The 10 fat cats set to make billions from the Tube

THE FACES behind the Tube consortia that are set to earn billions of pounds from the London Underground public-private partnership (PPP) are, in the world of finance, a Who's Who of businessmen whose companies have grown fat on lucrative Government and other public sector contracts.

These are men who, despite their public protestations of wanting to construct for Londoners a Tube fit for the 21st century, are generally driven by a single mantra: shareholder value, or the creation of ever bigger profits and dividends for their investors.

They line up as a cast of fabulously rich international jet-setters, entrepreneurial self-made millionaire engineers and fat cat utility bosses who made their money from privatisations.

Riley Bechtel, 48

CHIEF executive of the super-rich, super-secretive family that controls US construction and project management giant Bechtel. Said to be worth $3bn (£2.1bn) and one of America's 100 richest people, he is the fourth generation of the family to run the firm since it was founded, building railroads in the American West, more than 100 years ago. He and his family have homes around the world and he flies the globe in a private Falcon jet. He and the firm have been criticised for their lavish donations to political campaigns but he makes no apologies for having friends in high places in governments around the world. He is said be especially close to the Saudi royal family.

'If you're really in the game, you have got to understand what is happening in government and markets, and can see a deal before they put it out to bid. If the first time I hear about a big project is when the proposal is on Wall Street, then I don't have a good win plan,' he said.

His firm has been a good friend to successive British governments, helping to bail out failing major transport projects. Of his role leading the $15bn-a-year empire, Bechtel said: 'I am privileged to be the CEO here. I don't do squat that earns money. That's our 25,000 people.'

Brian Staples, 56

CHAIRMAN of Tube Lines, and chief executive of key shareholder Amey, who became one of the king fat cats of the utilities. The colourful Staples, who last year earned £2m in pay and share options from Amey, took a £750,000 pay-off from North West Water group United Utilities four years ago after he left in the midst of a tabloid scandal.

Staples was forced out of UU after he started an affair with the married secretary, 20 years his junior, of his boss, chairman Sir Desmond Pitcher. He left the marital home in Wolverhampton and moved in with her in a luxury flat in a converted mansion in Macclesfield. She swapped her Vauxhall Corsa for a BMW 7-Series.

He got his pay-off after a legal battle with the company at which he had already attracted fat-cat criticism for earning up to £380,000 a year with attractive bonus and share-option provisions.

The former grammar school boy has four children from previous failed marriages. Staples has told Amey shareholders the PPP will have a 'significant impact' on the company's future profits.

Paris Moayedi, 63

CHARMING and ever-dapper boss of rail maintenance giant Jarvis. Iranian-born Moayedi has built a £22m fortune in Jarvis shares, having bought them at 5p each (now trading at about 518p) when he took over in the early 1990s. He took £500,000 in his pay package last year.

He enjoys the trappings of wealth, moving his company from modest offices in Romford, Essex, to the opulent surroundings of Frogmore Hall in Hertfordshire. He lives in a 15th-century thatched house in Essex that used to belong to country singing star Roger Whittaker and has a house in the Cayman Islands. He admits to having visited it only three times, but he enjoys scuba diving there.

Moayedi retains a strong accent, having left Tehran - where he grew up - at the age of 20 in the late 1950s. A self-confessed hell-raiser in his youth, he settled in Britain after gaining an engineering degree from Bradford University. He made his first fortune when selling his own company to Jarvis and is famed in the industry - to his subsequent great embarrassment - for once describing the latest partner of Amey's Brian Staples as looking like Boy George.

Laurent Beaudoin, 63

CANADIAN business legend who ran the Bombardier planes and trains maker for nearly 35 years before handing over operating control recently. Beaudoin continues to effectively control the company through the multibillion-dollar, 62% controlling stake held by the founding Bombardier family.

He started running the company after marrying the daughter of founder Joseph-Armand Bombardier, and his 38-year-old son is being groomed to become chief executive eventually. The family commute from their Canadian base to their substantial European interests in their own-made executive jets.

