The war of words between Peter Mandelson and Howard Schultz pits The Prince of Darkness against the King of the Coffee Bean. But how do the two 55-year-olds stack up?

Background

Mandelson Born into Labour party royalty in 1953 as the grandson of Herbert Morrison, and grew up in north London.

Schultz Born in 1953 in Brooklyn, New York, where he was raised in a subsidised housing project.

Education

Mandelson Hendon County Grammar School and St Catherine's College, Oxford.

Schultz Became the first member of his family to go to college when he won a football scholarship to Northern Michigan University.

Big breaks

Mandelson After a spell as a producer on the influential LWT current affairs programme Weekend World, he became Labour leader Neil Kinnock's communications guru and is credited with setting the party on the long road to recovery.

Schultz Started out in the marketing department of Xerox, before joining Hammarplast, a Swedish housewares company. Then in 1982 he paid a sales call to a Starbucks Coffee, Tea, and Spice store and got hooked. Opened his own store after his vision for a chain of cafes was rejected by Starbucks' management, and then took Starbucks over in 1987.

Highlights…

Mandelson Along with Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Alastair Campbell, Mandelson was part of the immensely disciplined cabal that created New Labour and won back power in 1997. He made his stint as European trade commissioner an opportunity to restore his profile and develop elder-statesman-like gravitas and global clout.

Schultz Under his leadership, Starbucks grew at a rapid rate through the 1990s and floated on the stockmarket in 1992. By 2000, Starbucks had 3,501 stores, and it opened its 10,000th in 2005, the year he stepped back from running the company. The charity Aids Action gave him a National Leadership Award for his philanthropic and educational efforts to battle HIV/Aids.

…and lowlights

Mandelson Had to resign not once but twice from the cabinet, first over failing to declare a home loan from Geoffrey Robinson and then over the row about the Hinduja brothers' passport application. Despite his "I'm a fighter, not a quitter" declaration on election night in 2001, he had to spend the next three years in the wilderness, though he continued to advise Blair.

Schultz Since being parachuted back in to run Starbucks last year, he has closed hundreds of underperforming stores – "the most angst-ridden decision we have made". Analysts fear that the company overreached in the good times, and that the $5 latte is another victim of the recession.

Friends

Mandelson Tony Blair, of course. The novelist Robert Harris and City PR supremo Roland Rudd are also close to the fabulously well-connected Mandelson, as is John Birt, the former BBC director general who became a friend back in the Weekend World days. Over the summer he was a guest of the hedge fund manager Nathaniel Rothschild in Corfu, a stay that later became the source of controversy when details emerged of a private meeting with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska and shadow chancellor George Osborne.

Schultz Keeps his private life private, but did reveal this week that he has been secretly giving his friends Starbucks' soon-to-be-launched instant coffee and was delighted they didn't notice (or were too well-mannered to mention if they did). Admired in the charity world for his efforts to boost literacy and his Aids work.

Enemies

Mandelson Where to start? Old Labour loyalists have never learned to love the arch-moderniser, while political opponents have underestimated his ruthless skills at their peril. Gordon Brown used to figure high on the list, but the two men are brothers in arms since Mandelson's recall to the cabinet in October. Osborne quickly dropped off the Christmas card list when he appeared to have been the source of claims that Mandelson had "dripped pure poison" about Brown on board Deripaska's yacht. Many saw the hand of Mandelson in the subsequent claims – denied by the Tories – that Osborne used the meeting to solicit a party donation from Deripaska.

Schultz Starbucks has picked up plenty of critics along the way. Some people see the company as the shiny face of global capitalism, crushing independent coffee houses around the world, while others just want it to take its fair-trade obligations more seriously. One customer even paid for four full-page adverts in the Wall Street Journal savaging the company, and several Starbucks stores in Seattle were attacked during the World Trade Organisation talks in 1999.

In those quieter moments…

Mandelson Enjoys few things more than watching Strictly Come Dancing, and dreaming of gracing the stage himself.

Schultz A sports nut, particularly keen on basketball and baseball.

What they said yesterday

Mandelson "Why should I have this guy running down the country? Who the fuck is he? How the hell are they [Starbucks] doing?"

Schultz "The place that concerns us the most is western Europe, and specifically the UK. The UK is in a spiral."