CEO Issue 3

TODAY’S CEO 

ISSUE 3 

A sharing economy 

utilises spare capacity 

Bishops and 

actresses offer 

help to MBA students 

Cutting your 

carbon footprint 

can cut costs too 

Sponsored by 

How safe is data 

stored in the clouds?

HUMAN Human RESOURCES 

Resources 

30 theCsuite 

obile employees are key to 

companies’ international 

growth, either by acting 

as the spearhead to setting up 

operations in new countries, or by 

helping transfer skills and innovation. 

From supporting global business 

expansion to growing a diverse and 

inclusive workforce with global 

competencies at all levels, talent 

mobility has a crucial role to play. 

63% of global mobility specialist 

respondents to BGRS’ 2017 Talent 

Mobility Trends Survey said employee 

mobility was now high on their 

organisation’s senior leadership agenda. 

This might come as no surprise 

considering the number of expatriate 

and globally mobile employees is 

set to surpass one million by 2021, 

thanks largely to growth in new smaller 

and medium-sized multinationals, 

according to a study by market 

research company Finnacord, a 

division of Aon Inpoint, entitled 

Global Multinationals and Corporate 

Transferees: A Worldwide Review. 

The success or failure of these 

companies will largely rest on the 

competitiveness and sustainability 

of their talent mobility programmes, 

so it pays for senior leadership 

to lend their support. 

As a starting point, we provide 

an overview of who globally mobile 

employees are these days, plus a step 

by step guide to best strategies to 

attract and retain a mobile workforce. 

According to BGRS, international 

assignments are seen as a significant 

draw and are often considered a 

pathway to career enhancement 

for current employees. 

For this reason, international 

companies are now increasingly 

aligning mobility to their talent agenda 

in a bid to take a more strategic and 

effective approach to attracting, 

developing and retaining key talent. 

There is also a gradual yet 

noticeable shift in the demographic 

profile of globally mobile employees. 

The traditional profile of the white, 

middle-aged, married male is still 

very much in play, but it’s increasingly 

making way for Millennials. 

Soon to represent the largest 

segment of the workforce, 

Millennials come with a unique set 

of expectations that will have a 

bearing on attraction, engagement 

and retention for companies. BGRS 

reports that Millennials are often 

drawn to opportunities that include 

an international experience. 

A small number of companies 

included in BGRS’ 2016 report 

highlighted the role of global mobility as 

a strategic driver of their talent agenda. 

They’re sending more Millennials 

on international assignment to help 

ensure a pipeline of future leaders 

with global management experience. 

This helps contain assignment 

costs too. For example, premiums for 

insurance-based products will generally 

be lower for younger individuals, plus 

it’s less likely that they will be taking 

a family with them: another cost 

containment aspect – from both an 

overall programme perspective but 

also because assignment failure is less 

likely when a family isn’t being moved 

to another country with the employee. 

Companies that understand how 

mobile employees can be a key asset 

are fine-tuning their strategies to 

coordinate activities and select the 

most suitable approach. Here’s how: 

Building the foundations: 

n Your unique workforce: A good 

starting point is carrying out 

an analysis based on a detailed 

employee population census. 

This will allow companies to 

assess where they are located, 

their status and expectations, 

and to integrate this information 

into their overall strategy. 

n The environment: Conducting 

a geographic and industry 

benchmark will shed light on 

the employee benefits market, 

identify best practice, and assess 

how an individual company 

performs against competitors. 

n Flexibility: Based on previous 

analysis, it is possible to identify 

solutions based on a company’s 

specific requirements by 

selecting benefits to match the 

needs of different groups of 

employees in the same plan. 

Global design: 

n Governance: Define the balance 

between flexibility and cost 

control and central coordination 

to enhance company operations. 

n Measurement: Set up centralised 

monitoring, measurement and 

reporting systems to assess 

effectiveness and return on 

investment in mobility plans. 

n Support and assistance: Assess 

the need for centralised support 

in managing different regulatory 

systems, across countries or even 

within the same country across 

industry sectors or regions. 

n Business Travel Accident (BTA) 

cover: Globally mobile employees 

are exposed to several risks when 

travelling for their international 

assignments. Therefore, medical 

and travel insurance services like 

emergency medical expenses 

and transportation, repatriation, 

loss of luggage - just to name 

n 

some - should be included in 

their benefits package. 

Pooling: Integrating the 

organisation’s expatriate benefits 

into a global portfolio will allow 

for reduced costs and enhanced 

profitability of benefits solutions. 

Employee value proposition: 

n A multinational plan will ensure 

portability of coverage, thereby 

eliminating any constraints 

when relocating, and enhancing 

protection of the employees who 

may, for instance, be ensured access 

to facilities and care not available 

in their host or home country. 

n Part of the return on costs 

is based on the workforce’s 

understanding of their benefits, 

which can be measured based 

on engagement and retention. 

n Finally, it pays for organisations 

to detail each employee’s benefits 

in an individual statement, thus 

providing competitive advantage 

with clear messages to explain 

to employees the value of 

the benefits provided. 

HUMAN Human RESOURCES 

Resources 

If you are interested in know more, 

we invite you to read our special 

newsletter on Global Mobility or to 

contact us at marketing@geb.com 

theCsuite 31 

Today’s Boardroom is an exciting publication 

targeting the leaders of the Business to 

Business industry – it is a unique amalgamation 

of our previous titles Today’s CEO, Today’s CFO 

and Today’s CIO. 

ISSN 2015-6861 

WWW.TODAYSBOARDROOM.CO.UK 

We source editorial content from respected 

business experts to provide a balanced and 

impartial, yet current and enlightening read 

to help the Boardroom make more informed 

choices within their daily decision making 

routines. 

Boardroom executives need up-to-date 

information on trends, services and products 

to help them plot and plan the financial health 

and prosperity of their organisation. This 

information affects decisions and helps direct 

fellow Boardroom members on company 

strategy…not only for their employees and 

shareholders, but their clients too! 

Today’s Boardroom publication will put 

special emphasis on the main topics of 

financial planning, information technology, 

human resources, executive education, fleet 

management, business travel, big data, IT 

security and strategy. 

Distribution 

On a controlled named basis to 33,500 

Boardroom members in the UK and Europe in 

both print and digital versions. 

Why global mobility 

deserves a senior leadership focus 

By Pasquale Gorrasi, 

Director of International 

Lines at Generali 

Employee Benefits 

M 

The changing face of globally 

mobile employees 

Best global mobility 

strategies step by step 

Further information 

Advertising rates 

Half page £2,750 

Full page £4,950 

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ww.todaysboardroom.co.uk 

The digital version of the publication will be 

hosted on Today’s Boardroom. This unique 

business portal will also give the advertiser an 

opportunity to submit a company profi le with 

images, hyperlinks, logo and full contact details 

to be hosted on the solution providers section 

for 6 months on the Today’s Boardroom website.

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© 2014 General Electric Company. All rights reserved. Does not constitute an offer. No acceptance of any liability. Neither this publication nor any part of it may be reproduced, stored in 

a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of General Electric Company. 

GE Capital EMEA Services Limited - Registered Address: 201 Talgarth Road, London W6 8BJ Registered in England and Wales No. 00244759

Contents 

Foreword 

9 Business must prove itself 

Richard Northedge, editor of Today’s CEO 

Sponsor’s Feature 

10 Fleet Logistics looks to build on success of record year 

Fleet Logistics 

Financial Management 

14 How a sharing economy utilises spare capacity 

Catherine Wheatley 

19 Successful alliances: construction built on a foundation 

of trust 

Pat Finan, Bluescope Global Building Solutions 

21 Organic growth or acquisition? 

Deidre Hipwell 

25 Islamic finance: opportunities and challenges in Europe 

FWU Global Takaful Solutions 

27 Creating competitive advantages: cognition 

and social based technologies to win the future 

Dr Tazeeb Rajwani, Cranfield School of Management 

Executive Education 

32 Bishops and actresses offer help to MBA students 

Sylvia Pfeiffer 

36 Barcelona: business or pleasure 

EU Business School 

38 Mentoring helps even the highest 

Richard Northedge 

42 The new big business question: 

are you really a value delivery leader 

Professor Andrew Kakabadse, Henley Business School 

Today’s CEO 3

Contents 

Information Technology 

44 How safe is data stored in the clouds? 

Angela Jameson 

48 Business continuity through copy data virtualisation 

Actifio 

50 The Galileo moment 

Teleperformance UK 

52 How to assess new technologies 

Bibi Bajwa, Ormuco 

Fleet Management 

54 Cutting your carbon footprint can cut costs too 

Anne Lowe 

58 Top things to think about in your corporate fleets 

Lakshmi Moorthy, 

GE Capital International Fleet Services 

Business Travel 

64 Milan: city of fashion, football and finance 

Jeff Mills 

60 Will a higher speed limit really allow faster journeys? 


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Foreword 

Business must prove itself 

By Richard Northedge 

WHETHER LABOUR LIKED BUSINESS WAS FREQUENTLY 

raised in the run-up to the general election. But whether 

business likes itself is an equally good question. Major 

corporations have fed their critics with sufficient scandals 

and controversies for a charge-sheet to be compiled against 

commerce that makes companies look like scoundrels. 

To the old accusations of excessive boardroom pay (and 

pay-offs), the biggest of blue-chip names have been accused 

of bribery from China to Brazil; of squeezing suppliers 

and cheating customers and overcharging the state; of 

avoiding their own tax liabilities or advising clients to evade 

theirs; of creative accounting, insecure data-storage or 

hacking phones; plus cavalier environmental policies or 

lax safety. The Serious Fraud Squad has never had such a 

portfolio of FTSE companies. Add in private-equity funds 

that close businesses and sack staff but retrieve their 

own investment or firms that pay generous dividends 

before calling in administrators, and it seems clear why 

private companies may not be loved by all politicians. 

These are not external threats to a business but selfinflicted 

wounds and in many cases directors have loaded 

the gun used to shoot themselves in the foot. Such problems 

come on top of the normal commercial challenges – such 

as aggressive competitors taking market share, threats 

of takeovers, budgets undermined by rising costs but 

falling revenues, or senior executives poached by rivals. 

Any chief executive of a big corporation who does not 

have a major controversy in his or her in-tray – or does not 

yet have one – may well be lucky or complacent. Yet the 

fear that their company could be next to be named risks 

causing a paralysis in the C-suite as directors check every 

action with compliance or choose not to act at all. The danger 

of acquiring a business and inheriting its problems has 

deterred some bidders who no longer trust due-diligence. 

The financial-services sector, at all levels, is held back by 

red-tape and bureaucracy as past decisions are examined 

and future risks analysed. For some industries, the risk of 

intrusive investigation is blocking expansion or innovation. 

Banker-bashing has widened to a broader businessbashing, 

by the press and public as well as by politicians. 

The biggest headlines concern the largest companies, of 

course. Yet enterprises of all sizes are affected as the 

negative perception trickles down. The population is left 

with an impression that all retailers are inflating prices, 

all employers are exploiting workers and all companies 

avoid tax. When opinion polls show popular support for 

renationalising the railways or imposing price controls 

on utility companies, business has lost the argument. 

It matters if managers and entrepreneurs are held in 

disrepute. Trade works best when there is trust between 

customer and supplier or between worker and employer. It is 

important too that public officials recognise the contribution 

of the private-sector. When ministers are first to criticise 

business – even if only playing to the gallery before an election 

– they are less likely to turn to industry for help in running the 

country. And directors will be less inclined to join committees 

or head inquiries if raising their profile merely opens them 

to attack. Being mauled by grandstanding MPs on selectcommittees 

or attacked by newspapers because becoming 

a minister means accepting a peerage does not encourage 

executives to share their experience with government. 

But most important, it must be remembered that business 

provides the nation’s wealth. It provides people with jobs. 

It supplies shoppers with goods. It heats homes and feeds 

families. Economically, it is business that has reduced 

inflation to record lows, that exports the goods to close 

the trade gap, that has brought down unemployment and 

provided growth. It not only pays its own taxes but provides 

the resources for shoppers and workers to pay their taxes 

too. And it does that whatever shade of government is in 

power. Parliamentary critics should acknowledge that without 

a healthy private sector, there can be no public sector. 

But the best way for business to avoid adverse comment 

is by conducting itself in a way that cannot attract censure. 

Knowing that there are hostile critics ready to condemn 

commerce every time it strays from the straight and 

narrow should be the best incentive to act ethically, legally 

and fairly. Business has brought on itself many of the 

accusations against it. The charges may be exaggerated 

or simplistic and they may be brought by detractors 

whose own affairs would not stand detailed scrutiny, but 

directors now know the environment in which they work. 

Rather than becoming defensive when accused of 

malpractices, directors must be ready to accept their 

failings. Few are fooled by yet further newspaper 

advertisements insincerely apologising for historic errors 

with hollow assurances they will not be repeated. Heads 

do have to roll at times, and companies should be proud 

to say they have acted rather than act reluctantly. 

But avoiding trouble is always better than cleaning up 

afterward. Enterprise is an essential force for good, but 

executives can never stop ensuring that they deliver excellence. 

The charge sheet against commerce is not totally trumped up: 

directors must make sure business is beyond criticism. 

Author information 

Richard Northedge, a former Editor of Sunday Business 

and Deputy City Editor at the Daily Telegraph, is Managing 

Editor of Today’s CFO. 



Fleet Logistics looks to build 

on success of record year 

Fleet Logistics CEO, Rainer Laber 

FLEET LOGISTICS HAS JUST 

completed a record year with a fleet 

size of more than 146,000 contracted 

vehicles. But the company is now 

looking to build on its success with 

increased investment in new systems 

to bring greater transparency and 

clarity for its fleet customers. 

That was the upbeat message 

from CEO Rainer Laber, following a 

hectic 12 months which saw Fleet 

Logistics’ contracted fleet grow by 

22.8% from 119,400 units in January 

2014 to 146,600 by the year end. 

