Gerald Corbett

Gerald Corbett has held top jobs at some of the UK's best-known companies but has not been without controversy, most notably as head of Railtrack.

After studying history at Cambridge University, he attended London and Harvard business schools before joining Boston Consulting Group, which advises on corporate strategy, in the mid-70s. In 1982, he joined electrical retailer Dixons, where he became group Financial Controller and Corporate Finance Director.

He left after five years to be Group Finance Director at international building materials firm Redland. In 1993, he became Group Finance Director of Grand Metropolitan, the food and drink giant. When "Grand Met" merged with Guinness to form Diageo, he lost his job to his counterpart at Guinness.

In summer 1997, he was appointed Chief Executive of Railtrack. He admitted to journalists at the time that he had no experience whatever of the industry. In September 1997, three months after his appointment, a First Great Western express train from Swansea collided with a freight train at Southall, West London, killing seven passengers (see Southall rail crash). Thirteen months later, in October 1999, another Intercity train collided with a commuter train near Paddington, killing 31 people (see Ladbroke Grove rail crash). It was Britain's worst rail disaster in a decade. Nevertheless, Corbett survived the pressure to resign from his job.

In early 2000, he mad a very public apology on the BBC's Today programme on behalf of Railtrack: "The work we have done has..... been truly dreadful and it's largely down to us and our contractors. We are trying to do a hell of a lot of work and the way we have been doing it has not been good enough."

A year after the Paddington crash, in October 2000, a train from London to Leeds derailed at Hatfield, resulting in four deaths (see Hatfield rail crash). Corbett's resignation was initially rejected by the Railtrack board but he eventually left with a compensation package estimated to be worth £1.4m in total.

In March 2001, he was back at the helm of another major company, Woolworths, appointed to oversee the demerger of Woolworths Group from Kingfisher. Once this was completed in August 2001, he remained on the board as non-executive Chairman.

In October 2003, he was appointed non-executive Chairman of Health Club Holdings, the Holmes Place fitness clubs business. In November 2005, he was appointed non-executive Chairman of soft drinks company Britvic to oversee its flotation on the London Stock Exchange. He has also been non-executive director of Burmah-Castrol and MEPC.