The new year brings new challenges for some of the highest-profile figures in business. Others continue to be dogged by past problems.
For some, such as António Horta Osório, the chief executive of Lloyds Banking Group, 2016 raises the prospect of the government selling off its remaining stake in the bailed-out banks. For others, such as David Potts, boss of Morrisons supermarkets, there is the fear of a takeover. Ben van Beurden, meanwhile, chief executive of the Anglo-Dutch oil group Shell, has the task of pulling off a £40bn deal with BG first agreed before the oil price crashed.
It is also a key year for policymakers. Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England, is facing questions about whether interest rates will remain at their record low of 0.5% by the end of the year.
Here Guardian writers select the figures with most at stake in 2016.
Ben van Beurden
Few chief executives enter 2016 under as much pressure as Ben van Beurden, the Shell boss.
He took the top job two years ago with a relatively easy brief to chop the underperforming businesses built up during a period of high oil prices by his seemingly profligate predecessor, Peter Voser.
But after a period of successful cost-cutting the 57-year-old Shell lifer has found the price of oil collapsing, expensive exploration in the Arctic going nowhere, and his claims to lead a carbon-friendly company ridiculed.
A decision to use low crude prices as an opportunity for a £40bn takeover of rival BG has left him facing City critics worried that Shell’s sacred dividend is now under threat as the price of crude plunges relentlessly downwards.
The UN climate change deal last month may have spelled decline for fossil fuels that will play out over decades, but Van Beurden is under the cosh right now. Terry Macalister
Mark Carney
It has been a while since anyone referred to Mark Carney, the slick Canadian in charge of the Bank of England, as a “rock star central banker”. One MP has even compared his repeated promises of interest rate rises to the empty sweet-talk of an “unreliable boyfriend”.
Another of those pledges has failed to materialise in recent weeks. The governor predicted at a speech in Lincoln cathedral in the summer that the decision about raising rates would “come into sharper relief around the turn of this year”. It was part of a strategy of “forward guidance” meant to allow markets and consumers to prepare for shifts in policy.
But the final monetary policy committee meeting of the year came and went with only one of its nine rate-setting members voting for an immediate increase. And inflation remains at just 0.1%, instead of bouncing back towards the Bank’s 2% target.
Carney, hand-picked by the UK chancellor, George Osborne, to drag the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street into the 21st century, has blamed outside events, including the plunging oil price, for his predictions going awry.
But Bank-watchers are now asking whether rates will remain at their record low of 0.5% until the end of 2016: and if so, whether something is fundamentally wrong with Carney’s analysis of the economy. Heather Stewart
António Horta Osório
The Lloyds Banking Group chief executive has held a mantra since taking the helm of the bailed-out bank in March 2011 “to fix this bank and help taxpayers get their money back”.
Horta-Osório is tantalisingly close to achieving the goal. The taxpayer stake has already been reduced from the 43% it stood at when he took charge, to less than 10% as 2016 dawned.
Related: Osborne prepares to pick right moment for Lloyds share sale
But the last chunk of shares may also prove to the toughest to shift. George Osborne has pledged to sell £2bn of them to the public at a 5% discount to the prevailing market price. The chancellor has also promised that those who hold their shares for a year will be given a bonus share for every 10 held, with the bonus capped at £200 per investor.
With the taxpayer breaking even on a sale when the shares are at 73.6p, Horta-Osório will be watching the stockmarket even more closely than usual. The year 2016 could be his make or break year. Extricating taxpayers from a bank they pumped £20bn into amid the 2008 banking crisis could be the evidence that the Portuguese banker needs to prove he has fixed the bank. He may then face questions about what to do next. Jill Treanor
Carolyn Fairbairn
Everything is looking good for Carolyn Fairbairn, who became the first woman director-general of the CBI last year. The UK economy is growing at a fair lick, unemployment is coming down, and the corporation tax rate is coming down.
To be sure, the employers’ group has a few gripes with the government. It is, for example, not overly keen on Osborne’s plan for an apprenticeship levy. But, generally, Fairbairn would be looking forward to a trouble-free first year in the job were it not for one big cloud on the horizon: Europe.