The growth came from both 

existing and new fleet customers in 

all industry sectors, as well as from 

existing customers in new countries, 

especially Poland, the Czech Republic, 

Turkey and, most recently, Israel. 

However, going forward into 2015, 

Laber said that one of Fleet Logistics’ 

clear objectives would be to invest 

in additional tools and systems to 

help clients make better, faster and 

more informed business decisions. 

Clients wanted optimal 

transparency and clarity in their 

global fleet operations to be able to 

make decisions with a maximum of 

confidence and certainty, and the key 

to that was access to data, he said. 

“We have had a great year at Fleet 

Logistics, a record year. We have 

grown our fleet size to its highest 

ever level, we have record revenues 

and a healthy profit margin. So 

our shareholders are happy. 

“And that is also important for our 

clients because, if we are profitable, 

it not only gives us financial security 

to take the business forward, it allows 

us to invest in the business. And that 

will be one of the key objectives in 

2015 – to invest in the business to 

help our clients make faster, better 

informed decisions about the costoptimised 

running of their fleets.” 

Making fleet decisions was a 

complex business, said Laber, 

because of the very nature of the 

vehicles and countries involved. 

10 Today’s CEO


“It is not a straightforward process like buying raw 

materials or commodities, where the price is known and 

fairly standard around the world. There are so many variables 

involved which affect fleet costs from country to country. 

“Things like different models from manufacturers, 

different emissions’ rules and regulations by country, 

different tax regimes, different views on residual values 

linked to that country’s used car values, and so on. 

“And there are daily challenges such as currency 

fluctuations and changes in interest rates. So many 

things come into the equation that comparing 

the cost of one car in one country with another 

car in another country is very difficult.” 

There were other variables on a global level to take into 

consideration too, said Laber. 

“We see steady growth in the US coming from a very highly 

developed base, while good old Europe is facing a number of 

challenges, such as erosion of the Euro against the US dollar 

and other currencies. So currency fluctuations also play a part. 

“And we also have huge economic challenges like 

the recoveries in Greece and Italy which will require 

enormous energy to bring them back into equilibrium.” 

Against this backdrop of uncertainty, Fleet Logistics 

saw its role as supporting companies in the US, 

Europe, and indeed Asia-Pacific where the company 

is looking to expand, to help them find their optimal 

cost outcomes for the running of their fleets. 

“Many industrial companies have huge cost bases in 

which there is very little room for them to manoeuvre. They 

might be a chemical company making liquid gasses or a 

pharmaceutical company where there is a very long research 

and cost cycle before a new product can be brought to market. 

“Such businesses face huge cost pressures with very little 

they can do about the costs involved. But with their fleets it’s 

a different story. 

“The fleet represents a huge cost for many organisations 

but not many have true transparency or clarity of where 

those costs are, and where they can be optimised. This 

is where we can play a vital role for our clients, by using 

our experience, our knowledge and our tools to help 

them make cost-optimised decisions for their fleets. 

“And the key to doing that is data. Fleet Logistics 

holds the most extensive fleet database for our 

customers, and we are currently investing heavily in 

new tools that will help them shape their future fleet 

policies from the perspective of new vehicles, CO2 

emissions, total cost and many other parameters. 

“Bringing clarity and transparency to our clients’ fleets 

on a country by country basis will be a major priority for 

us this year and one where we believe we can add the most 

value. It will be one of our core activities,” he said. 


Fleet Logistics currently manages a contracted vehicle 

fleet of around 146,000 vehicles with a related cost base 

of around ¤2.5 billion on behalf of leading multi-national 

corporations. 

The company was acquired by TÜV SÜD in September 

2012, the leading international technical service 

organisation catering to the industry, mobility and 

certification segment. Its experts and technology 

consultants are dedicated partners in their clients’ 

processes, offering comprehensive industry expertise 

throughout the entire value chain. 

They focus their services on their core competencies 

of consulting, testing, certification and training. Over 

19,000 employees are committed to optimising technology, 

systems and know-how at over 800 locations in Europe, 

the Americas, Asia Pacific and Africa. Further information 

is available at www.tuev-sued.de. 

The Fleet Logistics group currently has operations in: 

n Austria, Vienna 

n Belgium, Vilvoorde 

n France, Paris 

n Finland, Helsinki 

n Germany, Mainz, Düsseldorf, and Münich 

n Hungary, Budapest 

n Czech Republic, Prague 

n Italy, Milan 

n Netherlands, Oosterhout 

n Poland, Warsaw 

n Portugal, Lisbon 

n Romania, Bucharest 

n Russia, Moscow and St. Petersburg 

n Spain, Madrid and Barcelona 

n Sweden, Malmö 

n Switzerland, Baden 

n United Kingdom, Birmingham. 

Fleet Logistics has strengthened its geographical 

coverage to include the Baltic region – Estonia, Latvia 

and Lithuania – by creating consulting partnership 

agreements. 

Fleet Logistics has emerged in Europe as a unique, 

knowledge-based fleet organisation, offering expert and 

impartial advice and management services, ranging 

from fleet solutions (fleet cost, policy and practices 

benchmarking) to strategic procurement (supplier 

tendering, negotiation and selection) and ongoing supplier 

monitoring (continuing control on overall costs, suppliers’ 

pricing, and service quality). 

Fleet Logistics’ support services enable clients to 

reduce costs, simplify administration, and achieve 

maximum effectiveness for their policies and operations. 

For more information please contact Vinzenz Pflanz, Chief 

Commercial Officer, email vinzenz.pflanz@fleetlogistics.com 

or visit www.fleetlogistics.com 


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50% 

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Global financial institutions 

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managed in Ireland 

• Youngest workforce in Europe 

• Only English speaking member of the Eurozone 

• Access to European market and beyond 

• Highest concentration of ICT activity in OECD countries 

• 10 out of the top 20 world insurance companies 

• 9 of the top 10 pharmaceutical companies 

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• Top 10 “born on the internet” companies 

• 40 aviation finance firms 

Please contact us for further information 

international.relations@dublincity.ie 

Forbes names Ireland as ‘The Best Country for Business 2013’ (Forbes, 2013)

DUBLIN - YOUR ONLY CHOICE By Peter Finnegan 

Thinking of Business and 

Career, of Investment and 

opportunity? Dublin, Ireland 

needs to be the capital choice for you. 

Ireland’s Capital City is not just the 

epicentre of the Irish Economy but the 

gateway to Europe and the World. It is a 

resilient city in one of the world’s most 

resilient economies. Today Ireland is 

the fastest growing economy in Europe. 

Dublin is Europe’s second city for Real 

Estate investment and value. 

Dublin welcomes people who prize 

diversity, love innovation, dream big and 

appreciate quality of life. A small city by 

global norms, Dublin’s size is it’s advantage. 

In Dublin, the words of WB Yeats 

ring true “there are no strangers, only 

friends you have yet to meet.” Here 

you will find that people welcome and 

embrace as their own; the visitor, the 

investor, the student /researcher, and 

the entrepreneur. Dublin is one of the 

world’s most globalised cities. It is 

cosmopolitan and attracts talent and 

investment from every nation on earth. 

Vibrant, creative, young, safe, green, 

exciting and full of energy are adjectives 

used by those who now make Dublin 

home. It is a “city of villages”, caught 

between mountain and sea, and boasts 

more green spaces per square mile than 

any other European Capital City. 

Dublin is the Eurozone’s best 

location for doing business. 

A stable political and regulatory 

environment coupled with being the 

only English speaking member of the 

Euro zone, makes Dublin attractive. 

Generous supports for business and 

a positive stable tax regime give 

confidence to investors. Its location 

between the Americas and Europe 

gives it the ability to be a bridgehead for 

commerce, trade and R&D. Excellent 

connectivity by air and sea, coupled 

with a world class communications 

infrastructure ensure that access to 

customers and markets is fast and 

reliable. 

Business growth in Dublin is 

increasingly driven by R&D. Dublin 

is a city that today attracts major 

companies to bring their R &D to 

Ireland. Here talented and highly 

qualified researchers can be found to 

push forward the frontiers of knowledge 

and opportunity. This innovation culture 

offers opportunities for local and 

international business innovators. 

It is no surprise that IBM’s Global 

Locations Trend report again named 

Ireland the best country in the world for 

Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). Dublin, 

with it’s reputation for R&D makes the 

top 10 of destination cities for FDI in 

the world. The World Bank’s “Doing 

Business 2015” report places Ireland 

13 th out of 189 countries for ease of 

doing business. 

Dublin is an ideal place 

for start-ups and for those 

who wish to scale and 

internationalise their business. 

Capital of the 2 nd most entrepreneurial 

country in Europe, the City hosts all 

the global giants and has created an 

incredible entrepreneurial eco-system. 

Companies comparing Dublin to 

London, as a location from which to 

grow, will quickly discover that Dublin 

is more cost competitive. While wages 

are higher in London, local purchasing 

power is almost 13% lower than in 

Dublin. 

In Dublin, technology and 

innovation collide. It is a city of 

smart people where openness to test 

bedding innovation is the cornerstone 

of its global reputation as a Smart City 

and thought leader in Digital Society 

and Business. 

So if you wish to succeed, Dublin has 

to be your destination of choice. It 

is a city which encourages creativity, 

offers quality of life, values people and 

provides a uniquely “Irish” gateway to 

the world. 

For information on supports and 

opportunities for business in Dublin; 

www.eurgate.eu 

“ 

Dublin has already established itself as a location for multinationals, so it 

has the necessary infrastructure for other companies to easily move into 

the country and set up shop 

(Moody Analytics) 

”


How a sharing economy 

utilises spare capacity 

From property to patents, 

big companies are letting 

others use their assets. 

By Catherine Wheatley 

WHEN RIVAL PHARMACEUTICAL 

giants Merck and AstraZeneca 

agreed to share a US manufacturing 

facility owned by the British firm’s 

MedImmune subsidiary in 2011, it 

marked a new phase in the growth of 

the sharing economy. The 15-year 

deal allowing Merck to use underutilised 

employees, equipment and 

property owned by MedImmune has 

helped AstraZeneca cover staff and 

depreciation costs of around $100m 

a year while retaining the flexibility to 

bring new drugs to market quickly. 

“We wanted to retain key employees 

by getting them working in their area 

of expertise,” said MedImmune’s 

Andrew Skibo. “Partnering to 

minimise investment risk will become 

commonplace in the future.” 

Since its genesis a decade ago, the 

sharing economy – in which people 

use technology to find and buy others’ 

spare resources – has been dominated 

by online ventures that champion 

consumer sharing. AirBnB, a website 

allowing people to rent their spare 

room to travellers, was valued at 

$10bn in the company’s most recent 

private-equity investment in 2014. 

Uber, which uses a phone app to link 

drivers with people looking for lifts, 

has become a global business since 

its launch in San Francisco six years 

ago. In Britain commuters can hunt 

for a car space at Parkatmyhouse, 

while professionals with endless to-do 

lists can browse Taskrabbit for local 

people with time on their hands. 

“We see growth in this area because 



it’s facilitated by the internet, which is 

being accessed by more people, in more 

places, and on more devices,” says Robin 

Klein of Index Ventures. “We also see 

that people want to liberate the value 

of assets that are unused for a lot of 

the time.” Research by PwC forecasts 

that the sharing economy will be worth 

at least $335bn globally by 2025. 

But now a growing number of 

corporations like AstraZeneca are 

starting to embrace the idea of 

sharing idle resources – from empty 

desks to intellectual property – in a 

bid to improve their own efficiency 

and contribute to the collective good. 

French supermarket giant Carrefour 

shares warehouse space with other 

retailers. The Marriott hotel chain has 

converted empty conference rooms into 

rentable work spaces through the online 

platform LiquidSpace. The potential for 

sharing is substantial: around the world, 

manufacturing facilities operate at an 

average of 20 per cent below capacity; 

and in most offices, around half the 

desks are unused at any one point in 

the day, according to research by PwC. 

“The factors that are driving peer-topeer 

sharing among consumers are also 

starting to drive company sharing so 

that assets can be used more efficiently,” 

says PwC economist Robert Vaughan. 

“Devices can measure and manage 

assets at a granular level, and the shift 

from west to east at a global level is 

encouraging big businesses to rationalise 

their cost bases and sweat their assets.” 

For some sharing businesses, the 

motivation is to improve their financial 

planning by either unlocking the value 

of idle assets or by saving money 

by renting rather than purchasing. 

“These companies are willing to 

trade ownership for immediate 

access to assets,” says Vaughan. 

As a result, online platforms that 

support business-to-business sharing 

are springing up in Europe as well as the 

US. Netherlands-based Floow2, launched 

in 2012, helps firms share equipment, 

skills and knowledge from diggers to 

office furniture and premises. The 

company has more than 30,000 items for 

offer on its website, which has recently 

expanded into Germany and Belgium. 

‘ 

The factors that 

are driving peer-topeer 

sharing among 

consumers are also 

starting to drive 

company sharing so 

that assets can be 

used more efficiently 

’ 



Some companies are also starting to share intangible 

assets. Technology companies amass hundreds of patents 

– IBM, Samsung, Canon, Sony, and Microsoft together filed 

more than 21,000 in 2013 alone – but few are ever put 

into production. To help unlock this latent value, General 

Electric struck a deal with online inventor community Quirky 

that gave designers access to GE’s patents in return for a 

stake in subsequent product developments. “The potential 

is to offer a segment of a company’s intellectual property 

base to the world at large, so that others may do things 

with it, and the patent holder may profit,” said Vaughan. 

In Britain, BrandGathering is a collaborative marketing 

platform connecting businesses that want to undertake 

joint branding activities. Founder Christina Richardson 

estimates that the site’s 15,000 users have created marketing 

opportunities worth more than £1m since its launch in 2012. 

