Richard ThompsonChairman, M&C Saatchi Merlin

You began your business career in information technology so what made you want to become involved in talent management?

I started dealing with talent after moving into marketing services. We would often liaise with agencies and managers, but we found it diffcult to engage talent and fnd a quality agent to work with. This really triggered me to realise there was a need to be met in this industry, so I began consulting for a while in the area.

I developed some strong working relationships with talent over this time, but it wasn’t until I Geri Halliwell asked ‘Would you manage me?’ - that I really thought about creating my own agency.

One thing then led to another, and that led me to where I am today.

What was rationale behind the merger of your agency Merlin Elite with M&C Saatchi to create M&C Saatchi Merlin?

I’ve always looked at talent as if they were a brand and managed them in that way too.

This ethos meant Merlin Elite was structured more as a marketing services business rather than a traditional talent agency, so there was already a lot of synergy with the way M&C Saatchi did business.

M&C Saatchi has always had a great reputation for being innovative, pioneering and entrepreneurial - characteristics that I think were fundamental in leading them to become the frst ad agency to acquire a talent agency.

We’ve got such a brilliant varied roster of clients, it’s diffcult to single anyone out! You have David Gandy in fashion, mainstream broadcasters like Sue Barker, Kirsty Gallacher and Jamie Theakston, a number of former sports stars, such as Jamie Redknapp, Matt Dawson and Jermaine Jenas who’ve gone into broadcasting, while others like Freddie Flintoff and James Cracknell moved in different directions.

How does your approach to managing leading names in sport and entertainment differ from other agencies, what’s your USP (so to speak)?

We manage them as brands and invest a lot of time into strategy and research to position them correctly and fnd their USP. The secret is continual reinvention.

We’ve been very good at reinventing talent and are probably the leading agency in helping clients cross over from one feld to another. Take Jodie Kidd, for example, whom we’ve taken from fashion into TV, or Freddie Flintoff from cricket into TV.

Cross-over has defnitely been what sets us apart in our industry.

Some global sports stars are now trying to manage their own (celebrity) brands – Lewis Hamilton, for example. Do you think this can work?

I absolutely don’t think it can. It doesn’t matter how big you are; you need someone out there objectively working on a strategy to formulate what the essence of your brand is going to be.

Defning what you are might sound straightforward, but it can be a painstaking process, it requires a lot of work, thought and time. Once you have a vision you then need to decide what strategy you will use to execute your plan, before going out there and fnding the work.

It doesn’t matter how many Grand Prixs you win, you need all of that going on behind your brand to really be effective. You need a third party in your life who can work with you objectively, give you really good advice and open the right doors with their great contacts - and I don’t see it with Lewis Hamilton.

Describe your typical working day?

In Starbucks with a large espresso, is normally where it starts – before moving onto lots of different meetings.

I’m involved with a number of different businesses – I’m also chairman of the production company TwoFour Group, Debrett’s and

Chairman of Surrey County Cricket Club - so my days are really very varied. M&C Saatchi Merlin dominates the majority of my day, but at the moment I’m involved in a lot of dialogue with Two Four Group as we have The Jump going on. I’ll normally be out at dinners at least three times a week.

You have a burgeoning reputation in private equity after turning round the events company MAMA Group and selling it to Live Nation, and overseeing the sale of the production company TwoFour Group to ITV Studios. What do you look for in a potential investment?

You look for a great management team frst and foremost, alongside unrealised potential and ambition.

I think it’s also important to fnd a business that could do with the leadership or input that I feel able to offer.

For example, I’m drawn to projects where there is a gap around bringing the team together or providing experience to guide a young, dynamic group. Shared ambition is crucial and a very clear vision & proposition.

Selling EMS to Mosaic Group in 1998/1999 was a big one for me, but selling Merlin to Saatchi three years ago was very satisfying. I guess both were really special for different reasons.

After I had sold Merlin I had started and sold three businesses in different sectors. Knowing that I had successfully reinvented myself three times, to provide three good exits, was and is fulflling.

What’s the next challenge you’re looking for?

Having had two good exits in the last twelve months, I’m interested in exploring more opportunities in private equity.

I’m also looking to take M&C Merlin Saatchi to the next stage through acquisition and international expansion and would love TwoFour Group to win another Emmy.

When it comes to very grand hotels, there is no more competitive arena than Paris. Eight hotels in the city now carry the French government-sanctioned “palace” status, the better-than-fve star classifcation introduced in 2010 and granted only to hotels that “symbolise excellence and perfection”, to whose ranks the venerable.

It’s quite an undertaking, then, for a little-known Swiss brand to enter this market but, on the basis of my weekend spent at La Réserve Paris. Located on avenue Gabriel, facing the Grand Palais across the wooded Jardin des Champs-Elysées, the hotel opened at the start of this month and occupies a real palace, built in 1854 by Napoleon III’s half-brother, the Duc de Morny.

That said, although the designer Jacques Garcia’s fabulously opulent interiors may look authentically antique, only the carved marble chimney pieces are original. The gilded rococo reliefs, the Versaillais parquet, the Cordovan leather panelling and the 6,000m of silk damask, taffeta and velvet that line the walls, frame the windows and upholster the chairs are all newly installed.

