Business English practice: Unit 10 — Businesspeople and Business Leaders

drillBiz

May 31, 2016

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Read through the explanations.
- A |      Businesspeople and entrepreneurs
  
  A businessman, businesswoman or businessperson is someone who works in their own business or as a manager in an organization.
  
  Note: The plural of businessperson is businesspeople. Businessperson and businesspeople can also be spelled as two words: business person, business people.
  
  An entrepreneur is someone who starts or founds or establishes their own company. Someone who starts a company is its founder. An entrepreneur may found a series of companies or start-ups. Entrepreneurial is used in a positive way to describe the risk-taking people who do this, and their activities. Some entrepreneurs leave the companies they found, perhaps going on to found more companies. Others may stay to develop and grow their businesses.
  
  Note: Found is a regular verb. Past tense and past participle: founded.
  
  Establishment can also describe an action (e.g. the establishment of a successful business was his main aim in life).
  
  ! Some English speakers believe it is not correct to use grow as a transitive verb in this context.
  
  B |      Leaders and leadership
  A large company mainly owned by one person or family is a business empire.
  Successful businesspeople, especially heads of large organizations, are business leaders or, in journalistic terms, captains of industry.
  
  There is a lot of discussion about whether people like this are born with leadership skills, or whether such skills can be learned.
  
  C |      Magnates, moguls and tycoons
  People in charge of big business empires may be referred to, especially by journalists, as magnates, moguls or tycoons. These words often occur in combinations such as these:
  media magnate
  press magnate
  shipping magnate
  oil magnate
  
  movie mogul
  media mogul
  shipping mogul
  
  property tycoon
  software tycoon
Use words form A and B opposite to complete this text.
- The big place at the moment for is, of course, the Internet. Take John Pace. ‘After an engineering degree at Stanford and an MBA at Harvard, I worked for a while in a computer games company. But I always felt I was an kind of guy. In 1997, I an Internet site for cheap travel: flights, hotels, renting cars and so on. I obtained money for investment in the - from friends.’
  Now the site has 300,000 customers and Pace is very rich, with a big apartment in Manhattan and a house in the Bahamas. ‘I don’t want to sell the company,’ he says. ‘I’ve had offers from some big companies, but I want to stay independent. I want to the business and do things my way.
  Unlike many entrepreneurs, I think I have the skills to lead and inspire a large organization. I can see the day when I’m in charge of a large business .’
Who’s who on this company board? Look at B opposite and complete the exercise.
- Randolph Hearst (1863 – 1951)
  - property tycoon
  - press magnate
  - shipping magnate
  - software tycoon
  - oil mogul
  - media mogul
- Masayoshi Son (b. 1957)
  - shipping magnate
  - oil mogul
  - software tycoon
  - press magnate
  - property tycoon
  - media mogul
- Rupert Murdoch (b 1932)
  - press magnate
  - shipping magnate
  - oil mogul
  - software tycoon
  - media mogul
  - property tycoon
- Aristotle Onassis (1906 – 1975)
  - software tycoon
  - press magnate
  - oil mogul
  - media mogul
  - shipping magnate
  - property tycoon
- Paul Getty (1892 – 1976)
  - press magnate
  - shipping magnate
  - media mogul
  - property tycoon
  - oil mogul
  - software tycoon
- Donald Trump (b. 1946)
  - press magnate
  - software tycoon
  - property tycoon
  - media mogul
  - shipping magnate
  - oil mogul
Over to you
- Who are your country’s most famous entrepreneurs?
  What are they famous for?
  In your opinion, are business leaders born or made?

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