For example, one company might donate a competition prize 

in return for a week of promotion on another’s website. 

“Most members are smaller businesses that are nimble, 

early adopters of new trends,” says Richardson. “But larger 

firms need to embrace collaborative consumption too – 

otherwise it becomes a threat. I can’t begin to imagine 

what AirBnB has done to the hospitality industry.” 

As a result, large corporations are also starting to invest 

in a disruptive sector to understand, and profit from, the 

sharing economy. Research by PwC found that while 30 per 

cent of companies polled regarded the sharing economy as 

an opportunity, the remaining 70 per cent saw it as a threat. 

Last year Concur, a global travel-expense 

management company, brought the sharing economy 

into the corporate sphere by sealing joint-ventures 

with both AirBnB and Uber. Now, business travellers 

can charge accommodation and car travel arranged 

though sharing sites directly to their employers. 

Several years ago BMWi, the German car giant’s 

innovation arm, put money into Parkatmyhouse. It 

wanted to understand how circling for urban parking 

spaces affects carbon emissions, according to Alex 

Stephany, the company’s founder. Meanwhile Daimler 

has funded Carpooling, Europe’s largest ride-sharing 

company, which provides access to over 750,000 lifts. 

“It’s similar to online retailing: if larger companies 

don’t embrace this new tech-driven trend they risk 

missing out on a big opportunity,” said Vaughan. 

Companies which prioritise reputation 

management are keen to harness a sharing 

outlook that embraces recessionary thrift, 

environmental concern and community values. 

For example both Levis and Patagonia, the 

outdoor clothing manufacturer, encourage their 

customers to recycle their clothing on Yerdle, 

a US online marketplace where people can 

exchange second-hand goods. B&Q has launched 

Streetclub, a digital platform that connects people 

with their neighbours, but which also encourages 

members to swap DIY skills. “It’s a neat corporate social 

responsibility angle for the big corporations,” says Richards. 

Trust is an important issue in the sharing economy, 

according to Vinay Gupta, 35, a co-founder of Whipcar, 

which rents under-used cars around the country for 

anything from a few hours to several months. Both 

parties to a transaction must be sure that the Whipcar 

trawls through oceans of digital data, from members’ 

credit records and MoT histories to driving convictions, 

to establish safe transactions. Like other sharing sites, it 

also relies on customer reviews to police poor behavior. 

“For most of us, cars are our second most 

valuable asset after our homes.Owners want to 

make the most of a depreciating asset, but they 

also want it to be looked after,” says Gupta. 

In an increasingly crowded sector, the most successful 

online sharing markets offer liquidity and choice, according 

to Greg Marsh, a founder of Onefinestay, which rents out 

posh homes in London and New York while their owners 

are away. When the company started in 2009 it had just 

six members, including Marsh himself. The company took 

400 days to recruit 100 members in London via word of 

mouth and marketing on Google, but just 143 days to hit 

the same target in New York. “In the early days it was like 

trying to balance a monkey on a pendulum. One week we 

needed more properties, and the next more guests,” he said. 

At the end of 2014 the Department of Business, Innovation 

& Skills published an independent review, Unlocking the 

Sharing Economy, which called for regulations to be reexamined 

for accommodation and online task-sharing 

platforms so that innovation across the sector is not 

strangled by red-tape. The report highlighted how quickly 

the sharing economy has moved from niche to mainstream 

– and that businesses ignore it at their peril. 


Catherine Wheatley writes regularly for the Sunday Times, 

the Daily Telegraph and the Sunday Express on enterprise. 


...PROCESS 

The finished work is usually a marvel, 

compared to the initial process 

...in your best interest


Successful alliances: 

construction built on a foundation of trust 

By Pat Finan, 

President of BlueScope 

Global Building Solutions 

IN 2004, AN ANALYSIS OF U.S. Department of Commerce 

Bureau of Labor Statistics examined the productivity of 

various industries 1 . While productivity for U.S. workers 

in almost all other industries increased by over 200% 

since 1964, the construction industry’s productivity fell 

to about 80% over the same stretch of time. Academics 

tend to agree that the two primary causes of the 

decline are the increasing complexity of buildings and 

the fragmentation of the construction industry. That 

fragmentation can lead to a disconnection between the 

design and construction phases and lead to a lack of 

information sharing as the multiple parties do not interact. 

The Construction Industry Institute estimated that 

there is as much as 57% non-value-added effort in current 

business models used in the construction industry 2 . 

There are design defects, uncoordinated construction 

documentation, permit delays, transportation problems, 

construction material staging, introduction of errors 

and omissions due to redundant activities and at times 

an adversarial relationship between suppliers. 

Because we now live in an information era, businesses 

increasingly bypass sales representatives, and use publicly 

available information to identify their needs. And, they turn 

to purchasing and procurement departments or third-party 

consultants to help them obtain the best possible deals from 

suppliers, typically in a hard bid, transactional environment. 

This often results in a divisive, inefficient process in which 

each party is focused on their own bottom-line. Information 

sharing is limited to just closing the deal, with both parties 

having nothing more than their individual financial interests 

to guide them. Without a partnership between parties, 

there is little likelihood that meaningful, knowledge will be 

shared for the greater benefit and success of the project. 

The new definition of “alliance” 

Sometimes when talking about forming alliances, a customer 

may hear they’re being asked for a more secure and 

exclusive supplier arrangement. But an effective alliance 

provides benefits for all engaged parties, and ultimately 

creates the opportunity for transformative results. 

When customers and suppliers actually work together, 

and anticipate a future – it can provide more reasons to 

jointly invest in trust and cooperation which ultimately can 

unlock greater value to both organisations. By learning from 

each other’s point of views, an alliance can build a mutual 

view of a broader picture – and enable both parties to look 

for creative approaches, building on their own areas of 

expertise. The best path towards solving problems is to 

increase the total number of possible solutions. And often, 

these can be disruptive ideas that help a building owner 

become aware of unknown needs before they have even 

identified a problem. It is a conversation: a dialogue that 

moves beyond product solutions to business insights. 

The business case for alliances 

During the project planning stage, a building owner has the 

greatest ability to be able to influence total project cost. 

The greater the scope of work, the larger the opportunity 

to impact total cost. By forming an inter-firm team and 

allowing each to work and share their complementary 

competencies, over time, shared knowledge helps speed 

schedules, influence cost and achieve greater efficiencies. 

As an owner who might have an interest in developing 

such an alliance, there needs to be connectivity between 

firms, with executive leadership defining the broader 

objective. An inter-firm team can be created and empowered 

to make operational decisions within a defined scope. By 

aligning organisations and establishing clearly defined 

objectives, the team can then work towards common 

goals. An alliance brings both parties to a higher ground. 

If there is no shared understanding, there is little chance 

for creativity and commitment within an alliance. 

There are some key characteristics that might be 

considered when identifying an alliance partner: 

≠ As a potential supplier to align with, do they 

have the capabilities you are looking for, both 

in the near-term and in the long-term? 



≠ Do they also have a strong internal champion 

that understands the objective? 

≠ Is there cultural alignment between your organisations? 

≠ Do they also have centralised decision making? 

≠ Do you feel comfortable with and believe 

a level of confidence can be reached with 

the supplier? Do you trust them? 

Guidelines 

A highly centralised authority in both organisations 

is critical to respond more quickly to opportunities 

identified. It can also help shape standardised building 

design, helping gain more efficiencies as you build 

additional facilities. This effort becomes even more 

complex when businesses are geographically and 

culturally dispersed. When forming an alliance: 

1. To help benchmark success, it is important to 

define performance measures and make them 

shared measurements for the foundation of 

joint management. Work to establish a baseline. 

The use of a formal scorecard helps cover the 

chief objectives that have been defined. 

2. Wide participation and information sharing can empower 

a combined team. It’s important to create transparency. 

3. Work to develop a “common” language, so 

that all parties involved understand the 

idiosyncrasies of the parties involved. 

4. Identify and share operational processes and learnings. 

Invite suppliers to the table early. They have embedded 

knowledge and can impact the project early on. The 

use of a scorecard system can enable you to identify 

suppliers you would be interested in aligning with. 

5. Develop a consistent set of safety standards 

than can move from project to project (and 

at times across disparate geographies). 

6. Strategic relationships can apply to one-of-a-kind 

projects as well as to longer term construction needs. 

7. Extend collaboration in the pursuit of innovation 

and best practices that create shared value. 

And finally, celebrate success and acknowledge 

the role of the team in that success. 

Industry trends that facilitate collaboration 

The uptake of Virtual Design and Construction (VDC) 

has operationalised a new range of innovative digital 

tools and brought a much-needed multi-disciplinary 

management approach to the design and construction 

process. VDC portrays the full spectrum of a project: 

those aspects of the project that can be managed and 

designed, the organisation that will define, design, 

construct and operate the building and the process they 

will ultimately follow. Building Information Modeling (BIM) 

is a VDC tool that provides a digital representation of the 

physical and functional characteristics of the facility. 

The model is integrated so that all parties can input 

and access shared data and give visibility to the impact 

that one model change might have on any or all parties 

involved – from architect, engineer, contractor and 

sub-disciplines. 4D models can be created which can 

link 3D design with a construction schedule. They can 

visualise the construction of a project over time. 

By using multi-disciplinary performance models, this 

management approach facilitates improved coordination 

and exchange of information between project stakeholders, 

and allows for scenario planning opportunities. The 

availability of these tools and management approaches 

can be incredibly powerful when paired with a dedicated 

team who knows how to use the insights from these 

tools to innovative and transform project outcomes. 

In conclusion 

A strategic alliance is not just the physical execution of 

another building project. An alliance ultimately is promoting 

a team, operationalising a better process and improving 

outcomes over time through applying accumulated knowledge. 

If done well, you can achieve breakthrough results – truly 

obtaining the best quality for the lowest total cost. 

References 

1. Professor Paul Teicholz Professor (Research) Emeritus, 

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Stanford 

University, AECbytes, Viewpoint #4, April 14, 2004 

2. Eastman et al., BIM Handbook. @2008 by John Wiley and Sons, Hoboken, NJ. 


Pat Finan is President of BlueScope Global Building 

Solutions. He is also a member of the Executive Leadership 

Team of Australian headquartered BlueScope. (ASX: BSL) 

BlueScope has 17,000 employees at 103 manufacturing 

plants across a global footprint. BlueScope Buildings is 

the world leader in premier engineered building solutions. 

BlueScope Buildings has over 100 years’ experience 

providing buildings across the globe. 

www.bluescopebuildings.com 

BlueScope Buildings aspires to what we call the “Great Eight” 

deliverables when a trusting construction alliance is achieved: 

n The elimination of redundant non-value added activities 

n Improved communication throughout the duration of the 

relationship 

n Captured learnings 

n Continuous process improvement 

n Increased productivity and effectiveness 

n Innovation 

n Better risk management 

n Lowest total cost 

Randy Stock, VP, Sales & Marketing 

T: +1-816-968-3293 

E: bluescopebuildings@bluescope.com 

W: www.bluescopebuildings.com 



Organic growth 

or acqusition? 

Is it better to buy 

a business or build? 

By Deirdre Hipwell 

DID YOUR COMPANY SURVIVE THE 

financial crisis in 2008 and battle 

through the recession, only to find 

itself still struggling to generate 

growth at a time that Europe is beset 

by deflationary fears? Well, you are not 

alone – it is a situation that many chief 

executives of British companies are 

facing. And, six years after the crisis, 

many chief executives have successfully 

restructured their companies and are 

sitting on large cash piles and are now 

looking for options to generate growth. 

For some, the answer will lie in the 

field of mergers and acquisitions while 

others will favour the less-risky route 

of slow and steady organic growth. 

Many will also consider a dual-track 

strategy of both organic growth 

and opportunistic, ‘bolt on M&A’. 

None of these options are foolproof 

but it appears that, following a period 

of cost-cutting and careful cash 

management, the appetite for M&A 

in many British boardrooms is in the 

ascendancy. Evidence already shows 

Today’s CEO ??


‘ 

the sub-£100m market 

across the UK is 

highly active with a 

number of quality small 

and medium sized 

businesses considering 

transformative or 

bolt-on acquisitions 

’ 

that the number of companies being 

bought and sold in Britain is on the rise 

and during the course of 2014, deal 

volumes returned to levels not seen 

since the boom year of 2005. Close to 

two-thirds of the total M&A volumes 

in Europe, Middle East and Africa were 

for transactions of €1bn or more, 

according to UBS, the Swiss investment 

bank, with ten “mega deals” of more 

than €10bn - almost an all-time high. 

This trend looks set to continue. 

Intralinks says it expects mergers and 

acquisitions in Europe, the Middle East 

and Africa to rise 18 per cent in the 

first half of 2015, compared with the 

same period in 2014. The firm provides 

virtual data rooms for companies that 

are preparing a sale, enabling deal 

teams on both sides of a transaction 

to exchange information securely. 

These data rooms often are set up at 

least six months in advance of a deal 

taking place, which means Intralinks can 

track early stage M&A and accurately 

forecast increases in activity. 

Philip Whitchelo, vice-president 

of strategy at Intralinks, says: 

“M&A is clearly back on the agenda 

for corporates in 2015. With 

continuing uncertainty and volatility 

in many economies, companies 

and their advisers seeking growth 

opportunities need to quickly 

react to, and take advantage of, 

opportunities that may arise.” 

But it is not just Britain’s large 

corporates that are looking to grow 

through ‘mega deal’ acquisitions either. 

BCMS, a family-owned Hampshirebased 

‘sell-side’ adviser to privatelyowned 

business, says the sub-£100m 

market across the UK is highly active 

with a number of quality small and 

medium sized businesses considering 

transformative or bolt-on acquisitions. 

