From missiles to motorways Scott Charlton had no intention of leaving Lend Lease, until he got an offer he couldn’t refuse, writes Domini Stuart.
ABOVE: Transurban Chief Executive Officer, Scott Charlton.
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Head-hunters often ask Scott Charlton if he can recommend someone for a position they’re trying to fill. Recently, he listened to another list of desirable qualities and said sorry; he couldn’t help. But this time it wasn’t his recommendation the head-hunter was after, it was him. The job was Chief Executive Officer of Transurban. ‘The fit hadn’t clicked because I wasn’t looking for a new role,’ he says. ‘I was very happy at Lend Lease – it’s a great company, they were very good to me, and I hadn’t accomplished everything I set out to do there. But Transurban presented such a great opportunity; it was as if my whole career in Australia had been leading up to this role.’
Charlton was born in Houston and raised just outside Dallas. His first ambition, to become an architect, had one fatal flaw – he couldn’t draw. Instead, his skills in maths and problem solving led to a degree in electrical engineering and a job with Texas Instruments, designing laser-guided systems for bombs. He soon realised that he didn’t want to design circuits for the rest of his life, so he studied for an MBA and moved into finance. When the savings and loan crisis blew up in the 1980s, Charlton worked on restructuring bank portfolios. As some included infrastructure, this was his first step on the path that would eventually lead to senior executive roles in Australia. In the meantime, he took a year off to go backpacking and, in New Zealand, met his Englishborn future wife. They both enjoyed Australia and, in 1992, decided to come back – though the original plan was to stay just for a year or two. ‘Ironically, my first major assignment in Australia was to model the Melbourne CityLink bid for the competitor who lost out to Transfield-Macquarie, which eventually became Transurban,’ he says. ‘I was working for a consortium called CHART – Clough Engineering, John Holland, Roche Brothers and Thiess Contractors – and one of the reasons we lost out was that our contractors didn’t want to do the deep tunnel under the Yarra.’
Complementary experiences If Charlton has come full circle, it is by way of three defining roles that allowed him to strengthen complementary skills. They also taught him about the demands of different time frames – from the fast turnaround of investment banking through to the longer cycles in construction and property development. As an investment banker at Deutsche Bank, Charlton cut his teeth during the 1990s, when there was a wave of privatisation of infrastructure assets.
Volume 3 Number 1
11/9/12 11:14 AM
