Philip Bowcock, the beleaguered bookie boss fighting to shorten the odds on his survival

PHILIP BOWCOCK sips a Diet Coke with his lunch, but you wouldn’t be surprised if he went for something a bit stronger. After all, the newish chief executive of bookmaker William Hill is in the eye of the hurricane. An unsympathetic Government looks set to slash the staking limits on the “crack cocaine” betting machines — which account for a hefty chunk of its profits — in a looming review. That makes the bookmaker, which has been going for 87 years, a prime takeover candidate in an industry on the cusp of another raft of dealmaking to weather rising costs.

It’s dog-eat-dog out there, and pity for Hills’ plight among rivals is slim. One chief executive cruelly says of Bowcock that “in the sack race, he’s Ronald Koeman” — referring to the Everton manager who’s favourite for the boot after a desperate start to the season. Another industry analyst says more charitably: “He’s competent, knows his stuff, he’s thoroughly professional but the truth is he’s a pilot flying into a huge storm. His fate will be decided by forces beyond his control.”

But in the swish surroundings of Mayfair’s Michelin-starred Murano restaurant, the 49-year-old shows little sign of being under siege. “Life is good,” he says, with not a hint of false bravado. Bowcock has been in the job full-time for six months now after a lengthy stint as interim chief executive following the abrupt ousting of previous boss James Henderson in July last year.

All told, it’s less than two years since he joined Hills from Cineworld as the numbers man. And it took eight months for the board to scrub “interim” off his office door, a fact that didn’t go unnoticed in the City.

So what odds would he give himself on still being William Hill boss in a year’s time? He refuses to answer: “Oh, that’s harsh. I don’t think like that — you just do the best job you can and what will be will be. I don’t ever think “I have 12 months to do X or Y’. What odds would you give me?”

Maybe 5/6: although with the likes of Kenny Alexander’s GVC and Itai Frieberger’s 888 in the market that price could rapidly lengthen. Then there’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport’s three-yearly review of the hugely controversial betting machines in thousands of betting shops around the country which could slash the £100 maximum stake to £2.

Campaigners say they blight lives. Only this week MP Chris Philp — a Treasury aide — wrote the foreword to a ResPublica report attacking gaming machines for “damaging the lives of people, our economic prosperity and the fabric of our communities”.

Meanwhile, another former Hills boss Ralph Topping — who left in 2014 — snipes from the sidelines, writing on LinkedIn that Bowcock is “not yet cast as Julie Andrews, hitting the highest of notes”. The slings and arrows extended to an unwanted consortium offer from Rank and 888 in July last year when Bowcock had been in the job for only one day. He also took the flak when talks with PokerStars owner Stars Group over a deal (started before he was in charge) bombed with investors a year ago. So he’s friendly enough but understandably on his guard, firing out answers over his risotto and hake in a clipped, almost staccato style.

But clearly he can’t do anything about what the DCMS may or may not throw at him. He’s spent his year in the chair getting to grips with Hills’s formerly industry-leading online business, which listed badly under Henderson, taking out costs and reinvesting the cash in marketing while the DCMS’s sword of Damocles hangs overhead.

“It’s stating the bleeding obvious that the more efficient your business model is, the better you’ll adapt to whatever comes your way. We can all sit here and second-guess what the outcome is going to be, but reality is, nobody actually knows, so let’s deal with the controllables, then we’ll face the triennial.”

He suspects that a Government preoccupied with Brexit could launch a further consultation on different options, potentially kicking the issue into the long grass for a bit longer. But in the worst-case scenario, around half its near-2400 shops could close, costing about 8000 jobs according to some estimates. That’s had a major effect on the share price, which is down nearly 40% since the beginning of last year. As Bowcock puts it: “Would you buy shares in William Hill or Ladbrokes Coral at the moment? So why would anybody? There’s no floor, no incentive for anybody to buy shares at the moment because of the uncertainty.”

At least he is used to firefighting, judging by his recent career before the bookmaker. He joined housebuilder Barratt Developments as a financial controller just as the market was turning in early 2007 (“I did two debt refinancings and a rescue rights issue in 12 months”). Then it was on to doomed night-clubs operator Luminar, where for 18 months he helped fight an ultimately losing battle to keep the administrators at bay.

“I probably learned more there than at any other business. When you are up against it, you have to think fast and creatively. When you’ve got thousands of people relying on you to make sure you’ve got money in the bank to pay their wages and you’ve got HMRC knocking on the door for VAT payments and banks asking for interest payments, it really focuses the mind.”

Bowcock was born and grew up in the north Staffordshire countryside but went to Cumbria’s independent Sedbergh school — renowned for its notoriously tough 10-mile cross-country run over the fells — where contemporaries included former England rugby captain Will Carling. He had to overcome early tragedy at the age of 14 when his solicitor father died, and eventually settled on accountancy as a profession to fall back on.

He admits he never saw himself running a listed bookmaker, although he has mostly been at consumer businesses: it also it helped when Hills came calling that he had an earlier brush with bookmaking during a stint with Hilton Group, owner of Ladbrokes in the early Noughties. Now he finds himself — along with Ladbrokes boss Jim Mullen — virtually friendless, fighting a hugely unpopular corner as the stakes review looms.

But Bowcock pleads — possibly in vain — for an “evidence-based process”: “It is not all ‘we are purveyors of evil’,” he adds. He claims there’s no evidence linking staking levels with problem gambling, so cutting levels might not make much difference. He adds: “If you go into a pub and stick £500 into a pub machine, your return to player is around 65% and there’s no control, so they can stand there and just bang £2 coins into it and nobody would ever interact. If you were stood at a [betting] machine for two hours, there would be an interaction.”

Then there’s the risk of driving the industry underground like in the US, where illegal sports betting is an estimated $150 billion industry. Only Nevada has a comprehensive offer to gamblers. “Don’t forget, people want to bet. People like gambling. Gambling is as old as few other professions you can mention. It goes back to ancient China. It isn’t going to go away. So it’s better we work with the Government, or it gets pushed underground... If people want to drink, is it better they drink in the pub where the landlord can keep an eye on them, or is it better that they’re in the park with a bottle of vodka from Tesco?”

He adds: “It is all very well amusement arcades and casinos shouting [about machines] but you can go down to the Hippodrome and put £10,000 on red and nobody will worry.”

Bowcock himself has the occasional flutter on the horses, or a punt on his local team Stoke City, but says that “very seldom do I win anything”. You get the feeling his luck might have to change, and fast.