BMG's new UK team leader brings clear set of goals and softly-softly approach.

Call it a fluke of timing, but it seems fitting that a self-confessed diehard Swedish sports fan should take the helm of a UK major record company within a week of the English football team's double victory -- under the management of fellow Swede Sven-Goran Eriksson.

The differences end there, however, for while the England coach took over a team that was in the doldrums after a terrible recent history, Hasse Breitholtz officially assumes the role of chairman of BMG UK and Ireland today (Monday) at a time when the company is riding high in the UK charts on the back of artists as varied as Westlife, Dido and Outkast. Still, there is no doubt that he will instill a very different management style from the man who preceded him -- and hired him -- Richard Griffiths.

Breitholtz is the least known chairman to be appointed to run a UK major record company since Paul Burger arrived at Sony from Canada in 1993. However, Griffiths says that one of the reasons for naming Breitholtz as his successor, following his own promotion to run all of BMG's European operations, is to tap into the benefits that" foreign expertise can bring. "If you look at BMG in the UK, Ged [Doherty] and I have come from America, Hasse from Europe and [new BMG UK marketing chief] Maarten Steinkamp from Holland. Outside experience allows us to look at things from a fresh perspective while aspects of the UK record business are tired," he says.

The most immediate by-product of that fresh perspective is the on-going restructuring of BMG's UK operation along genre rather than traditional label lines. Many of the finer details are still to be finalised, but what is already abundantly clear is that Breitholtz will be drawing on all his skill and experience as a team player to make the new operation work.

It is a skill he put into practice at championship-winning Swedish ice hockey team Djurgarden -- he remains a zealously dedicated director of the team and returns home to watch them once a month -- and even more so at BMG Sweden. Headhunted from local independent Sonet in 1989, the BMG Sweden operation he created had developed a 22% market share within two years, making it the major's most successful territory in Europe at the time.

"The very first thing I did, before starting [BMG Sweden] on January 2 1989, was to buy Record Station, a very strong local label with which we'd had a distribution deal at Sonet," recalls Breitholtz. "The owner Marie Lidin was looking for a partner, so we purchased it and I still think it's the best deal I've ever done in my life -- not only financially but it was a good deal for BMG because it brought us local leverage with artists such as Tomas Ledin, Eva Dahlgren and Ratata which would have taken a long time to build."

This focus on artists is appropriate from someone who started his own career performing on stage. With his suburban parents having made piano lessons compulsory from an early age, Breitholtz was the obvious choice when a group of college friends decided they needed a keyboard player for their US West Coast folk-influenced band. After signing to EMI Sweden in 1970, Landslaget (National Team) went on to produce seven albums in as many years, two of which hit the number one spot (see Dooley, p27). No wonder that the young Breitholtz considered this to be the "best job in the world".