Gerald Corbett is an executive businessman in the United Kingdom. He has been appointed as the chief executive of several companies, but he is most notable for once being the chief executive of Railtrack. A businessman (sometimes businesswoman, female; or businessperson, gender neutral) is a generic term for a wide range of people engaged in profit-oriented enterprises, generally the management of a company. ... Chief Executive may refer to: Chief Executive of Hong Kong Chief Executive of Macau Chief Executive Officer This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... For the generic term, see rail tracks. ...

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. The University of Cambridge is the second-oldest university in the English-speaking world, with one of the most selective sets of entry requirements in the United Kingdom. ... London Business School, in London (UK), established in 1965, is an international business school and a constituent college of the University of London, providing postgraduate degrees in finance and management, including MBA (Master of Business Administration) courses, as well as non-degree courses for business executives. ... Harvard Business School, officially named the Harvard Business School: George F. Baker Foundation, and also known as HBS, is one of the graduate schools of Harvard University. ... The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) is a leading management consulting firm founded by Harvard Business School alumn Bruce Henderson in 1963. ... Year 1982 (MCMLXXXII) was a common year starting on Friday (link displays the 1982 Gregorian calendar). ... Dixons is an electrical retailer in the UK and Republic of Ireland, and is owned by DSG International plc (formerly Dixons Group). ...

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. Lafarge (Euronext: LG, NYSE: LR) is a French industrial company specialising in five major products: Cement, construction aggregates, concrete, gypsum wallboard, and roofing tile. ... Guinness logo World War II era advert. ... Diageo plc (LSE: DGE, NYSE: DEO) is the largest multinational beer, wine and spirits company in the world. ...

In summer 1997, he was appointed Chief Executive of Railtrack. For the generic term, see rail tracks. ...

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. // About Woolworths Group plc is a general merchandise business in the United Kingdom. ... Kingfisher plc is a UK high-street retailer formed in 1982 by the buyout of Woolworths by Paternoster Stores Ltd. ...

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. In 2006 he was appointed as Chairman of SSL, the company that manufactures Durex contraceptives. Britvic LSE: BVIC is a British producer of soft drinks. ... The Source by Greyworld, in the new LSE building Paternoster Square. ... Castrol is a brand of industrial and automotive lubricants which is applied to a large range of oil products for most lubrication applications. ...

Railtrack

At the time of his appointment, Corbett admitted to journalists 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. Thirteen months later, in October 1999, another Intercity train collided with a commuter train near Paddington, killing 31 people. It was Britain's worst rail disaster in a decade. Nevertheless, Corbett survived the pressure to resign from his job. The Southall rail crash occurred on September 19, 1997, on the Great Western Railway line at Southall, west London. ... Cover of the Cullen report The Ladbroke Grove rail crash (also known as the Paddington train crash) was an English rail accident on October 5, 1999 in which thirty-one people died. ...

In early 2000, he made a 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." The British Broadcasting Corporation,which is usually known as the BBC, is the largest broadcasting corporation in the world in terms of audience numbers, employing 26,000 staff in the United Kingdom alone and with a budget of more than GB£4 billion. ... Today, sometimes referred to as the Today programme to avoid ambiguity, is BBC Radio 4s long-running early morning news and current affairs programme, which is now broadcast from 6am to 9am from Monday to Friday and from 7am to 9am on Saturdays. ...

A year after the Paddington crash, in October 2000, a train from London to Leeds derailed at Hatfield, resulting in four deaths. 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. The Hatfield rail crash was a railway accident that occurred on 17 October 2000, at Hatfield, Hertfordshire, UK. A Great North Eastern Railway Intercity train bound for Leeds had left London Kings Cross at 1210 local time. ...

Corbett was personified on the London stage in David Hare's "The Permanent Way" and in the television film Derailed. These dramatisations showed the private tension beneath the public face and noted that Corbett had his own share of personal tragedy. His father was killed at an early age by a drunk driver in a car accident. Corbett is married with four children, and he himself is one of five brothers including authors Pie Corbett and Andew Corbett-Nolan.