Editorial: World Business Chicago CEO must sell our uneasy city as a great investment [Chicago Tribune]

Phil Clement is Mayor Brandon Johnson’s pick as CEO of World Business Chicago, the city government’s liaison to the business community, both here and elsewhere, and its foremost commercial cheerleader.

If your reaction is “Who?” you’re forgiven. Though Clement has enjoyed a long career as an executive — his longest stint was at commercial insurance brokerage giant Aon — he’s been a low-profile player within Chicago’s business scene.

The lack of notoriety isn’t all that surprising, since Clement spent a large chunk of his time as Aon’s chief marketing officer in London, not Chicago. Clement was in that very role when Aon issued the shocking announcement 12 years ago that it was moving its headquarters to London from Chicago. At the time, the move was a blow to the city’s prestige, though then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel touted additional jobs Aon pledged to add at its namesake tower. Many in the city’s business elite recoiled, including Aon founder and billionaire Pat Ryan, who at that time was no longer CEO, and local members of Aon’s board such as Andrew McKenna and John Rogers, who left the company in response. Clement’s job then was to sell the move’s virtues.

The relocation was essentially a tax dodge, but it stung nonetheless. So Clement steps into this new job with the long-ago Aon drama fixed in the memories of veteran Chicago businesspeople.

Make no mistake, the job is as tough as it is critical, particularly now. Chicago’s business reputation is as weak as it’s been in memory, hit by the pandemic’s corrosive effect on the Loop and commensurate plummeting commercial real estate values, the scourge of violent crime and retail theft, and a new far-left mayoral administration bent on hiking taxes and imposing costly new mandates.

The headquarters departures in 2022 of hedge fund giant Citadel, manufacturing colossus Caterpillar and airplane maker Boeing issued blaring alarms about Chicagoland’s health as a corporate center.

Clement’s marketing background is a clear plus. World Business Chicago is at its heart a marketing operation combined with a sophisticated data gathering function. As CEO, Clement will need to loudly proclaim to the world, and importantly these days, to Chicagoans themselves that this remains an incredible city blessed with singular advantages such as Lake Michigan, an envied transportation network, and world-class cultural institutions and universities. Not to mention a stellar human workforce.

What also has set Chicago apart from other cities over the last 150 years is a unique trifecta of government, business and civic institutions cooperating time and again to improve the city in tangible and dramatic ways. Millennium Park, O’Hare Airport, the lakefront park system — these are just three examples of that dynamic in action.

As much as Clement will need wins in terms of attracting outside business investment to Chicago, he would be wise, too, to issue a clarion call to those already here to rouse the slumbering giant of Chicago’s civic will.

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