Reticent chief of Allied Domecq may soon order a Bacardi chaser

Business Profile: Philip Bowman feels the City is beginning to forgive him for spending more than £1bn stocking Allied's wine racks

Philip Bowman is under the weather. Lingering sinusitis has forced the boss of Allied Domecq to don a cashmere pully around the office and he is looking tired after a busy week. No doubt the whisky toddies have been flowing freely, if not what's the point of running the world's second-biggest spirits group?

These are heady times for the drinks industry. Not only is the ink barely dry on a deal to create the world's biggest wine company, but the fractious shareholders that control Bacardi are weighing up the possibility of a stock market float. Few will follow the outcome of the Bacardi meeting next month with more interest than Mr Bowman.

"It's not something I would have expected a couple of years ago," he admits. Ever since deciding not to bid for Seagram's drinks cabinet three years ago – leaving Diageo and Pernod Ricard to glug down the spoils – Mr Bowman has been on the prowl for a similar acquisition.

With Australia's troubled Southcorp off the menu for now (Chardonnay is somehow a little too common for the high-brow Allied boss), there could be all to play for if the Bacardi family shareholders decide to relinquish control. "It [next month's meeting] does suggest a change of policy," Mr Bowman says hopefully, his public school accent hiding his own Aussie roots well.

Despite his cold, the 50-year-old head of Allied is on a mini high at the moment. Just a mini high, mind you, because anything more might give away too much of his personality, and as various corporate minders keep reminding me, the reticent Mr Bowman doesn't "do" personal profiles. The Beefeater gin-to-Ballentine's Scotch group has just posted reasonable interim results – quite an achievement after a profits warning in February that left investors nursing a hefty hangover.

The reason for the smiles is that Mr Bowman believes the City is finally starting to forgive him for spending more than £1bn on stocking up Allied's wine rack during the past couple of years. The group's preference for companies that source grapes from regions that are in short supply, such as Marlborough in New Zealand, home to Montana's Sauvignon Blanc grape, meant it avoided the worst of the grape glut that has floored Southcorp. He is not complacent, however.

"From the perspective of the financial markets, there is still a degree of scepticism about wine. In part this is historic, because no UK public company has had exposure to wine like they have in the US, Australia and New Zealand," Mr Bowman explains. He knows that analysts still fret that the wine business is too capital intensive, its returns on cash invested too low. But he says the division hit the targets set out at a field trip for investors to Bilbao, Spain last summer.

While Mr Bowman is clearly something of an oenophile, he is pragmatic enough not to let this sway his global shopping list. New World wines top his list, not out of some "romantic" affiliation with his homeland, but because they are the only ones that stand any chance of repaying the investment. "France is ruled out for very simple economic reasons," he says, a little wistfully as he recalls that Allied once owned Château La Tour, the classic French claret producer. "It's desperately sad the business was sold. It would have been a wonderful flagship for our portfolio."

In addition to wine brands such as Spain's Bodegas y Bebidas and New Zealand's Montana, Mr Bowman has filled some important gaps in Allied's spirits chest since taking the helm in the middle of 1999.

His biggest coup was persuading Diageo, the world number one, to part with Malibu, the coconut rum. This was no mean feat and required some careful conniving on Mr Bowman's part. He hatched a plot with the Puerto Rican company that made Captain Morgan, Seagram's star dark rum, which allowed him to claim that Vivendi's Seagram sale triggered a change-of-control clause that allowed the Central American rum maker to take the brand back and sell it to Allied. The threat of protracted litigation forced the deal with Diageo at the knock-down price of £560m. Other Seagram spoils, included the US rights to the premium vodka, Stolichnaya and the Mumm and Perrier-Jouët champagne houses.

Although Allied, like its chief executive, wins few points in the City for charisma, observers are candid enough about the transformation wrought by Mr Bowman. "He's done a relatively good job in spite of the scepticism of investors. He's given it better focus and a better profile," admits one drinks analyst. Another says: "He's very formal but an impressive businessman." A third adds: "When he arrived, the market thought he was the Big Saviour and that he walked on water. He has done some good things like improving the quality of the management team and the reporting. But I don't think he's amazing and I certainly don't think he walks on water."

For his part, Mr Bowman recalls that when he agreed to join Allied "most of my friends thought I'd taken leave of my senses. I remember our first public meeting, you could have cut the atmosphere with a knife." The man is on a roll. "The reputation in the media was terrible. The relationship with the media was bad. And in the City, there was an almost total lack of credibility, certainly with most of the analysts."

He says a number of accidents during the Nineties, such as losing out heavily on foreign exchange transactions and acquiring a big business in Mexico on the eve of a major devaluation, had made the business "not only very bureaucratic but an expert in the art of how not to make a decision". He puts the company's greater emphasis on transparency and cleaner numbers down not to his own background as an accountant and finance director, but to his heritage. "I think it's to do with my background from Australia in that one tends to just call things as you see them rather than wrap them up."

It's a shame Mr Bowman's Aussie straightforwardness doesn't lend itself to a frank discussion of what he is like away from work. I glean that his favourite tipples are champagne and Canadian Club whisky (apparently very refreshing mixed as a long drink with ginger ale) and that's about it.

I try firing a quick question about one of his Who's Who-listed recreations – entomology (the study of dead insects) – if only to banish images of schoolboys and dead flies. But I am firmly rebuffed. Mr Bowman mumbles something about it being "a very old-fashioned pursuit that the Victorians used to love doing, which is rushing round with a large black net catching butterflies". He quickly curtails such temerity before I get any ideas about him opening up, saying simply that running a company such as Allied leaves him no time for such frivolous pursuits.

He had better make sure to empty his diary completely if he gets any serious ideas about a deal with Bacardi, then.

PHILIP BOWMAN OENOPHILE

Position: Chief executive, Allied Domecq

Age: 50

Pay: £1.63m

Education: Westminster School, Pembroke College, Cambridge

Career: Trained as an accountant at Price Waterhouse. Stints as finance director at Bass and Coles Myer (an Australian retailer – where he will be remembered for blowing the whistle on A$18m of transactions with a company controlled by the Coles Myer chairman). Then became chairman of Liberty (the department store). Holds non-executive directorships at BSkyB, Burberrys

Interests: Scuba diving, entomology, opera, computers, electronics