If things go to plan, the prime minister, David Cameron, intends to hold a referendum on UK membership of the European Union during 2016, with dates already being pencilled in as early as June or July.
Related: Stuart Rose on the EU referendum: 'The sooner we get it done, the better'
The Brexit debate will be highly charged and hugely divisive for the UK and, like the rest of the nation, business remains split on the issue. The CBI’s own polling shows that a majority of members in favour of remaining within a reformed EU, but there is a small and vocal minority that believes the UK would be better off outside.
Those in favour of Brexit will take some convincing that the prime minister has succeeded in his attempts to renegotiate the terms of EU membership, and Fairbairn’s challenge in 2016 will be to prevent an acrimonious split in her organisation. Larry Elliott
Dave Lewis
Dave Lewis went into 2015 with all guns blazing, launching a drastic shakeup at the UK’s biggest supermarket chain. He announced plans to cut thousands of jobs, close stores, abandon long-planned developments, sell off foreign operations and slash prices.
But a year on, with much of that work completed, Tesco is still struggling to win over shoppers. The supermarket’s share price has sunk to an 18-year low as sales continue to fall at a dizzying pace, according to the latest industry data.
Tesco is not the only big supermarket chain to endure falling sales. But as the biggest of the bunch, there’s a feeling that Tesco could and should be faring better.
Revelations of losses at Tesco subsidiaries including the Dobbies garden centre chain, Giraffe restaurants and Harris + Hoole coffee shops have also made clear the breadth of the problems that Lewis and his team face.
Lewis’ honeymoon period is well and truly over and he has a lot to prove in 2016. Impatient shareholders, and the credit rating agencies which have such influence over the cost of servicing Tesco’s massive debt pile, want to see signs that his medicine is working.
Lewis will also have to carefully navigate the fallout from an accounting scandal which broke soon after his arrival in 2014. Might he have to negotiate a deal with the Serious Fraud Office, which has been investigating? How will he handle any litigious shareholders?
Tesco will also have to answer questions over its relations with suppliers when a Grocery Code Adjudicator investigation reports this month.
Putting past errors safely to bed while fighting to secure Tesco’s future in a rapidly changing grocery market should provide plenty of challenges for this veteran retailer in 2016. Sarah Butler
Warren East
When Warren East came out of retirement to run Rolls-Royce in July things were obviously awry at the one-time beacon of British engineering. After a series of profit warnings before he joined, East, the former boss of the chipmaker ARM Holdings, issued his own warning after two days in the job and in November he said Rolls was so opaque that financial forecasting was futile.
East has promised to cut costs and slash bureaucracy to get Rolls firing on all cylinders again. He is due to give more details in February. But Rolls is buffeted by falling demand for private jets and for boats and equipment for oil and gas production as well as a switch by airlines away from the wide-bodied planes that Rolls makes engines for.
Complicating matters further, the low-key but insistent US activist fund ValueAct has bought 10% of Rolls and wants a seat on the board. The government is also involved and has drafted plans to nationalise Rolls’s nuclear submarine division or force the division – or all of Rolls – to merge with BAE Systems.
East, 53 and already wealthy and respected after running ARM successfully for 12 years, no doubt thought he had the energy for another challenge – but what a challenge. Sean Farrell
David Potts
David Potts is running the smallest of the UK’s major supermarkets but arguably he has the biggest turnaround job on his hands.
Morrisons’ northern heartland puts it right on the frontline of the battle with discounters Aldi and Lidl, and Potts must find a way to hold on to his his weekly share of the shopping basket.
He is hoping to score some wins by fixing the basics of service, availability and quality neglected under the previous management team.
Potts sensibly sold off Morrisons’ poorly performing M Local convenience store chain. He still has work to do to get a better deal out of an online joint venture with Ocado.
Improving efficiency and getting the best out of Morrisons’ food processing divisions will also prove important in cutting prices for shoppers and so making that extra trip to a discounter less enticing.