David Rebbettes, founding director of 

BCMS, which advised on the sale of the 

UK online auction site, Preloved.co.uk 

to the Hut Group last year, says there is 

also significant appetite from overseas 

investors for acquisitions. “Whether 

the client is from London, Lithuania or 

California, we’re now seeing far more 

multinationals acquiring at our end of 

the deal market,” he says. 

But before a chief executive carries 

out M&A, it is essential to consider 

if an acquisition will generate growth 

and create value in a business. Bankers 

say a successful M&A transaction 

requires finding the right target, 

determining how much to pay for 

the business, and planning from the 

outset how best to time a deal and 

integrate the target post-transaction. 

The Boston Consulting Group, a 

management consultancy, goes further 

and says there are some essential 

questions which chief executives 

“should know the answer to” before 

even attempting any acquisition. 

These include: Is bigger necessarily 

better? What are my rivals doing? Is 

the industry consolidating? What will 

my dominant investors think? Is now 

the right time to do a deal? How much 

value can be created by combining 

these companies? Will taking on 

extra debt affect my credit rating? 

And finally, do I have a clear strategy 

for the combined companies? 

Carrying out such an assessment 

is particularly important given how 

a number of reports over the years 

have shown that badly-handed and 

ill-thought out acquisitions can damage 

a company and destroy shareholder 

value. A McKinsey study in 2012 found 

that in 70 per cent of M&A deals the 

buyer failed to achieve the expected 

levels of revenue synergies, while 61 

per cent of all acquisition programmes 

were considered failures because 

they did not generate a sufficient 

return on the funds invested. 

However, another report released 

by the City University London’s Cass 

Business School last year, which 

assessed 20 years of global M&A 

activity by 25,000 companies, shows 

that businesses that are active in M&A 

typically performed better than their 

wider sector. Cass says companies 

tend to outperform the market by 

0.1 per cent per year during periods 

when they announce between one and 

two purchases. This outperformance 

rises to two per cent annually during 

periods when companies announce 

three to five acquisitions and by 

3.4 per cent when buying activity 

rises to six or more transactions. 

Scott Moeller, professor in the 

practice of finance at Cass, adds that 

its research showed that although 



newly-listed companies underperform the market by 5.6 

per cent a year, on average, during the first three years 

after listing, “when these young companies announce 

six or more acquisitions during their first three years, 

they outperform the market by 3.8 per cent per year”. 

Rentokil Initial, the pest-control to hygiene and 

workwear provider founded 90 years ago, is a prime 

example of a British company that is growing through 

acquisitions. In 2014, it spent £77m buying 30 companies, 

which was ahead of its original spend target of £50m, 

and it plans to spend a further £50m on acquisitions 

in 2015. The company has set up a central M&A team 

of five members which works closely with Rentokil’s 

country and regional teams when looking for acquisitions 

that will fuel growth and profitability for the group. 

Rentokil’s spokesman says it focuses on acquisitions 

that will generate growth, particularly in new and 

emerging markets, as well as acquisitions that help 

“protect and enhance” its earnings. Targeted M&A has 

also helped Rentokil overcome a difficult recession 

where it had to restructure its company significantly 

and offload its troubled City Link courier service. 

Analysts at Barclays praised Rentokil’s strategy, stating: 

“While the macro environment is challenging, Rentokil 

is delivering well on the things within in its control, 

namely improving cash conversion, reducing central 

overheads and conversion of the acquisition pipeline.” 

The Berry Recruitment Group, based in St Albans, 

says it has adopted a dual approach buying a number 

of rivals – Wild Recruitment, Mainline Resourcing and 

Express Rail – while “extensively investing in our specialist 

divisions”. “Our aim has been to increase our scope and 

profitability through acquisition and organic growth and, 

most recently, the acquisition of central London based 

The Plus Team has continued this trend,” says the company. 

“We have more than doubled our size such that our 

turnover is now on track to exceed £50m during 2015.” 

The Boston Consulting Group says: “Many companies have 

significantly more cash to invest in growth than their core 

markets’ organic growth rates and sustain. An acquisition is 

often – but not always – the only way to generate value.” 

However, Boston adds that for any company looking to grow, 

all options should be considered and it is dangerous to take a 

one-size –fits-all approach, particularly to M&A. “The logical 

and empirical reality is that different types of companies 

in different industries require different approaches.” 


Deirdre Hipwell is mergers and acquisition correspondent 

at The Times. She was born in Zimbabwe and attended 

Macalester University in Minnesota in the US before 

working as a paralegal in Chicago. 


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Islamic finance: 

opportunities and challenges in Europe 

By FWU 

1. Islamic finance is growing, but still not 

established in all European countries. What 

is the most likely explanation for this? 

While still in its infancy, particularly within Europe, Islamic 

finance has grown rapidly on a global scale. Within Europe, 

Islamic finance has gained traction within France, Germany 

and the United Kingdom (UK) – all countries with fairly large 

Muslim populations (Muslim population by country 1 , France: 

4.7 million, Germany: 4.1 million and UK: 2.9 million). 

As with most financial services, Islamic finance is 

largely demand driven. As a result, Islamic finance has 

initially gained traction in European countries where a 

natural catalyst exists – sizeable Muslim populations. 

2. How can Islamic finance attract 

more customers in Europe? 

With the correct positioning, Islamic finance would 

attract many European customers who subscribe 

to Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) principles – 

considering similarities between Islamic finance and 

SRI principles. This could provide a significant catalyst 

for Islamic finance in Europe, where an estimated 450 

million 2 consumers subscribe to SRI principles. 

As an example, SEDCO Capital has incorporated 

Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) principles 

into two of its equity funds, allowing the funds to 

also be marketed to SRI conscious investors. 

Importantly, many European countries have already made 

changes to their regulations and tax regime to accommodate 

Islamic finance; including France, the UK and Luxembourg. 

3. Is Islamic finance targeted exclusively 

to the Muslim population? 

No, many customers and investors are 

attracted to the unique value proposition of 

Islamic finance, regardless of religion. 

For example, within capital markets, most major 

investment banks (that happen to be conventional) 

are active in both issuance and trading of Sukuk. 

For example, during September 2014, Goldman 

Sachs (leading U.S. investment bank) raised US$500- 

million through a Sukuk issuance, that was listed 

on the Luxembourg Stock Exchange. This Sukuk’s 

order book was around US$1.5-billion. 

4. What are the unique value 

propositions of Islamic finance? 

Islamic finance is built upon many principles that are 

attractive to all consumers, irrespective of religion. 

Positioning these principles in the right way, could 

lead to an increased appetite for Islamic finance 

among consumers (both retail and institutional). 

The main value propositions differentiating 

Islamic and conventional finance are: 

n Transparency/Full Disclosure of terms and conditions 

n Ethics: avoidance of industries that 

promote low ethical values 

n Mutuality/Risk sharing in economic transactions: 

when more than one party shares a risk, the risk 

each party faces individually is reduced 

n Fairness 

n The avoidance of economic transactions 

that are based upon uncertainty in both 

timing or quantum of any loss/gain 



n 

Avoidance of interest-based economic transactions: 

instead of renting money out, money should be 

used to support productive economic ventures 

5. Luxembourg has positioned itself as the Centre 

for Islamic Finance in Europe. What does this mean 

for Shariah-compliant financial services in Europe? 

Legal and regulatory framework 

The legal and regulatory framework governing Luxembourg’s 

financial sector was specifically designed to host products 

(including registered financial instruments) from diverse 

traditions and cultures, for cross-border European distribution. 

Consequently, Luxembourg has emerged as the leading 

European domicile for Shariah-compliant investment funds, as 

well as for listing Sukuk. Luxembourg’s financial sector exhibits 

two fundamental attributes capable of acting as a catalyst 

for Shariah-compliant financial services across Europe. 

Firstly – strong, clear regulations and anti-money laundering 

credentials; fostering consumer confidence in Shariahcompliant 

investment funds domicile in Luxembourg. 

Secondly – facilitating ease of cross border 

distribution, as Luxembourg falls under Europe’s UCITS 3 

regime, acting as a passport, enabling funds domicile in 

Luxembourg to freely sell regulated investment funds 

across Europe. 52 4 Shariah-compliant investment funds 

were domiciled in Luxembourg as at October 2012. 

Luxembourg government Sukuk issuance 

Recently, with the issuance of a €200-million Sukuk (1 

October 2014), the Luxembourg government positioned 

the country as a leading centre for Islamic finance; 

and reinforced commitment to promoting growth of 

Islamic finance within Europe. This Sukuk was also 

the first to be issued by a AAA-rated government. 

Islamic banking – an important distribution channel 

Islamic banking is considered an important channel 

for distributing Shariah-compliant financial services. 

EurisBank is an Islamic bank that is being established 

in Luxembourg. EurisBank will be the first European 

headquartered Islamic bank and is backed by a consortium 

of prominent GCC businessmen. EurisBank plans to offer 

retail, private and corporate banking services through 

branches in Paris, Brussels, the Netherlands and Frankfurt. 

6. Do European companies have the 

experience and knowledge to be able to offer 

Islamic finance products to consumers? 

Yes, most definitely. 

For example, if we consider Takaful (Islamic insurance), 

major European conventional insurance brands (e.g. AXA, 

Allianz, Aviva and Prudential) have established Shariahcompliant 

operations and emerged as dominant players in 

Takaful, mostly in the Middle East and South East Asia. 

In addition, major European reinsurers (e.g. Munich 

Re, Swiss Re, Hannover Re and Scor) have also 

established re-takaful solutions and are also mostly 

active within the Middle East and South East Asia. 

With experience gained mostly outside of Europe, 

these companies are well equipped to transfer 

knowledge back into their European operations, 

opening up the European market for Takaful. 

7. How do you foresee the future for 

Islamic Finance in Europe? 

The outlook is very positive, particularly if 

emerging trends continue to develop. 

Global Shariah-compliant assets were estimated at 

US$1,460-billion at year-end 2012; an increase of 20% 

over the previous year, according to a research paper by 

TheCityUK (October 2013). Continuing this trend, the market 

could be on target to reach US$2-trillion by year-end 2014. 

Within Europe, Islamic financial services providers have 

focused on providing Shariah-compliant retail products 

in countries with large Muslims populations (France, 

Germany and the UK). In the UK, five Islamic banks operate 

(4 investment banks and 1 retail bank). In France, Swiss 

Life launched a Life Takaful 5 investment-linked plan (ILP). 

Islamic finance has a bright future ahead, especially if 

recent trends continue and more European governments 

and corporates continue to access alternative 

funding sources offered by Sukuk issuances. 

References 

1. Pew Research: 2010 estimates 

2. PWC: Takaful growth opportunities report 

3. UCITS: Undertaking for Collective Investment in Transferable Securities 

4. Kuwait Finance House Research 

5. Islamic insurance 


As Islamic financial services providers carefully 

position offerings to include European customers that 

appreciate the ethical foundation of Islamic finance, 

the potential market could be boosted by the estimated 

450 million 2 European SRI consumers. 

Capital markets can also offer a growth catalyst for 

Islamic finance. The Luxembourg and UK governments 

have both issued their first Sukuk during 2014, raising 

€200-million and £200-million respectively. Among 

European corporate issuers; FWU’s US$55-million 

SALAM-I Sukuk (issued 2012) was the first Sukuk 

issuance by a German corporate and largest ever by a 

European corporate. 

FWU continues to diversify funding sources through 

their SALAM Sukuk programme. FWU’s most recent 

US$100-million SALAM-III Sukuk is asset-backed 

(issued on top of a block of pre-determined Shariahcompliant 

life insurance contracts), representing a true 

ring fencing of assets. The SALAM III Sukuk providers 

all investors (regardless of religion) an opportunity to 

participate in asset-backed European rated credit. 



Creating competitive advantages: 

cognition and social based technologies to win the future 

By Dr. Tazeeb Rajwani, 

Cranfield School of Management 

Introduction 

Cognitive and social technologies will radically 

transform the world of business. This technology will use 

computational power using machine learning to enhance 

the globe-spanning supply lines, real-time information 

exchange, and allow a swarm of firms to enhance business 

performance. These powerful new technologies will 

challenge existing management practices and models, 

therefore many executives are rethinking their infrastructure 

for collaboration and communication. Typically these 

technologies include the likes of predicting different 

situations, helping optimise locations, information tagging, 

predicting markets and optimising social networks. The 

usage of social technologies within companies is already 

changing business models. Global enterprise spending on 

social and cognitive technologies is predicted to increase 

dramatically by 2015, with a 43% year on year growth. 

Despite the recent volatility from diseases, terrorism, 

recession, a growing number of innovative firms are 

integrating different technologies into their businesses 

to create agility, including General Electric, EY, McKinsey, 

KPMG and BMW. These forward thinking firms are adapting 

their traditional management practices while leveraging 

new technologies. However, when it comes to the current 

management practices that predominate in the majority 

of companies – a large number of leaders are still ‘unsure 

about the relevance’ of new technologies to allocate 

their resources and capabilities effectively and faster. 

The big exam question is ‘can these technologies actually 

allow firms to create agility and high performance?’ 

The relevance of new technologies 

We have found companies can actually boost productivity 

and enhance performance by leveraging social technologies 

to support business needs. A number of companies have 

implemented new technology investments for a variety 

of purposes such as research & development, marketing, 

customer service and knowledge management. Global 

service firms such as Accenture, Pfizer, BT and IBM have 



used these technologies to rapidly identify who within 

their organisation know ‘what’ and thus consequently 

share their expertise quickly. In some cases this goes 

beyond the UK borders to creating global outreach 

platforms for collaboration and communication. 

Traditionally, some companies used to be in control 

of designing their products, services and marketing 

messages based on their own understanding of what their 

customers wanted. However, empowered by predicative 

and social analytics based technologies, customers are 

now quickly connecting with and drawing power from 

one another and defining their own perspective on 

companies and brands. For example, Dell features its 

IdeaStorm Forum on DellCommunity.com for new ideas 

and product development. While, Pfizer has rushed into 

developing these technologies for internal usage, thinking 

that employees will use it like internal Google-level 

search and Wikipedia-level internal collaborations. 

