Read the case given below and answer the questions given at the end.

CASE STUDY - 2
John Neill at Unipart

While most parts suppliers for the United Kingdom's automobile industry struggle, one company is doing just fine- Unipart. This EUR 2.3 billion company has done well largely because of the decisions made by its CEO, John Neill. In 1974, at the age of 29, Neill was made the managing director of the Unipart division of British Leyland (BL). He immediately began to ruffle the feathers of conservative BL executives by developing innovative marketing campaigns and focsusing company attention on the parts business (in contrast to its cars and trucks). He increased the division's marketing budget sixfold, created a retail shop programme, altered the packaging, and began promoting the division's parts on television. His 'parts first' pitch did not go down well with his bosses, who saw it as an attack on the viability of BL itself. But it was too fate for BL's top management to do much about it. Neill had created a viable business, while the rest of the company (which later became part of the Rover Group) laboured along, losing market share every year. Almost from the beginning, Neill envisioned making Unipart independent from BL. In 1987, he did just that. He negotiated a EUR 89.5 million management buyout of Unipart from BL. He then immediately began taking actions that would allow Unipart to stand on its own. 'We knew the future would be worse,' Neill recalls, 'because today's market share was smaller than yesterday's. So the parts business would go down unless we did something dramatically different.' That 'something' was to move away from providing original parts for Rover. Instead, Unipart was commit to creating a strong consumer brand built around replacement parts. Today, Unipart has become a highly recognizable consumer brand in the United Kingdom. It has also diversified into a range of other businesses. Producing and selling automotive parts is still the company's main activity, but it also runs a successful warehouse, a logistics business and has created an Internet trading platform. In 1987, when Unipart became independent, sales to Rover represented 90 percent of its business. It is now down to 3 percent. No longer are Unipart's fortunes tied singularly to Rover. In fact, one of Unipart's most profitable current businesses is running Jaguar's entire parts operation on a fee basis. Despite Neill's success since the buy-out, Unipart faces tough times ahead. The UK auto industry suffers from massive overcapacity. Intensive downward pricing pressure on suppliers is likely to eat away at Unipart's profits. In response, Neill has expanded Unipart's logistic business by paying EUR 292 million for auto parts distributor Partco. This acquisition makes Unipart the biggest automotive parts distributor in the United Kingdom. Neill is also diversifying beyond Unipart's automotive parts roots, especially on the E-commerce front.

Questions:
Q1. 'John Neill is not smart; he is just lucky.' Do you agree? Explain.
Q2. Did intuition play a role in Neill's decisions? Discuss.
Q3. Contrast the major strategic decisions at Unipart and British Leyland.
Q4. Do you think John Neill would have been equally successful if, back in 1987, he had been head of BL? Explain.