Sales go with sails for trim challenger

A Swiss billionaire runs his business like a yacht, writes DANIEL RIORDAN.

For a while Ernesto Bertarelli loomed as Kiwi public enemy number one - the man who ripped the heart out of Team NZ, poaching skipper Russell Coutts, tactician Brad Butterworth and three other Black Magicians for his own Swiss challenge.

But here he is six months on, tanned and relaxed in the Auckland sunshine, with no sign of bodyguards, or angry mobs bent on jingoistic vengeance.

The 35-year-old they call the baby billionaire says he is fully aware of the negative reaction in some quarters here to his cherry-picking of Team NZ, and admits to underestimating the strength of that response.

"But if you look at other sports - from Formula One to football - professional and talented sportsmen like Brad and Russell move freely across nations and teams."

One of his considerations before he made his offer was the ability of Team NZ to replace some of the old hands with a new generation of sailors.

"I want to win the Cup but not if it means damaging yachting."

He is said to be putting $55 million into the challenge.

Mr Bertarelli is no mean sailor himself, having won regattas racing catamarans and coming third in last year's Fastnet. He is keen to sail on his own America's Cup boat, but says the final call will be Coutts'.

"But my experience with my other racing boats is that usually my team does better when I'm on board. That's because when it comes to making tough decisions, it's nice to look back and have the boss around to make them."

He grew up with America's Cup posters on his walls, and dreamed of winning the Auld Mug. The closest he has come before now was the $700,000 backing he gave to one of the previous regatta's two Swiss challengers.

His yachting and business strategies are similar. "No individual is better than a team and sailing reflects that more than any other sport. Everyone on the boat has a different function, different talents.

"If you see my boat, you will understand my management style."

That management style has been honed at the top since 1996, when he replaced his father as chief executive of Geneva-based Serono, one of the world's biggest biotechnology companies.

The company's major products include beta interferon (to combat multiple sclerosis), growth hormones and infertility treatments.

However, Mr Bertarelli is funding the Cup campaign as an individual, and says Serono's specialist market means the company's name will not even be on his two boats' spinnakers. The campaign itself does not yet have a name, and there are three options being considered.

His two-day stopover this week was only his second visit here, following a few days' watching the regatta last summer. The idea of mounting his own challenge occurred once he returned to Geneva, and his first real contact with Coutts came when he asked about buying one of the black boats.

They were not for sale, but several conversations and several months later, Coutts was signed as Mr Bertarelli's skipper. The businessman maintains he does not remember who first broached the idea, "although it was clear to me that things were not as they seemed with Team NZ.

"It was a meeting of the minds with Russell. We're about the same age, we got on well together, and his ambition and mine came together nicely."

This week's visit, on his private jet, saw him accompanied by an entourage that included his English wife Kirsty, his sister and brother-in-law.

He was due to meet the the Cup's trustees, the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron and Team NZ to try to sort out problems delaying the acceptance of his challenge.

Tomorrow it's back to the business of business, as opposed to the business of sport, when he flies to San Francisco for a biotechnology conference.

He plans to return next year and be on hand for the launching of the boats.

But until the challengers' series starts in 2002, he will be spending most of his time running Serono.

He says his passion for yachting, not money, is behind the challenge.

"Twenty years from now, I don't want to look back and think, 'I had the opportunity to sail the America's Cup with Russell Coutts and Brad Butterworth, I had the means to do it, I was young enough to do it, and I didn't do it'."

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