That everything looks as though it has been here for ever is a tribute to the skill of 120 craftsmen, some of them from the Louvre, who worked on the project. So far, so splendid — if not necessarily what one would expect from an entrepreneur that the trashier echelons of the French press used to refer to as l’ancien roi du saucisson — “the old sausage king”. For Michel Reybier is the very private Swiss-domiciled founder of the French conglomerate Groupe Aoste, purveyor of Cochonou processed ham, Justin Bridou mini-salamis and César Moroni chorizo.

There are no fags outside, no imposing porticoed entrance, no lobby busy with liveried funkies The group was sold to Sara Lee in 1996 and Reybier has since diversifed into healthcare, biotech, oil, wine and hotels, opening the frst La Réserve in Geneva in 2003 (though it is nowhere near as grand as this one).

Another opened near St Tropez in 2009, the year he also became a shareholder in French budget hotel brand Mama Shelter. Last year, he acquired a clutch of d istinguished properties in Switzerland, among them the Victoria-Jungfrau in Interlaken, the Palace in Lucerne, the Eden au Lac in Zurich and the Bellevue Palace in

Bern. Some of them may be rebranded with the La Réserve imprimatur once they’ve been suffciently overhauled. For this is a rarefed product aimed at a clientele who don’t blanch at four-fgure room rates. “I want us to have the style and life of the Plaza-Athénée and the intimacy of the Bristol,” Raouf Finan, Reybier Hospitality’s chief executive, told me late last year. “I want to attract the suite guests from all the other palace hotels — but especially the Bristol, because it’s very close by.”

In essence, then, Reybier is throwing down the gauntlet to the Oetker Collection, owners of the Bristol and another family-owned hospitality company born of a fortune made in processed food — in this case the German company Dr Oetker, known for its cake mixes and frozen pizzas.

It comes as little surprise that La Réserve’s general manager Frédéric Picard has been recruited from Oetker. It was he who, in 2012, opened Palais Namaskar in Marrakech, the hotel that signalled the start of Oetker’s expansion drive, from the four grand hotels it had held for decades to a current tally of nine, with more to come. (The latest is the revamped Lanesborough in London, due to open soon.)

It’s tempting, therefore, to look for similarities but, apart from the Mercedes limos to meet guests, La Réserve Paris is very much its own place. Will Picard, I ask, be getting a hotel cat? (The Bristol, eccentrically, has two white Birmans that bring it no end of press coverage.) He pauses then trumps the suggestion: “I was thinking of getting a dog,” he grins. “But no; no animals.”

The hotel’s entrance This may be a new rivalry but La Réserve is not about to imitate the Bristol. For a start, it’s a lot smaller, with just 26 suites and 14 rooms — another counter-intuitive decision to have taken at a time when the competition has been expanding and rooms tend to outnumber suites.

The Bristol, for instance, recently upped its room inventory by 26 to 188. And last year the Plaza-Athenée added six rooms and eight suites. But then La Réserve’s size is one of the reasons that it feels as though you’ve been given the run of a very grand private house. As Picard puts it:

“People want discretion now; they don’t all want to see and be seen.” To this end, most of the hotel — its glorious library, its basement spa and 16m candlelit swimming pool, its smoking room — is off-limits to non-residents.

There are no fags outside, no imposing porticoed entrance, no lobby busy with liveried funkies and hovering bellhops. The welcome is relaxed and discreet and without stuffness or hauteur. The personable staff materialise just when you need them, with advice or smart suggestions on exhibitions or out-of-the-way museums.

Not that I wanted to leave the almost absurdly romantic ffth-foor eyrie in which I stayed, an enflade of knocked-together former maids’ rooms under the mansard, with views stretching to Notre-Dame in one direction and the Eiffel Tower in another.

The bedroom was a warm dark space decked in crimson silk, a place so sumptuous and snug that even the bedside mats were padded. In contrast, the sitting room was light-flled, a Parisian salon with a Louis XV chaise-longue, chinoiserie commode and hung with good examples of French postwar abstraction.

The hotel was also technologically ahead of anywhere that I’ve stayed.

The staff who escort you to your rooms carry devices that scan your passport so that it need never leave your sight. In the room are free-standing glass speakers made by the French brand Waterfall (and retailing at £2,299 a pair) to which you can wirelessly stream music from your phone.

Even the kettle has a thermometer, for those of the view that the optimum temperature for brewing the herbal teas provided should be closer to 80C than boiling point.

Although, in the pursuit of perfection, I would say that the wine fridge was set too cool for the two vintages (2004 and 2007) of the St-Estèphe second-growth Cos d’Estournel stored within. Priced at €192 and €180 respectively, they, like all the wines in the in-room bar, come from vineyards belonging to Michel Reybier.

La Reserve Paris, Hotel and Spa Address: 42 Avenue Gabriel 75008 Paris, France Phone: +33 1 58 36 60 60

Pictured is Jean Luc Naret, CEO of La Reserve Paris Hotel, Paris This article was originally published in The Times.