Jessops recently considered a deal with a Scandinavian rival but decided not to follow through. The company, led by its chairman, Tim Brookes, is now pursuing other options, including the possibility of a trade sale or a refinancing to grow the business over the next three to five years.Jessops is 40 per cent owned by Bridgepoint Capital, with 20 per cent controlled by Prudential Venture Managers and the rest by the management.The company has been keen on international expansion. Last year it failed with a bid for a small US camera retailer which had collapsed.Jessops has 214 shops and in the year to September 2001 recorded profits of £10.6m on sales of £220m. This was higher than the forecasts issued in the flotation prospectus.The group's Christmas trading statement showed that in the three weeks to Boxing Day, underlying sales were 13 per cent ahead of the same period last year, driven by strong sales of digital cameras.

The business said it had seen some impact on sales in central London from 11 September but that this had been compensated for by strong performances in outer London and the North.Jessops had planned to raise £22.7m in the float to help fund the expansion of its store portfolio from 192 to 450 over the next seven years.. ROBERT GASPARINITitle: chief executive, Chubb Age: 51Salary: £510,000Biggest personal influence: "John F Kennedy because that was part of my falling in love with the United States. The style of transparency he brought to American politics was so important as well as youth, empowerment and change."Biggest business influence: "Jack Welch [ex-General Electric chief]. Most management consultancy books are rule books but I've read three or four of Jack Welch's and they give you the experience of life." Robert Gasparini is one of those people for whom competition seems very important. Tall and lean, the 51-year-old chief executive of the Chubb security business is a former competitive swimmer who still finds time to go running for 45 minutes every day. He loves football, following Italy, Manchester United and Chelsea, and likes his managers to display a competitive streak in their personal lives "We want a will to win," he says. "If they are not interested in sports then they'll have interests in other competitive situations."Speaking in Chubb's elegant headquarters building in London's St James's Square, the most striking feature about this Italian-American is his passion.He speaks articulately and persuasively about everything from his love of his native Italy to the management style of Jack Welch "I love Italy and the lifestyle.

Good food, sun, the arts; you can't get much better than that. But it's a miserable place to do business."And on his management hero, Jack Welch of General Electric: "This is not an easy guy but there is no compromise on what he believes in."It is something you might say about Mr Gasparini himself who has the evangelical self-belief of the born-again salesman who could flog snow to the eskimos Indeed a former salesman is exactly what he is. His first job was as a management trainee at Colgate-Palmolive where he started out in the field selling soap and toothpaste. "I had my little van and suitcase and I would go round the 'mom and pop' stores," he says. "Then I graduated to the supermarkets."Though he retains joint American and Italian citizenship he is probably best described as a citizen of the world. Born in Portugal the son of a Italian father and American mother he moved school every two years as his father was in the Italian foreign service, a career he later considered himself.

As a result the young Gasparini lived in Spain, Israel, Italy and France and learned to speak five languages. He was educated at a strict Jesuit schools which he describes as "character building. It taught the difference between right and wrong." Then came an MBA at Columbia University in the US where he fell in love with the "can-do" culture of the American dream He worked in New York for the consultants Booz Allen. "It was not necessarily intellectually demanding but it taught you to make decisions quickly. It was good for confidence building." In 1989 he joined Willams, the conglomerate which included the Chubb locks business and he has been there ever since.At Chubb he faces what may be his toughest challenge yet. The business made a truly appalling start to life as a public company a little more than a year ago. When the old Williams conglomerate was broken in two in November 2000 the Chubb security operation was supposed to be the sexy high growth part while the Kidde fire protection business was seen as worthy but dull.