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Alex Rhea
• Alexander D. Rhea is a tall, dark 52year-old Texan with an undeniable resemblance to a more famous son of the Lone Star State. But at close quarters he proves to be a relaxed and highly professional businessman whose quiet and confident control has made a big impression on his colleagues in the nine months since he became managing director of Vauxhall Motors Ltd.
An unflappable air is a great asset for anyone who elects—as Alex Rhea did— to join the overseas operating division of an international corporation. Promotion may mear. [roving half across the world, and Mr Rheas territorial progress since joining General Motors in 1948 provides an example: 1948 New York; 1949 Caracas, Venezuela; 1953 Sao Paulo, Brazil: 1956 Russelsheim, Germany (Opel); 1958 New York: 1968 Australia; 1970 Britain.
The early years were mainly in financial posts, but in his 1958-68 period in the States he held wide-ranging responsibilities —for instance covering manufacturing, distribution and allied activities of GM throughout South America, Mexico and South Africa. His move to Australia was as managing director of Hoidens, where he recalls particularly the lack of shop steward militancy and the mutual acceptance of wage-tribunal pay awards.
Mr Rhea (pronounced Ray) has found it a fascinating career to date, and he valued his early opportunities for wider management: he regards an early broadening process as invaluable for specialists. Success he sums up as a matter of breaks and brains. "The break to get the job, the brains to do it."
Off-duty interests for Alex Rhea are golf and his family—his son has just been recalled to the USA to join the Forces, which reminds him of his own war service as a Navy supply officer in the Atlantic and Pacific. He served in destroyers on those terrible Arctic convoys—including the ill-fated P017. On a lighter note he recalls a trip with the old carrier Wasp taking 60 Spitfires to embattled Malta. A prop-shaft was distorted by a mine and they spent the entire voyage alternately shooting ahead of or falling behind the convoy, which was travelling at the critical speed for their bent shaft. Matching supply and demand in the motor industry must sometimes present similar problems!