Takeover rumours circled more than once in 2015, and there is no doubt Morrisons is vulnerable after slipping out of the FTSE 100. Sarah Butler
Mark Carne
Mark Carne stepped straight from the oilfields to the top job in the UK rail industry in April 2014, taking over as chief executive of Network Rail from one of the golden boys of British infrastructure, Sir David Higgins.
Unfortunately for Carne, the latent problems in rail infrastructure swiftly became plain. Not least, that his organisation had signed up to an overambitious, poorly scoped and costed five-year plan pushed by Whitehall and lapped up by ministers. It was a plan it could not deliver – especially once it could no longer borrow funds to mask inefficiency.
Chaos from over-running engineering works last Christmas also left Carne in the firing line. While new directors have been parachuted in, there has been a feeling that Carne, well-liked and highly regarded, has inherited too much mess.
He has spelled out a vision for the future, both technological – the digital railway – and cultural, with a more diverse and empowered workforce at Network Rail. But his organisation is likely to face calls for radical reform this year, and Carne may no longer be given the benefit of the doubt should further calamities occur. Gwyn Topham
Dave Forsey
Running a company with the reputational problems of Sports Direct will always be a high pressure job. But 2016 is promising to be even more so for its bosses Dave Forsey, the chief executive, and the founder Mike Ashley.
An investigation by the Guardian prompted MPs to demand Mike Ashley face questions over pay and working conditions at the group’s warehouse in Shirebrook, Derbyshire. The company has promised £10m to give staff a pay rise, but that was immediately dismissed by Britain’s largest trade union Unite as no more than a “PR stunt”.
Ashley’s summons before the House of Commons and the results of an internal review are certain to keep practices at the FTSE 100 firm in the spotlight.
Forsey, meanwhile, is charged with a criminal offence for allegedly failing to give the 30 days’ notice required for redundancies under employment law, after the group’s subsidiary USC went into administration in January last year.
Forsey denies the charge. The next hearing in the case is scheduled at Chesterfield magistrates court in March, while a separate civil conduct investigation was kicked off by the department of business innovation and skills (BIS) in October. BIS has the power to ban somebody from serving as a director for up to 15 years. Simon Goodley
Ivan Glasenberg
It was a humbling 2015 for Glasenberg, the mining industry’s highest-profile and most opinionated chief executive. In September, as shareholders grew nervous about Glencore’s ability to weather the storm in commodity markets, the company became the first London-listed big miner to chop its dividend and raise new capital – around £1.6bn.
Glasenberg dipped into his back pocket to find £138m to take up his slice of the new shares. Even that display of confidence didn’t stop the rot. The share price is currently 90p – it stood at 530p when it floated in 2011.
Glasenberg needs two things in 2016. First, he has to demonstrate his various plans to reduce Glencore’s debt – via cuts, disposals and deals – can be achieved. He has started promisingly, and has already pledged that the original $10bn goal can be exceeded by $3bn. But 2016 is about securing the targets. Even on the company’s own projections, borrowings will still be $18bn-$19bn at the end of 2016, which leaves little room for error.
The second thing Glasenberg needs is some luck. Nothing would restore investors’ faith like rising commodity prices, especially copper. That, though, is entirely outside his control. Nils Pratley
Christine Lagarde
Christine Lagarde’s day job, running the International Monetary Fund in Washington, is unlikely to get any easier in 2016, with what she calls “mediocre” global growth expected and a decision looming on whether the IMF should contribute to the latest Greece bailout.
The suave former French finance minister may also have hoped to be polishing up her CV for a potential run at the Elysée Palace in 2017. Instead she will now have to prepare herself to face trial.
In September, a French court recommended Lagarde be acquitted over the long-running saga of a €400m (£293m) taxpayer-funded payout to controversial financier Bernard Tapie during the financial crisis. But last month, the Cour de Justice de la République, which tackles allegations of wrongdoing by ministers, ruled she must appear in court, charged with “negligence by a person in a position of public authority”.
So far, the IMF has expressed confidence in Lagarde’s ability to focus on her job; but she may ultimately struggle to combine acting as one of the figureheads of the global economy with the public scrutiny of her record in office that inevitably accompany a trial. Heather Stewart
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