Leaders need to acknowledge that these new 

technologies – social and cognitive – have implications 

for business performance, as they can improve various 

management systems, reduce costs and quicken processes 

in their business models. Consequently, it facilitates cooperation 

among information workers, provides a secure 

and managed collaborative environment for content 

creators, and helps to orchestrate people to achieve 

new innovative solutions. However, there are many other 

challenges that leaders and their organisations need to 

consider in implementing new technology strategies. 

Possible challenges for strategic leaders 

Research shows three possible challenges that leaders 

will face in implementing technology strategies. Firstly, 

leaders need to decide which technologies make sense 

for their business needs. The choice in social tools can 

be difficult and also fairly expensive, at times costing 

in excess of £1m. With the variety of tools available, 

each with its own implications for performance, 

leaders will have to map their desired outputs. 

Secondly, with the rising number of companies in the 

UK exploring new technologies, companies are training 

their engineers, managers, accountants and sales 

professionals on these new technologies. However, 

implementing any technology strategy requires a 

significant orchestration of culture. Companies will 

have to embed and embrace true global working into 

their culture, while networks develop independent of 

geographic and organisational boundaries. Companies 

will have to move to a ‘deliverables based performance’ 

culture, rather than a ‘be seen in the office’ culture, which 

potentially could positively impact performance. 

Finally, some companies will resist adopting these 

technologies, despite the potential evidence suggesting 

superior performance. In part because the kind of adoption 

required is challenging to current best practices. Some 

leaders will truly believe that their ‘current’ organisational 

energies, practices and mindsets are going to be successful 

in the future, not recognising that they must learn to forget 

the old ways to compete for the future. With these tough 

challenges in mind, social and cognitive technologies are 

going to be gaining momentum on the boardroom agendas, 

strategy and budgets meetings in the years to come. 


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links with industry and business. Above all, it is known as a 

school that provides relevant management solutions. 

The School is one of the world’s largest providers 

of executive development programmes for practising 

managers. 


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Bishops and actresses 

offer help to MBA students 

The profusion of business 

schools is making them 

try harder to attract 

students. By Sylvia Pfeifer 

THINKING OF TAKING AN MBA TO 

improve your business skills, help you 

climb the corporate ladder, or start 

a business? Then you have a lot of 

thinking to do. In the UK, no fewer than 

86 schools offer an MBA and, with 

many offering up to four programmes 

each, that means a prospective 

student is faced with choosing 

between nearly 350 courses. And that 

excludes looking at MBAs abroad. 

Suffice it to say, there are plenty 

of MBA programmes. Given the cost, 

time and effort involved in embarking 

on a course, choosing the right one is 

key. A good starting point, according to 

Andrew Main Wilson, chief executive 

of the Association of MBAs in London, 

is determining what you want to do 

with “the evolution of your career” 

after the course. These days, most 

courses no longer just teach the MBA 

basics – finance, accounting, marketing, 

strategy and supply-chain management 

– but offer a particular focus on a 

whole range of different skills. 

They are doing so out of necessity. 

Traditional classroom-based MBAs are 

no longer attractive enough to entice 

people already in work to give up their 

jobs. As competition for good jobs has 

become more intense and students 

can opt for the cheaper alternative 

of long-distance studies, schools are 

having to adapt to attract new students. 

Different ways of teaching, increasingly 

using creative arts, are also being tried. 

Main Wilson identifies four major 

changes: an increasing emphasis 

on practical learning that looks at 

real-life case studies; a focus on 

the skills needed to work for or run 

a small or medium-sized business 

rather than joining a large blue-chip 

organisation; a greater emphasis on 

digital abilities; and teaching skills such 

as communication and management. 

“Schools are developing 

courses around softer skills,” he 

says. “The aim is to make you an 

effective, all-round leader.” 

Warwick Business School, in 



Coventry, has gone further than 

most. Although it might sound 

counterintuitive, it has introduced 

creative arts into its curriculum. 

Under its dean, Mark Taylor – who 

was previously a managing director at 

BlackRock, the asset manager – the 

school has introduced a number of 

different initiatives, including the aptly 

named Working Capital – an acronym 

of Creativity And Performance In 

Teaching And Learning). The project 

is headed by a professor of creative 

education, Jonothon Neelands. 

Classical drama and business 

education may appear to have little in 

common but, according to Neelands, 

students can learn about leadership and 

decision-making not only from reading 

textbooks but by acting out parts 

from different famous plays, including 

Shakespeare’s King Lear or Othello. It 

is very different from the usual MBA 

role-play, where students are asked, for 

example, to take on the position of a 

chief executive under fire at a company. 

“Through the MBA programme 

students will pick up the usual skills 

like finance, but employers at all 

levels are looking for people with 

something else – the ability to be 

creative and to look at problems in 

new ways,” says the professor. 

Shakespeare’s tragedy, King Lear, 

charts the descent into madness of 

the king after disposing of his estate 

between two of his three daughters, 

based on their flattery. Acting out 

scenes from the play, says Neelands, 

helps students deal with perennial 

themes, including succession, the 

problems that can occur when running 

a family business and how emotions 

can erode leadership. It can even give 

students “a new perspective on how to 

deal with a chief executive who makes 

a random, crazy choice,” he adds. 

Another exercise involves Sophocles’ 

Greek tragedy, Antigone, in which 

the hero Creon loses everything for 

upholding what he believes was right. 

Taught as part of a module called 

‘ 

It can even give 

students “a new 

perspective on how 

to deal with a chief 

executive who makes a 

random, crazy choice” 

’ 



‘leadership and the art of judgment,’ students are asked to 

act as consultants looking to invest in the emerging market 

of Thebes. “It is an emerging market, with huge potential, but 

in a state of chaos,” says Ashley Roberts, assistant dean at 

WBS Create, “The students have to take on a role and work 

out what is needed in Thebes to invest in it. It sees students 

work together and to work to real world specifications and 

expectations. The playfulness of the imagined task and roles 

encourages students to look for possibilities, experiment, 

not be afraid to be wrong and find an effective consensus.” 

“We all act in one way or another,” adds Neelands. “People 

are tired with the same old approach to business teaching 

and are looking for something that engages them.” 

Warwick University is now in talks with Harvard 

in the US to find more ways to engage students and 

encourage them to interact with each other. 

A focus on entrepreneurship has been another 

development in MBA programmes. John Colley, director 

of MBA programmes at Nottingham University Business 

School, whose own background is in industry, says the 

school has made very substantial changes in the last 

three to four years. As at Warwick, the emphasis is on 

developing creativity and the teaching of leadership and 

softer skills. The school has a strong entrepreneurship 

division and focuses on helping students to come up with 

new business ideas. Students learn from the experiences 

of other entrepreneurs, usually through direct interaction. 

“You do need a form of differentiation as a school,” adds 

Colley. “One that is a constant strength of your school 

so that you have the teaching capability in that area.” 

Having a strong alumni network works to the advantage 

of a school. Jenny Clark, an assistant director in degree 

programmes at the London Business School, says 

its incubator programme, which has been running for 

about five years, has helped launch tens of businesses 

over the years. The first three years of cohorts have 

raised £10m between them, she adds. Getting access 

to previous students who became entrepreneurs and 

tapping them for advice on everything from how to 

pitch an idea to where to get funding is invaluable. 

Just as the business world has become more global, so 

have MBA schools. Most have formed partnership with 

counterparts abroad, exposing students to a greater variety 

of people and experiences. The model also allows business 

schools to specialise and contribute to the programme they 

are best at. One example is the Euro MBA, which is run by six 

European business schools, each participating with its most 

successful module – for example, Audencia Nantes in France 

highlights corporate social responsibility, while Germany’s 

HHL Leipzig has strategic innovation as a specialism. 

Main Wilson says: “The nature of teaching and the cohort 

has become more international – you need to come out 

‘globally cultural’.” 

MBA schools are casting their nets wider and attracting 

students from a broader range of industries and 

organisations. Leadership is a universal skill and one that 

does not always come naturally. Even the church is looking 

at MBAs to help teach leadership skills. The Archbishop of 

Canterbury, Justin Welby, who has an industry background 

himself, has arranged for bishops to take part in a leadership 

course run by Insead in France. The aim is to master the 

art of ‘team health checks’ and ‘difficult conversations’. 

A Church of England review chaired by Lord Green, former 

chairman of HSBC, states: “Leaders of the church are priests, 

prophets, theologians, evangelists and heirs of the apostles. 

Alongside the apostolic call, bishops, like deans, are also 

responsible for extensive budgets and investment portfolios, 

for business and for process.” Under the plan, serving 

bishops will begin their studies with three modules lasting 

three days each, entitled ‘Building healthy organisations’, 

‘Leading growth’ and ‘Re-inventing the ministry’. 


Sylvia Pfeifer was City Editor of The Business and The 

Sunday Telegraph’s Deputy Business Editor before working 

six years at the Financial Times, including two years as 

Energy Editor. After Oxford University she took an MA at 

Georgetown University in Washington. 



Barcelona: 

business or pleasure? 

By EU Business School 

BARCELONA IS CONSIDERED AN 

epicentre of modernist architecture, 

cosmopolitan culture and world-class 

cuisine, so it’s no wonder that eight 

million holiday makers flock to the 

Catalan capital each year. As the 

third-most visited city in Europe and 

tenth in the world, Barcelona has a 

thriving tourism sector, and certainly 

shows no signs of slowing down. 

Before Barna (the nickname adopted 

by locals) played host to the 1992 

Olympic Games, it was a far cry from 

the city we see today. Winning the bid 

to host what was to be one of the most 

iconic games in Olympic history led the 

city’s council to take an opportunistic 

approach in their preparations. Their 

strategy would not only provide 

the facilities necessary to cater for 

such an event, but to eventually pin 

Barcelona on the world map, ultimately 

bringing about social, environmental 

and economic benefits for the city’s 

future. This turning point led to the 

vast construction and development of 

several of the city’s neglected areas, 

in particular the marina area – which 

initially housed the city’s factories, 

with no public access to the coast. 

The two kilometres of beach that now 

stretches the length of this area was 

also installed, using sand imported 

from Africa and the Middle East. 

Exactly 20 years after the games, 

Barcelona’s annual intake of tourists 

grew by over 300%. Now receiving 

around eight million tourists a year 

(equivalent to the population of 

Switzerland), the city has a booming 

tourism industry that has become a 

pillar of the local economy, generating 

around €8.2bn a year for the city. 

It’s fair to say that Barcelona has 

won the hearts of many, yet behind 

the festivals, beaches and iconic 

art scene, lies another story. 

Barcelona currently showcases 

a thriving ICT scene – a sector said 

to be laying the foundations for the 

future economic stability of the city. 

There are over 2,000 individual ICTrelated 

companies based within the 

metropolitan area, including several 

leading multinational corporations 

and large research/innovation centres, 

all of which have decided to take 

advantage of the city’s quality ICT 

services, resources and talent. 

In addition to numerous event 

fairs, trade shows and conferences 

(Barcelona ranks third in the world 


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Mentoring helps 

even the highest 

Britain’s biggest bosses 

need someone to talk to, 

finds Richard Northedge 

MANY TOP EXECUTIVES AT BIG 

companies offer their services as 

mentors to budding business men and 

women. But many of those top directors 

are themselves being mentored. Even 

the biggest of boardroom names think 

that it is never too late to learn from 

others, even if they are also sharing 

their skills with others as well. 

Paul Geddes took advantage of the 

Chartered Management Institute’s 

mentoring service in the run-up to 

becoming chief executive of Direct Line, 

the insurance company floated on the 

stockmarket by Royal Bank of Scotland. 

“I worked with CMI to prepare myself 

for the transition from a divisional chief 

executive to the stand-alone CEO of a 

listed company,” he explains. “I chose 

to work with two mentors, both of 

them with distinguished careers and 

a lifetime of hands-on experience.” 

Mentors can come from inside 

an organisation but typically come 

from other companies or they maybe 

business people who have retired from 

executive roles. The idea is not only that 

they share their wisdom but also that 

they give confidence to the mentee or 

share knowledge with them. The mentor 

may also introduce his (or, occasionally, 

her) network of contacts to the mentee. 

Sometimes, as with Geddes, the 

mentors are tasked with achieving a 

specific change, such as promotion to 

a wider role or dealing with external 


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‘ 

Having the 

problems in front 

of you and sharing 

them with an 

experienced mentor 

is really where 

the value comes 

’ 

investors. The aim may be to focus 

the executive on thought-leadership 

or to develop their management style. 

But as well as the professional and 

financial benefits for the mentee 

and performance gains for the 

company, the executive may also 

achieve greater job satisfaction. 

Mentoring usually involves an 

ongoing relationship, unlike short-term 

executive coaching, and it can be more 

irregular rather than having a strict 

timetable of coaching meetings. And 

while a coach may shadow the executive 

closely for that limited period, the 

mentor – or mentors – may meet 

occasionally or advice by telephone. 

Additionally, although a coach might 

have no personal experience of 

business at a high level, mentors will 

almost always hold or have held senior 

posts themselves. Further, while the 

coach will usually have a pre-ordained 

programme, mentors are more driven 

by their protegees’ demands. 

But both coaching and mentoring 

allow the executives to remain in 

their daily job, unlike an MBA or other 

full-time course that would take them 

away from their desk for a prolonged 

period. Gavin Patterson, chief executive 

of BT, says the telecoms company 

was prepared to send him on a top 

management course at Harvard. “But 

I would have been away three or four 

months,” he says. “I was looking for 

a practical way to develop. If you 

are one of the top 10 people in the 

business, the possibility of being away 

for three months is practically zero.” 