Described as truculent and a man who ruled the firm with iron discipline, Beaudoin said: 'We are successful and some people don't like it - what the hell can I say?'

Bill Alexander, 54

BOSS of Thames Water who made £1.2m after it was bought 18 months ago for £4.3bn by German utilities giant RWE. Involvement in the Underground is part of his German masters' demands to get Thames into other businesses. He earned £400,000 in the last year of Thames' independence but is likely to be on much more with RWE, which has put him in charge of its march into America.

A strong manager, the Northumbrian - a Labour supporter in his youth - went into the coal industry after technical college and started on the coalface before rising to become head of engineering at British Coal in the late 1980s. He reckons the intimidation and abuse he received during the miners' strikes was 'all good character-forming stuff'.

With homes in Barnes, west London and Henley, Oxon, he drives an E-type Jaguar given to him by his wife and counts Sir John Hall, the multimillionaire businessman and former Newcastle United chairman, among his friends. Although a rugby union man, he has held shares in the football club and is said to be matey with deputy Prime Minister John Prescott with whom he has been on overseas trips.

Jim Ellis, 59

ONE of the original fat cats of utility privatisations and heads Seeboard, the South East's US-owned utility which will supply power to the Underground. Ellis caused a furore in the early 1990s when his original salary for leading Seeboard tripled. But he trumped that when taking £1.2m in shares and options after engineering the sale of the company to the Americans in 1996.

Since then, the pay has only got better for the man who has spent more than 30 years with the company. He was paid £458,000 last year, including a £234,000 bonus. He could be in the money again soon as he is likely to pick up further bonuses with Seeboard again up for sale, with a price tag of £1.5bn.

Michael Jeffries, 56

MILLIONAIRE boss of consulting engineer WS Atkins. He earned £400,000 last year and holds shares worth £3.5m, even after selling a chunk of his holding for £3.4m just 18 months ago.

A tall, heavily built but softly spoken North-Easterner, he has travelled the world in his 25 years at the firm. After spending part of his schooldays in Trinidad where his father ran a paint company, he trained as an architect. With four grown-up children, he lives in Surrey where he he spends his spare time painting watercolours, playing the piano and repairing grandfather clocks.

Mike Welton, 55

BOSS of construction giant Balfour Beatty, which is likely to be one of the biggest recipients of contracts to refurbish and upgrade the Underground. He gets an annual salary of £500,000 and has share options worth a similar amount. Nearly a quarter of a century with the company, he is a civil engineer by training and admits to bouts of schoolboy excitement at seeing heavy engineering plants in action. He reckons his favourite job was the construction of Hong Kong airport but also admits to being distressed at how his staff were pilloried over the firm's contract to run the rail line on which the Hatfield disaster took place.

Rod Hoare, 60

CHIEF executive of the Metronet consortium, credited with a tough management style who gets his staff working. He was hired on what is likely to be a highly lucrative package from BAA, where he was in charge of the much-feted Heathrow Express train link from Paddington, a construction project on which he worked closely with Balfour Beatty.

An experienced boss, previously head of British Airways' regional division and before that head of British Caledonian, he said: 'I lead from the front, putting my commitment into something and saying we will achieve it. I work to ratchet up people's performance. If managers have not been through bad experiences in either their personal or business lives, then they have not been tested.'

Terry Morgan, 53

RECRUITED from aerospace giant BAE Systems to become chief executive of Tube Lines. Managing director of operations at BAE, he is likely to have been hired by Tube Lines on a big six-figure salary with substantial performance-related bonus elements. At BAE he was embroiled in the row over the decision to close its Royal Ordnance munitions division. He was previously head of Land Rover but left after it was taken over by BMW in the 1990s.

Married with two grown-up children and a house in the leafy Birmingham suburb of Solihull, he has links with New Labour after being brought in by David Blunkett to work on a Government education quango.

Report by Robert Lea

Tube firms in billions bonanza