UK: WANTED - GRADUATES WITH THAT OLD GET-UP-AND-GO.

Peter Wilsher sees a future on the Continent for those with degrees and ambition.

Jose Ignacio Lopez de Arriorta, whose cost-cutting wizardry at General Motors and subsequent scandal-drenched departure to Volkswagen (see also Management p16) made him by a wide margin the most newsworthy businessman of 1993, was born in the tiny North Spanish town of Amorebieta, on the road between Guernica and Bilbao. Everyone living there claims to remember little bespectacled Josein, who studied so hard and was so rotten at football. However rough the ride may become for him in distant Wolfsburg, to the locals he remains a hero who can do no wrong, who still speaks Basque as his most comfortable domestic language, and who will one day return to them when he retires from the international executive fray.