Perhaps unsurprisingly, Erginbilgiç bristles at suggestions he is coasting on the success of others.
“This is my third transformation, right?” the 64-year-old points out. “And what I have seen in all three is the same: after a while, the leadership stops talking about results, so people don’t know whether the company is in a good shape or a bad shape.
“All they know is they delivered their plan and they are getting a bonus, so they think ‘we’re doing well’.”
Erginbilgiç (pronounced “air-gin-bil-gitch”) is a dual Turkish-British citizen who studied engineering and then business administration at university in Istanbul.
He spent much of his career in the oil industry and earned his spurs at BP from 1997 to 2020, rising through the ranks to take charge of the “downstream” business focused on refining, chemicals and petrol stations.
There, the married father-of-two gained a reputation as a ruthless and efficient operator, and at one point worked directly under ex-BP chief executive Tony Hayward as chief of staff.
Hayward, who succeeded Lord Browne in 2007 but resigned in 2010 over the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, has described Erginbilgiç as “one of the very best executives I’ve ever worked with”.
Erginbilgiç ended up leaving BP after missing out on the chief executive role to Bernard Looney in 2020. Instead, he moved into private equity as an adviser at Global Infrastructure Partners.
His appointment as chief executive of Rolls in July 2022, made under chairman Dame Anita Frew, was something of a surprise.
Erginbilgiç has said he was partly attracted to the role by the company’s 119-year history, which famously includes building Merlin engines for Spitfire and Hurricane fighter planes during the Second World War.
However, Rolls had just survived a near-death experience when he arrived. The coronavirus pandemic shut down the aviation market overnight and forced the company to raise billions of pounds in emergency funds from investors.
Even before that the engineering giant had been trying the City’s patience. It had been stuck in turnaround mode – with few tangible results – for the best part of a decade.
Erginbilgiç’s predecessor East – the cool-headed former boss of Cambridge-based chip designer Arm Holdings – was meant to rejuvenate Rolls.
“Warren was brought in to modernise the company. He was supposed to be this kind of technology figure,” explains one senior figure within the company.
Instead, he spent most of his tenure putting out fires, not least the aftermath of a major corruption scandal and problems with the company’s Trent 1000 engines that cost more than £2bn in compensation paid out to airlines.
By the time East departed, Rolls was leaner, having shed around 10,000 staff during the pandemic, but was still viewed as a fixer-upper.
Chief among its problems was the huge difference in profitability between the company and its main competitors, such as General Electric and Pratt & Whitney.
It made less money despite the commanding position Rolls had built supplying engines to widebody planes and smaller business jets.
