum esse qui admittatur, honoris causa, ad gradum Doctoratus utroque Jure, tam Civili quam Canonico; idque tibi fide mea testor ac spondeo, totique Academiae.