Bell, Charles 1960–

International Directory of Business Biographies, (2005) by David Lewis

Charles Bell 1960–

Chief executive officer and president, McDonald's Corporation

Nationality: Australian.

Born: November 7, 1960, in Kingsford, Australia.

Family: Son of a travel agent (name unknown) and Margaret (maiden name unknown); married; children: one.

Career: McDonald's Corporation, 1975–1979, crew member; 1979–1983, store manager; 1983–1985, manager, McDonald's Europe development company; 1985–1990, operations director and regional manager, McDonald's Europe development company; 1990–1993, vice president of marketing; 1993–1999, managing director of McDonald's Australia; 1999–2001, president of Asia Pacific, Middle East, and Africa group; 2001–2002, president of McDonald's Europe; 2003, president and COO; 2004–, CEO and president.

Address: McDonald's Corporation, 1 Kroc Drive, Oak Brook, Illinois 60523-2275; http://www.mcdonalds.com.

■ Charles Bell began working for McDonald's in Australia in 1975 as a teenager. A hard worker who was highly ambitious, he rose quickly through the ranks, becoming the youngest McDonald's manager ever in 1979. By 1993 Bell was running the Australian operation, which became a model for the company's global operations. In 2002 he came to the United States to become the corporation's chief operating officer. An affable and shrewd manager, Bell was a major player under the CEO James Cantalupo in reversing McDonald's decline in the early 2000s. In 2004, at 43 years of age, Bell became one of the youngest CEOs in the world when he replaced Cantalupo as president and CEO of McDonald's. He was also the company's first foreign CEO.

"LIFE IS NOT A REHEARSAL": RISE OF A McAUSSIE

Charles Bell was born in Kingsford, Australia, on November 7, 1960. His father was a travel agent; his mother, Margaret Bell, lived in the same Sydney suburb through the early 2000s. In 1975 Bell was a student at Marcellin College of Randwick, a select Catholic boy's school, where he learned religious instruction, teamwork, and discipline as well as some technical training. Not far from Marcellin was one of the first McDonald's outlets opened in Australia, of which Bell learned from a friend while riding home on the bus. He applied for a position serving hamburgers and was hired. Although his first night was so difficult that he told his parents he felt like quitting, he did not. Bell stuck with his job, dressing hamburgers, unloading trucks, and cleaning restrooms.

Having opened its first outlet in Sydney at the end of 1971, McDonald's Australia was a fledgling operation which failed to turn a profit through most of the 1970s. Visiting the Kingsford outlet, the Australian manager Peter Ritchie met the young Bell and quickly sized him up as a future company leader. Bell readily agreed with Ritchie with regard to his own prospects; as Ritchie told the Sydney Morning Herald , "He was ready to tell us how the place should have been run from 15 onwards" (April 21, 2004). Bell was often arrogant and upfront about his ambition, but in a charming, irreverent Australian way. Ritchie saw not a ranting fool but a potential leader.

The aspiring young manager gained a few lessons in cross-cultural operations during the 1970s. Helping to lead an American company in Australia, where businessmen were not seen as the heroes they were in the United States, proved to be a challenge. Unions were much stronger and taxes higher. The Shop Assistants' Union sought to organize Bell's workers; the union took McDonald's to court and struck the company's food suppliers, denouncing McDonald's for maintaining unfair labor practices, serving rotten plastic food, and even for subverting Australian culture. Ritchie sued the union for defamation and won through his presentation of McDonald's Australia as an Australian company run by Australians. Bell learned from Ritchie how to counter the anti-Americanism that had stung McDonald's: by marketing the company as a local one. Enough Australians were convinced for McDonald's Australia to finally begin earning a profit in the early 1980s.

"IF YOU WANT TO BE THE POPE, YOU HAVE TO COME TO ROME"

Even before Cantalupo became CEO, as early as 1996, he knew of Bell's abilities and wanted him to go to Illinois—to McDonald's headquarters. Bell, however, a conservative Australian with strong family ties as well as strong political ties to his friend Prime Minister John Howard, did not want to emigrate. Cantalupo sought to persuade Bell that only by coming to America could he make the impact that he had the potential to make; even the Asian operation would not be moved to Sydney. But Bell, a "dinkum Aussie" through and through, did not want to relocate. "If Bell wanted to be Pope, he would have to live in Rome," said Cantalupo in an article in Business Review Weekly (June 5, 2003). Bell went to Illinois in 1999.