Patterson wanted a mentor who 

would make him a better manager of 

a huge FTSE company. “My earlier 

experience on a board had been 

limited to one year as a non-executive 

director for a company that was having 

serious difficulties. The mentoring 

was about co-development in-situ, 

not about preparation. Having the 

problems in front of you and sharing 

them with an experienced mentor 

is really where the value comes.” 

The Sage software company is 

a supporter of mentoring but its 

research found that while 93 per cent 

of mid-sized companies agreed that 

such outside help is useful, only a third 

of companies use a mentor. Jayne 

Archbold, Sage’s head of strategy, 

says: “In this era of unprecedented 

competition and change, organisations 

are only as good as their people. 

Business mentoring can be a vital 

support in these tipping-point moments 

for mid-sized business. Closing the 

‘mentoring gap’ should be a top priority.” 

“Personal contacts and a strong 

network are vital for the success 

of mentoring,” she adds. However, 

Sage’s research found that a fifth of 

firms take advice from people they 

know personally with nearly as many 

turning to external consultants while 

just 13 per cent use mentors. UK 

firms are less wedded to mentoring 

than other European companies, 

however, with just 9 per cent saying 

that it is essential to success. 

The mentoring process usually starts 

with setting goals then producing 

an action plan to achieve them. The 

mentor should help the executive 

implement that plan and review 

progress during and afterwards. 



David Nish says: “At the beginning of 

2010 I was appointed chief executive 

of Standard Life. My development plan 

identified the objective of working 

closely with an experienced global 

buysiness leader. The high-profile 

mentor I have worked with has been 

exceptional. We established quickly 

an open and robust relationship that 

allowed the exploration of matters or 

real substance to my development. 

The personal commitment by my 

mentor has been strong and the 

time we have spent together has 

been a very rewarding experience.” 

There needs to be a personal 

rapport between mentor and mentee 

for the process to work properly. 

At Direct Line, Geddes says: “I have 

ended up with two new friends who 

I hope to remain in contact with for 

years to come. I was delighted and 

a little surprised by the significant 

investment of time and energy they 

both made in my development. Their 

independence allowed for completely 

candid conversations and I was 

also fortunate to have chosen two 

mentors whose company I enjoyed. 

“This contributed to mentoring 

sessions and occasional phone calls 

in between that were stimulating 

and useful and enjoyable,” he adds. 

The 30% Club, the group lobbying 

to increase female boardroom 

representation, sees mentoring as 

a method of achieving its aim. It 

developed a pilot programme for 

mid-career women in 2013 to broaden 

the pipeline of executives suitable for 

rising to the top and the scheme was 

formally launched last September. 

Joanna Santinon of consultants EY, 

which developed the project with 

the 30% Club, says: “The feedback 

from the pilot programme has been 

fantastic and reinforces the power and 

value of mentoring to help boost the 

career potential of female talent.” 

Victoria Sigeto, a lawyer at 

Freshfields who was a mentee on 

the pilot programme, says: “I thought 

this would be a unique opportunity 

to experience that different 

perspective you get from having a 

mentor outside of the organisation. 

I’m really happy with the progress 

we have made and the resulting 

transformation to my approach 

to challenges and opportunities. 

It exceeded my expectations.” 

She has had the benefit of learning 

from very senior executives from 

outside her field. But as Sigeto may 

discover if she moves into the highest 

tier of management, mentoring need 

never stop. Even some of those lending 

their experience to Sigeto and her 

colleagues still seek help from others 

who have solved similar problems 

before them. Olaf Swantee is chief 

executive of EE, the UK’s largest 

telecoms company – which is now 

being bought by BT for more than 

£12bn – was mentored under the CMI 

scheme. And, he says: “I have continued 

to stay close to the programme. 

“The individual confidential 

meetings with experienced chairman 

and chairwomen gave me the chance 

to shape my own style as well as 

the opportunity to discuss complex 

international challenges and test 

ideas before implementation. It 

continues to add value for me and a 

number of colleagues who I have sent 

on the programme to help them grow, 

develop and shape their careers.” 


Richard Northedge is managing 

editor of Today’s CEO. 



The new big business question: 

are you really a value delivery leader? 

Renowned business 

thinker, Professor Andrew 

Kakabadse recently 

presented the findings 

from his research into 

the characteristics of 

outstanding boards 

and top teams, and his 

views on what it means 

to be an outstanding 

global leader in today’s 

competitive environment 

ACCORDING TO PROFESSOR 

Kakabadse, “Creating value 

requires a different kind of leader. 

Delivering on the promises made 

to stakeholders and the markets is 

enormously challenging, calling for 

not just political and leadership skills, 

but a distinctly different personal 

and organisational approach.” 

Drawing on his research of over 

12,500 top teams and general managers 

plus 5,000 boards in 14 countries 

across the world, Professor Kakabadse 

highlighted what the best leaders 

do (or don’t do!), and revealed some 

common problems, including meaningful 

engagement, leadership during change, 

and the challenges of effectively 

negotiating and satisfying multiple 

contradictory stakeholder demands! 

But what are the critical 

challenges to effective 

delivery in an organisation? 

According to a recent survey of 

entrepreneurs and senior business 

decision-makers across a range 

of sectors, the challenges are 

numerous and diverse, including: 

n scarcity of resources to 

match our ambitions 

n being good at agreeing what, 

but not the how 

n a culture of risk management 

n a company structure that 

can inhibit efficiency 

n IT which can be restrictive 

n diversity within the organisation, 

and the fragmentation that creates 

n 

n 

maintaining a difference, 

and a competitive advantage 

management styles and 

internal culture 

Engagement is still the key 

It is clear that there is a need to 

differentiate between value given 

and value gained; ideally we all 

want both, but is this possible? 

For example, the expectations of 

Generation Y workers are massively 

changing, and they expect the IT they 

choose to be delivered perfectly. 

The battle for management, between 

vision and delivery, rages on. 

We regularly see a culture of fear 

of innovation, so the reality of any 

strategy can be very different at 

operational level, with the Board 

imposing ambitious targets, unaware 

that the workforce is unable to deliver 

on the strategic aims because the 

IT infrastructure doesn’t allow it. 

And progress can be held back by 

our reluctance to reward innovation, 

or allowing politics to get in the 

way of what we seek to achieve. 

We have to make it clear that we 

can’t do everything, but set out the 

priorities, communicate clearly, giving 

context, as well as objectives and 

rationale. As with so many aspects 

of leadership, engagement is key. 

The survey revealed more about their 

challenges… 

n Communication – there is a need 

for an inspiring framework to 

show the ‘why’ when presenting 

future strategies to employees 

n Hippo! (the Highest Paid Opinions 

are the only ones that matter!) 

n Risk aversion 

n Lack of shared view on how 

(even if not what) 

n Inertia – treading water – 

perceived lack of common 

sense and involvement 

n Tension between short- and 

long-term strategies 

n Stakeholder demands 



n Alignment throughout the business – 

communications and engagement 

n What IS value? Is it cash, or ethics, or something else? 

n The need to respond quickly to trends and problems? 

n The ongoing battle between continual 

improvement and operational delivery 

n How do we motivate and reward, 

against short- and long-term? 

n Entrepreneurship versus team objectives 

n Understanding the ‘why’ is more 

captivating for most employees 

n Chinese whispers – boards removed 

from reality 

Professor Kakabadse’s findings from his ‘Global study 

on leadership, engagement and value delivery’, highlight 

some of the variances in views expressed by top teams 

and their general managers, and gave examples of the 

need for a shared vision, including one globally recognised 

brand which was sold without the CEOs knowledge, 

and another whose 5,000 MDs had to physically meet 

up to discuss and agree the purpose of their role. 

The number one question for both aspiring 

and existing board members is: ‘do they really 

understand their organisation’s competitive 

advantage and how it should be positioned’? 

The top team and CEOs invariably think they know what 

the vision is, and are trusted to discuss sensitive issues. 

But general managers – those who Andrew believes are 

the most important in any organisation when it comes 

to value delivery – often disagree, and the inability 

to discuss such issues points to a lack of respect. 

Figure 1: Strategic Engagement 

Dialogue – Top Team 

36% France 63% Spain 

47% UK 66% Australian Public Service 

49% Finland 67% Australian 

50% Sweden 68% Ireland 

58% Hong Kong 66% NHS Board 

61% Germany 70% NHS Top Team 

62% USA 77% Japan 

80% China 

Believe there are issues which should be discussed but are 

too sensitive to be discussed in the top team and are NOT 

A selection of his other findings included: 

n 85% of board members didn’t share 

a view of their own USPs. 

n Top management down rated their boards by 40% 

lower than they rated themselves, by any criteria. 

n In well-led US companies, there was less 

inhibition, and more cohesive strategy. 

n And whilst trust in boards was high in Russia 

and very low in South Africa, the board 

dynamics appeared highest in Australia. 

So diversity is normal, and honesty and resilience are 

important, but engagement remains the single critical 

factor that binds everyone, prompting the question: is it 

enough to have IQ without EQ (emotional intelligence)? 

Equating value with strategy, 

engagement and alignment 

From his research, Professor Kakabadse has devised an 

equation that links the elements of value delivery, and 

established a clear pattern that shows the greatest value: 

S + (E x A) = V [where S= strategy, e=engagement, 

a=alignment, and v=(value delivery)] 

So where the effective engagement is based in evidence, 

there is a stronger probability of high performance. 

This contrasts starkly with the 90% of businesses 

where the equation is based on a leader or value 

proposition, rather than value delivery, where a subtle 

change in the format creates a very different outcome: 

S x (E + A) = V 

So evidence (or lack of it) may be one of the blockage 

points, rather than it being the strategy itself. 

And the outcomes are different when the board owns 

the culture and the management owns the strategy. 

Andrew also looked at how individuals’ personality traits 

impact on their propensity to base strategies on valuedelivery 

rather than value-proposition, revealing that: “The 

level of resilience needed to deal with the uncomfortable 

truths is much greater with the evidence-based model.” 

He looked at how various learning methods affect 

decision-making (“Leadership is about learning and until 

the body does something, the mind isn’t learning”). 

In short, Andrew said, some executives get it intuitively, but 

55% just learn by experience but developing through trial and 

error can be a painful, destructive – and expensive – route. 


Andrew Kakabadse 

BSc MA PhD AAPSW FBPS FIAM FBAM 

Andrew has a long string of prestige visiting professorships 

and other roles and appointments across the globe. 

He has consulted and lectured in the UK, Europe, the 

USA, SE Asia, China, Japan, Russia, Georgia, the Gulf 

States and Australia. He is currently embarked on a major 

£2 million global study of boardroom effectiveness and 

governance practice, with the participation of a number of 

governments including British Ministers of State. 

His top team database covers 21 nations and many 

thousands of private and public sector organisations. He 

has held positions on the boards of a number of companies 

and has also been adviser to a Channel 4 Television 

business series in the UK. 

He has published 32 books, over 300 articles and 18 

monographs, and was ranked amongst the 2011 Thinkers50, 

the listing of the world’s top 50 business thinkers. 



How safe is data 

stored in the clouds? 

If in doubt, keep sensitive 

files on your server, 

says Angela Jameson 

CLOUD COMPUTING IS TRANSFORMING 

the way businesses organise their 

data storage. Many companies are 

moving to a cloud solution because 

it is cheaper and more flexible than 

hardware. But the cloud storage 

solution is not foolproof. 

Its insecurity has already been 

highlighted by the disclosure of 

intimate pictures of more than 100 

Hollywood celebrities, among them 

actress Jennifer Lawrence, after they 

were stolen by hackers from Apple’s 

iCloud service. US businesses, including 

retailer Target and investment bank JP 

Morgan, have shown that even the best 

resourced companies can be vulnerable. 

Storing data that is critical to your 

organisation outside the immediate 

environs of that business should make 

a chief executive nervous. But with the 

right planning and safeguards in place, 

it can be an extremely helpful resource. 

Businesses tend to think about 

data storage at three critical points, 

according to Andrew Seaton, the 

chief executive of Resolve IT, the 

fast-growing IT consultancy. “People 

consider data storage usually in 

conjunction with other IT decisions, 

for instance when you are starting out 

in business or when you have a major 

system change – either a hardware or 

software upgrade – or when there has 

been a major fault or a disruption to the 

business, because of a data failure.” 



When beginning to look at the 

options for data storage, whether in 

the cloud or not, businesses need to 

be clear about how they are going to 

use the data, what kind of data it is, 

who is going to be accessing the data 

and from where. Seaton, whose own 

business has grown rapidly, says he is 

still nervous about storing potentially 

confidential information in the cloud. 

“It depends how confidential it is,” he 

says. “Payroll and financial information, 

I personally would store in a server. 

Lots of our clients are nervous about 

this area. Over time, I expect we 

will become more comfortable with 

cloud storage and the increasing 

shift to the cloud will continue.” 

Another thing that needs to be 

considered at the outset is where, 

physically, the data will be kept. Many 

British and European contracts will 

oblige businesses to keep data in a 

certain geographic location. There is 

a concern that if data is held on a US 

company’s equipment – wherever in 

the world it might be – it is accessible 

to the American legal process. Federal 

authorities in the US are currently 

trying to force Microsoft to disclose all 

its information to US law enforcement 

agencies including the CIA and the FBI – 

even if the information is held in storage 

in Europe. Microsoft, which is supported 

by other tech giants in this legal case, 

has said it will fight this battle all the 

way to the Supreme Court if necessary 

but some experts fear the company 

will lose the case with big implications 

for European internet users. 

Increasingly, that means that firms 

prefer to use companies that will 

retain their data in specific 

regions; cloud giants like 

Amazon Services will now 

offer storage facilities 

in specified European 

or UK locations. Some 

companies will also 

give an EU Safe 

Harbour Agreement 

– in other words, 

they will abide by 

EU legal standards. 

However, cybercrime 

continues to be a major 

threat to UK businesses. 

