Skilling’s Laws
VAN SKILLING HAS engineered some major deals, and is good at playing the role of a buttoned-down CEO. But he has another side-that of a character in the American grain.
Part of it has to do with the sheer length and variety of his career. A native of St. Louis, David van Diest Skilling (known to all as Van) got out of college at the tail end of the Korean War.
“I had a major in chemistry with the idea that I was going to be a doctor,” he said during a chat in San Francisco last fall. “I was not sure I wanted to go to medical school, but since I didn’t want to be drafted, I became an oxymoron-a naval intelligence officer.”
In 1970, having bounced from a boat business to a chemicals firm, and from Denver to Los Angeles, he received an offer that would define his career.
“A friend of mine from Navy days said, ‘I have an idea.’ I thought he wanted to open a laundromat. Why don’t I work for TRW? I said, ‘You don’t pay your bills very well.'”
TRW was a large defense contractor and engineering concern, and Skilling worked in its oil-field equipment and industrial products groups, in both marketing and operations-whatever they threw him. In 1989 he was given command of the information services unit, consisting of a credit bureau and database business, about which he knew little.
But he was a quick study, and realized at once that the unit had to overhaul its outdated systems. He also figured out that TRW brass had never been comfortable with the information business, and he told them “Play me or trade me.”
They did, in a $1.1 billion deal backed by Bain Capital and Thomas Lee Associates. The unit was renamed Experian. That was just the start.
As part of a two-pronged strategy to be more global and get more involved in target marketing, Experian made an offer to buy CCN, a British targeting company owned by Great Universal Stores. But it didn’t work out as planned.
“We went from being the groom to the bride,” Skilling laughed. Experian was acquired by CCN/GUS, then went on an acquisition bender of its own, buying Metromail and Direct Marketing Technology, among other things. Today Experian is a true global enterprise-thanks in large part to the tall, silver-haired executive described by some as courtly.
Skilling’s subordinates can be forgiven for being misty eyed over his retirement, which is scheduled for March 1. Never one to take himself too seriously, he often amused them by reciting Skilling’s Laws, such as “Clear liquor before dinner, red wine with dinner, brown liquor after dinner.”
Though he’ll stay active, Skilling hopes to to do some fly fishing and spend more time with his family. Memories? To this day, he is proud of one of the bright kids on his team. “The only job Bill Gates ever had was working for me,” he said. “Unfortunately, we couldn’t keep him.”