The PwC 2014 Information 

Security Breaches Survey, conducted 

for the department of Business, 

Innovation & Science, found that the 

typical cost of the worst security breach 

for small organisations was £65,000 to 

£115,000 and for large organisations 

was between £600,000 and £1.15m. 

Furthermore, according to 

PwC, the number of security 

‘ 

Some companies will 

also give an EU Safe 

Harbour Agreement 

– in other words, 

they will abide by 

EU legal standards 

’ 



incidents detected in the UK in the past year increased 

by 69%, compared to a global increase of just 25%. 

UK companies are taking cyber security more 

seriously, becoming skilled at identifying where their 

vulnerabilities are and putting in place the necessary 

processes and policies to mitigate the threat. 

Bryan Little, chief technical officer at Qinetiq, says 

government has long been aware of the vulnerability of 

storing data, but now many businesses are receiving a 

wake-up call. “It’s not just companies as big as Sony and 

Apple,” he says. “We have seen law firms and plastic surgeons 

targeted because they have a celebrity clientele.” One 

thing a CEO can do is to bring in a third-party to monitor 

the cloud services the business is using. “It’s a service 

that we offer at Qinetiq. We can monitor your area of the 

cloud to see if there is any problem with that data.” 

Little advises that it is essential that chief executives 

do their homework. “There are more cyber attacks, 

but there is also a lot more advice out there.” 

Cyber Essentials is a scheme set up by the government and 

backed by industry to help businesses protect themselves 

from common cyber attacks. Using its resources, Little 

suggests that CEOs arm themselves with a standard set of 

security questions to ask cloud providers so that they can 

form an opinion of whether they are taking security seriously. 

Cloud solutions are particularly appealing to small 

and growing businesses because they give people data 

back-up for a fraction of the cost that it would cost to buy 

hardware and manage it properly. Cloud companies can 

give email, collaborative working software and storage 

space for between £10 and £20 a month, which really 

allows start-ups to concentrate on their business plan, 

rather than being distracted by installing IT systems. 

Mike Cook, chief information officer of Postcode 

Anywhere, the software company that looks up an address 

when online-shopping customers enter a postcode, says: 

“The amount of money you can spend on cloud computing 

is related to how straightforward your needs are. But 

if your business doesn’t already have servers set up for 

data storage, it’s going to be 20 to 30 times cheaper 

to use the cloud. It’s also much quicker to set up, it can 

allow remote and 24/7 access – which hardware can’t 

always give you. Essentially this means the technical 

elements of growing a business are now really cheap.” 

Tim Walker, managing director of IT services experts Taylor 

Made Computer Solutions, says cloud storage can be used 

alongside traditional back-up tapes. “Even if you use 

back-up tapes, keeping your data in a server on 

site is incredibly risky – particularly if there’s a 

fire or flood. Using a cloud model means your 

data is safely stored off-site – ready to be 

restored at a moment’s notice,” he explains. 

Businesses also need to be aware of 

their Data Protection responsibilities. 

Companies are regularly punished for breaching 

privacy rights or holding too much personal data. 

Other technology trends, such as Bring Your Own 

Device – where people use their personal smart-phone 

or tablet – and Bring Your Own Cloud (employees 

backing up to their own third-party cloud service), cause 

additional challenges for businesses. They also make 

it easier for departing employees to steal data. 

Stewart Room, one of the country’s leading data 

protection lawyers, who works for PwC’s leading cybersecurity 

practice, agrees that the rules and regulations 

surrounding data storage should not be taken lightly. 

“Electronic data is subject to myriad rules and regulations,” 

he says. “Some rules give third-parties access rights, 

for instance to regulators, law enforcement agencies, 

citizens and litigators. Businesses need appropriate 

systems and rules to manage access requests.” 

There is also the issue of how a cloud provider will dispose 

of your data, once your relationship with them has ended. A 

bona fide provider will have a clear procedure for this issue. 

Most businesses will now be using some form of cloud 

computing, whether that is a strategic choice or not, 

says Room. “Companies like Microsoft are turning their 

Office software into Office365 with cloud elements 

so it is there even in an ordinary Office application.” 

What with security, the issue of inappropriate state 

access, criminal activity, the interest of regulators, 

cloud storage can sound like a headache. But it does 

provide huge opportunities for businesses, he argues. 

“For a business, the cloud is entirely navigable. You 

just don’t want to deny the gains it offers: the ability 

to constantly upgrade, to scale up, the opportunity to 

take advantage of aggregated learning, 24/7 provision, 

the ability to use new technology without worrying 

whether the investment is worth it. These are absolutely 

fantastic business opportunities,” says Room. 


Angela Jameson regularly edits The Sun’s City pages and 

also writes for The Sunday Times, The Times and the Daily 

Mail. She read English at Oxford University and was The 

Times’s industrial correspondent. 



Business continuity through 

copy data virtualisation 

By Actifio 

WHAT ARE THE COSTS OF BUSINESS INTERRUPTIONS? 

Dependence upon IT within a business is so universal 

that the impact from downtime is immediately felt. 

Outages degrade employee productivity. Soft costs 

add up quickly from customer dissatisfaction, stressful 

recovery, staff morale and lasting brand damage. 

Then there is the hard-dollar financial cost. 

Some disruptions such as data corruption, a failed 

backup job, hardware failure, operator error or even 

planned outages, can be contained and easily handled. 

Yet routine events are frequent and cause the majority of 

disruptions – more than 80%. However, critical planning 

and testing is required for successful readiness to contain 

disruptions of any dimension. Unfortunately major 

disruptions, man-made and natural, are steadily increasing. 

In this context, new and more effective technology 

solutions are required to avoid business disruptions and 

achieve nearly immediate recovery if disruptions do occur. The 

focus is on the continuity of business operations, continuity 

of data, and the CIO’s objective to cost-effectively deliver 

on Service Level Agreements (SLAs) These new solutions 

must be easily tested, relieve strains on staff, simplify 

operations and reduce infrastructure requirements. 

Enterprises therefore use business continuity 

solutions. Gartner offers three requirements 

for evaluation of a business continuity solution 

that will fully support business objectives: 

n Recoverability – the capacity to meet or exceed RPO/ 

RTO objectives for mission critical applications 

n Diversity – the capacity to support heterogeneous 

infrastructures, including operating systems, servers, 

storage, applications and network connectivity 

n Affordability – the capacity to meet desired levels of 

recoverability can be provided within budget constraints 

The whole process should be achieved in a cost-effective 

manner. Virtualising copy data and managing these efficiently 

can meet demanding RPO and RTO objectives at a reasonable 

cost enabling precise SLAs that can be proven in testing. The 

process can be run as often as needed, without disrupting 

production systems. 

Virtualised copy data management simplifies data 

protection, disaster recovery and data migration. A copy 

data virtualisation platform therefore serves as a full 

business continuity solution. 

Copy data virtualisation platforms can be operated from an iPad 



Less is more – simpler and more effective 

Exceptional information technology changes have always 

caused disruptive adjustments that create, overhaul or 

demolish business models. New solutions must provide a 

transformational effect that causes a new thinking and 

approach. Copy data virtualisation is such a solution with 

revolutionary character that increases in importance when it 

comes to meeting business continuity requirements. Such 

a solution is based on a platform that effectively spans 

architectural differences. Functioning in virtual or physical 

environments, it bridges applications and operating systems. 

The model is driven by simple but powerful SLAs 

that allow businesses to match data loss and recovery 

time objectives by application. By managing application 

data in a native format, access to data for recoveries is 

nearly instantaneous. Recovery testing can be executed 

on-demand. This transformative solution stands out 

from traditional methods with significant savings, 

easier operation and flexible functionality. Copy data 

virtualisation also enables a more efficient use of the 

network bandwidth. Frequent and consistent tests give 

the assurance that the data is protected and in case of 

failure, the transaction can be reliably maintained. 

Business continuity and disaster recovery – 

all out from the cloud 

IT in the cloud is a reality. Customers see opportunity to drive 

out capital costs and eliminate internally managed operations 

crowded with expensive infrastructure and managed by skilled 

staff that could be redeployed to more strategic priorities. 

While this trend is accelerating, for many it will be a gradual 

migration. Each enterprise will weigh benefits and tradeoffs 

when considering cloud-based business continuity offerings. 

Benefits for data migration 

Data migrations create some of the most painful challenges 

IT faces. Whether accommodating a new storage array or a 

relocated data centre, data migration from existing systems 

can be a long, complex, and expensive challenge. Copy 

data virtualisation speeds and simplifies the migration of 

data, within a data centre or even over long distances. 

An example would be a faculty that had to be moved to 

another university. The IT team needed to accomplish a critical 

data migration project without downtime. Using copy data 

virtualisation, the faculty was able to connect with the new 

university location to their platform over the network. The 

system recognised the remote servers and storage as recovery 

destinations. With a simple click to restore, the servers and 

data were moved without disruption. Users skipped a day 

of downtime and the IT team skipped weeks of planning. 

Think about an average large enterprise managing 

Petabytes of data growing annually. The normal asset 

refresh cycle will introduce new storage arrays every three 

to five years, with data movement measured in tens, if not 

hundreds of terabytes per array. Migration planning in terms 

of what data should move, what may be consolidated, 

what servers are connected, will happen regardless of 

technology. Copy data virtualisation eliminates the migration 

implementation headache, first reducing the total amount of 

data, then by keeping production systems up and running 

while moving data non-disruptively behind the scenes. 

Complete business continuity and recovery 

There was a time that business continuity and disaster 

recovery have been two very separate things. Divided by 

available technology, the first was directed at maintaining 

operations and the second at restoration of operations when 

disruptions did inevitably occur. The time gap between the two 

was very difficult and expensive to address – until now. Copy 

data virtualisation provides a means to close the gap. In effect, 

the new distinction focuses first on maximizing business 

continuity, and then on immediate recovery, if disruptions do 

occur. SLAs become both the tools and measures of a recovery 

program, while delivering granular recovery by application. 

The copy data virtualisation approach delivers clear 

financial benefits from simplified infrastructure and 

operations, to – most importantly – greater reliability 

of the business continuity systems themselves. In 

practical use this leads to a substantial reduction 

in business continuity infrastructure costs. 

The benefits increase over time as clients capitalize 

on more use cases from the copy data virtualisation 

platform. More assets can be repurposed. More application 

infrastructures can be minimised or streamlined. Fewer 

storage systems are needed and production storage 

can be more efficiently utilised for production purposes. 

Demands for data centre energy and space diminish. 

Compatibility across heterogeneous platforms becomes 

less of an issue. Data migration simplicity creates greater 

storage efficiency and eases upgrade transitions. 

Business continuity takes place today under a holistic 

approach, as a large roof that is stretched over the technology 

and the business. By succeeding IT managers to consistently 

implement SLAs, the internal confidence in the process is 

strengthened. That means a better reputation and more 

confidence in the company by customers and partners. 


Actifio delivers copy data virtualisation to hundreds of 

global enterprise customers and service provider partners 

in more than 36 countries around the world. Actifio’s 

Virtual Data Pipeline technology decouples data from 

infrastructure, enabling dramatic improvements in business 

resiliency, agility, and access to the cloud. Actifio’s 

technology replaces siloed data management applications 

with a radically simple, application-centric, SLA-driven 

approach that lets customers capture data from production 

applications, manage it more economically, and use it 

when and where they need to. Actifio is headquartered just 

outside Boston, Massachusetts. 

Visit www.actifio.com for more information, follow 

@actifio on Twitter or email at info@actifio.com. 



The Galileo moment 

Customer experience is 

what’s happening to your 

business while you are 

busy making other plans, 

says Teleperformance UK 

THINK OF A BRAND, AN ORGANISATION, 

commercial or private. Then think 

of the customers who collectively 

form the value pool – growth and 

profit – for these businesses. 

We visualise the multiplicity 

of customer journeys and the 

infrastructure needed to support 

these, and facilitate customer’s 

desired outcomes as a symbiotic 

relationship between consumer and 

corporation, individual and entity. 

And yet, rather than that traditional 

model of customers orbiting a business, 

moving in and out of its sphere of 

influence, there is a “Galileo moment” 

coming when it will be recognised that 

the reverse is true. It is the customer 

who remains fixed in space and time, 

and it is companies that move in and 

out of the value orbit of the consumer. 

This disruptive aspect to the life of 

an empowered, mobile and increasingly 

vocal customer base demands that 

today’s chief executive and board of 

directors consider the experience 

of customers at every touch point to 

gain insight that turns loyal customers 

in an increasingly virtual world into 

advocates, while reacting quickly 

to new channel evolutions to retain 

market share, and discover and 

nurture new sources of revenue. 

In our recent annual World Wide 



Customer Experience Survey 1 , we 

asked 69,000 participants in eight 

countries to rate their most recent 

customer service experience. The 

result showed an average of only 

44.5 per cent were satisfied or very 

satisfied with their experience. At the 

same time, the survey also revealed 

the percentage of happy and loyal 

customers exponentially increases 

after a positive experience, indicating 

on average a 33 percentage points 

improvement was possible in the 

overall perception of a brand. 

Because customers now decide how 

they want to interact with a company 

and not the other way around, they 

expect to have access to information 

at any time. 4G-enabled mobile smart 

devices have changed everything. We 

are “instant gratification junkies”, says 

Anthony Macciola, chief technology 

officer of software business 

KOFAX 2 . “We want complaints and 

issues addressed immediately.” 

Our survey showed clearly that 

Gen X and Gen Y, born after 1965, 

are leading the adoption of online 

and social media channels through 

smart-device use, integrating them not 

only into their daily interactions with 

brands and businesses, but also into 

their life expectations, including those 

underpinning customer experience. 

Technology is essentially changing 

expectations, not merely facilitating 

them. Forrester analyst Thomas 

Husson says: “Customers have 

experienced a mind shift. Technologies 

packed into mobile devices enable 

people not only to instantly consume, 

but also create and maintain 

control in their everyday lives.” 3 

This perpetuates a challenge for 

the near-future highlighted by the 

International Customer Management 

Institute in a survey of contact centre 

professionals. This identified that, 

while 68 per cent of companies think 

offering mobile customer service 

improves the customer experience, 

only 25 per cent have a mobile 

customer contact strategy in place. 

Forrester surveyed customers 

as part of its study of Customer 

Experience (Forrester’s CXi). 4 The 

results show how much customers value 

an exceptional customer experience 

and how their future behaviour is likely 

to be impacted by their perception 

of a company’s ability to provide a 

better overall customer experience 

compared to industry peers. 

One CEO explained: “I hear often 

that trust arrives on foot and leaves on 

horseback. This couldn’t be truer for 

customer experience which in my view 

is fundamental to the 21st century 

consumer-corporate models. Our 

company supports half of Interbrand’s 

Best Global Brands 2014 5 . What we 

can see in common across all these 

brands is that they are businesses that 

have put in place strategies including 

outsourcing in one form or another 

that help ensure they are prepared 

for the future and the many potential 

benefits an ‘always on’ connected 

customer landscape will bring.” 

In a world of big data and endless 

touch points, all customers truly 

want is an experience with a brand 

or organisation that says “we know 

who you are…” to which the customer 

can respond “… and I believe you”. 

This is the Galileo moment. 

References 

1. World Wide Multichannel CX Survey 

2, 3. Smarter CX for Smart Device Users 

4. The Business Impact of Customer Experience 

5. www.teleperformance.com 


Teleperformance is the global leader 

in outstanding customer experience. 

With locations throughout the 

world including the UK, Europe, 

the Americas and Asia we’ve been 

providing superior customer care 

services for leading companies, 

national and international brands 

throughout the world since 1978, 

with expertise in many markets and 

verticals. 

With a large global footprint, we 

bring together best practices and 

experience from several countries 

worldwide combined with continuous 

innovation, the best mix of people 

management, efficient processes, 

intelligent analytics and strategic 

locations. This means rapid team 

assignment and a comprehensive 

range of solutions to provide a 

seamless and enriched customer 

experience wherever you need us. 

For further information: 

Web: www.teleperformance.com 

www.youtube.com/teleperformance 

Email: matt.sims@teleperformance.com 

Tel: 0117 916 8000 



How to assess 

new technologies 

By Bibi Bajwa, Ormuco 

Using the tech industry’s own models to 

inform your technology adoption strategy 

With a constant and dizzying stream of new technologies 

coming to market; with the waxing and waning of trend after 

trend, each making bolder promises than the last; and with 

customers whose behaviour and preferences seem to change 

every other week, predicting the future has never been more 

of a mug’s game. Unfortunately, as a business leader, it’s a 

game you not only have to play, it’s one you must master. 

Every year Gartner publishes a report that gives an 

indication to the thought leaders in an organisation as to 

what the potential impact and take up of a technology stack 

could be, and over what period of time. Understanding how 

vendors bring new innovations to market, and how they are 

adopted at different stages of the product cycle – and by 

whom – can help you decide which technologies might be right 

for your business and, perhaps more importantly, give you 

a good indication of when you should be investing in them. 

It doesn’t change the fact that predicting the future 

is still more of an art than a science, but when you’re 

playing a game with stakes this high every little helps. 

What type of buyer are you? 

When it comes to technology adoption most businesses 

(and, indeed, consumers) are followers, which means 

they adopt late. There is nothing ‘wrong’ with being a 

follower if it is the right thing for your business. 

For example, if you operate in a low-added value, 

commoditised sector, the risks of being more innovative 

than your competitors probably vastly outweigh the 

potential rewards. In this case you will wait to see 

what the take up is on a new technology and allow the 

vendors to iron out any deployment issues. If both of 

those show good traction and stability you might then 

build it into your strategy plan for the coming years. 

On the other hand, if you are an organisation that is an 

early adopter of technologies you can create a competitive 

advantage, but only if you settle on the right technology for 

your business, and can accelerate the adoption process as 

well as work through the initial teething problems (there will 

be some!), allowing you to come to market quicker, or with a 

better product, than other innovators. It is a risky plan for 

some and an opportunity to steal market share for others. 

Whatever type of business you are, appraising any 

new technology means making a judgement about the 

risks versus the potential rewards of both adoption 

and non-adoption, as well as understanding how 

the balance between these changes over time. 

There are a few models we can use to help make the 

assessment. 

The Hype Cycle of innovation 

Courtesy of Gartner Research 

On the graph above, the bottom axis shows time elapsed 

and the vertical shows expectations in relation to various 

technology stacks. Within the graph itself you have marked 

points that show how far each technology has travelled 

along the Hype Cycle, and how many more years it will be 

until it is anticipated to reach the plateau (far right). 

You can probably think of a technology, now ubiquitously 

adopted, and remember it going through the cycle. Mobile 

phones and the Internet, for example, moved fairly quickly 

from stage to stage and are now well off the right-hand 

edge of the graph. On the other hand there’s a technology 

like AI, which has been repeatedly through the first 3 

stages but has yet to establish itself (although with the 

likes of Watson and Siri it might well make it this time). 

Of course your own experience of any given technology 

will not necessarily follow the Hype Cycle exactly. A 

technology which in general will not plateau for 10 years 

could accelerate much quicker for you if it suits your 

organisation’s sector, strategy and development timeline. 

The Chasm model 

In 1991 a Silicon Valley consultant named Geoffrey Moore 

invented a model for marketing and selling disruptive, mainly 

technology, products. As the model is also handily expressed 

in a graph, we can map it directly on to the Hype Cycle too. 

This model has different groups of buyers on the X 

axis, which also displays time, and the number of those 

buyers on the Y axis. Its defining feature is the Chasm, 

which any innovative new technology must jump over 

in order to be widely adopted by the mainstream. 



‘ 

While the Chasm model is usually 

used by technology vendors as a 

method of introducing new products 

to the market, you can use it along 

with the Hype Cycle model to 

become a more “savvy” buyer 

’ 

What the Chasm model helps you to understand is 

exactly who is buying (or buying into) a technology at any 

point along the Hype Cycle. For any given technology the 

specific characteristics and motivations of these buyers 

will vary, however each group has a few things in common. 

Innovators are risk-takers, on the very cutting edge 

of their field. They fail probably more often than they 

succeed. If you are an Innovator, you probably know it. 

Early Adopters wait to see how a new technology 

plays out with Innovators before they jump on board, 

normally at the point when the media hype reaches its 

apogee. There is still great risk involved in adopting a 

technology at this point, because it has not yet proven 

itself by navigating the Chasm, which corresponds to the 

Trough of Disillusionment in the Hype Cycle model. 

If the Early Adopters accept a product, and help prove its 

use, word spreads and it climbs the Slope of Enlightenment 

to mainstream adoption by the Early Majority. 

Vis-à-vis any given technology, you should be able 

to place yourself into one of the five groups of buyers. 

Charting the current position of whatever technology 

you are assessing on the Hype Cycle can then give 

you an indication of whether or not it has reached 

the right stage of maturity for your business. 

Plotting Risk, Reward and Price 

While the Chasm model is usually used by technology 

vendors as a method of introducing new products 

to the market, you can use it along with the Hype 

Cycle model to become a more “savvy” buyer. 

n Risk generally decreases at an increasing rate 

as a technology becomes more established. 

n Price decreases as vendors take advantage of the 

economies of scale a growing market brings, but there 

is for most products a rate below which it cannot go, 

which is generally the marginal cost of producing it. 

n Known Rewards increase – in both volume and value – 

throughout the product lifecycle but can tail off towards 

the end of the cycle as saturation point is reached. 

Of course these are just general trends. There are 

huge potential rewards for a few lucky innovators and 

early adopters towards the left of the graph, and the 

crossing points of the three lines will inevitably vary 

for different technologies and businesses. Measuring 

the expected evolution of Risk, Reward and Price 

enables you to pick the right time for you to invest. 

If your business plan requires you to be conservative 

– for example you make widgets and only need to 

increase efficiency by a few percent every decade – you 

will probably wait until after the Known Rewards line 

crosses either the Risks or Price line, or both. On the 

other hand, if your business requires you to be innovative 

to keep your competitive edge you may choose to jump 

in well ahead of any of the projected crossing points. 

Wherever on the spectrum from innovator to late majority 

your business lies – for any given technology – once you’ve 

gathered your intelligence and done your analysis you should 

be able to find the sweet spot that works for you. 


The above diagram illustrates the general trends 

of the three main points you will be considering 

when deciding whether to adopt a new technology 

or not. These are Risk, Price and Rewards. 

Bibi Bajwa is Chief Operating Officer – EMEA at 

Ormuco, a leading global cloud, managed services and 

telecommunications provider. Having worked most of her 

career in a variety of global outsourcing and technology 

organisations, Bibi is considered an expert on IT 

enablement & best practices. 

Ormuco, established in 2008 in Montreal, has developed 

its reputation by offering a range of solutions and services 

designed to streamline day-to-day business operations and 

reduce associated IT costs. Ormuco delivers data centre, 

workspace and cloud transformational solutions to some of 

today’s leading brands. For more information please visit 

www.ormuco.com 



footprint can 

Cutting your carbon 

cut costs too 

Going green can help profits 

as well as the environment, 

says Anne Lowe 

RED BULL IS MARKET LEADER IN 

energy drinks, not least thanks to the 

efforts of a marketing team driving 

the country in 38 mini cars that are 

refitted to resemble the distinctive 

drinks can. It’s not surprising that the 

company’s managers thought that the 

vehicles’ own energy profile should be 

an important factor, therefore. Red Bull 

thus went green. But finance was at 

least as important as the environmental 

factors and the company is now 

exporting the boost to its profits to 

the drinks group’s overseas divisions. 

Nine of those mini cars were quickly 

replaced by diesel vehicles that 

emit 43 per cent less carbon and, by 

giving more miles to the gallon, are 

saving £6,000 a year. That will rise to 

£25,000 as more cars are replaced. 

Red Bull’s transport usage was 

reviewed in 2012 by the governmentbacked 

Energy Savings Trust. Within 

six months, fuel-cards with a mileagemonitoring 

system were introduced. 

That led to a 12 per cent fall in the 

distance driven each year by the 

company’s entire fleet of 234 vehicles. 

“Because we can now monitor miles 

we can take action to reduce them,” says 

David Oliver, the drinks company’s UK 

procurement manager. “We’re actively 

promoting alternatives to getting into 

the car. We’ve installed technology to 

encourage conferencing and homeworking, 

and made it easier to book rail 

tickets for unavoidable travel,” he adds. 

While this exercise was being 

undertaken, a new sales team joined 

Red Bull with a fleet of 50 carbon- 


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Fleet Logistics stands for: 

A fully independent pan European fleet management company - covering 24 countries in Europe 

Serving large national and international fleet operators since 1996 - on average 3000 cars 

Europe’s largest and longest-running in the fleet management business - close to 150.000 cars under management today 

Full transparency through the only pan European IT system in the industry, combined with similar operational processes across all offices 

Reduction and control of the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), with a track record of over 1.5bn€ in realized savings 

Combination of TCO optimization capability and delivery of best practice driver experience 

Unique capability, combining global reporting, outsourced fleet management and consulting 

Call Fleet Logistics International today on: +32 2 600 72 22 

or send an e-mail to: info@fleetlogistics.com 

STRATEGY. EXECUTION. MEASUREMENT.


‘ 

Everything they’ve 

helped us do passes 

my ‘three benefits’ 

test – good for 

business, good for 

the environment 

and good for our 

drivers on the road 

’ 

heavy vehicles. These were all replaced 

with low-carbon alternatives, reducing 

emission by 29 per cent and cutting 

fuel costs by £28,000 a year. 

“By reimbursing people for fuel 

they buy we’ve cut the cost of every 

mile by 15 per cent,” says Oliver. “And 

with accurate records we can reclaim 

Vat, bringing a further £3,500 to 

the business every month.” There is 

also a 29 per cent decrease to the 

drivers’ taxation on benefits-in-kind. 

Oliver adds: “Energy Savings Trust 

helped us prove that by greening the 

fleet we can contribute to Red Bull’s 

low-carbon commitment and get 

valuable cost savings too. Everything 

they’ve helped us do passes my ‘three 

benefits’ test – good for business, 

good for the environment and good 

for our drivers on the road.” 

Fleet operators of all sizes are finding 

that going green can be profitable as 

well as environmentally friendly. The 

Department for Transport is conducting 

a two-year Low-Carbon Truck Trial, due 

to end early next year, to investigate 

the efficiency of alternative fuels such 

as liquefied natural gas, compressed 

natural gas and used cooking oil. Some 

354 trucks using these fuels are being 

monitored and 18 new refuelling 

stations are being added during the 

trial. Most are dual-fuel tractor gas 

trucks and provisional results indicate 

carbon savings of up to 9 per cent with 

those savings expected to increase as 

the refuelling infrastructure expands. 

Rachel Dillon, climate-change 

policy manager at the Fleet Transport 

Association, which is backing the 

trials, says: “The crucial early feedback 

identifies the operational challenges of 

running gas HGVs. We hope the trial can 

kick-start the market. The Low-Carbon 

Truck Trial is putting more gas-powered 

HGVs on the road and will also provide 

much needed provision of the public 

refuelling infrastructure. The use of 

gas and methane will help industry to 

contribute to national carbon reduction 

targets and also tackle air-pollution.” 

But she warns: “However, the cost of 

vehicle conversions and lack of current 

refuelling stations is deterring take up.” 

For organisations using smaller 

vehicles, going green often means 

tackling ‘grey fleets’ – staff using 

private cars for business journeys. 

North Lincolnshire & Goole Hospitals 

Trust had 1,250 staff – from nurses 

and doctors to midwives – using their 



own cars to drive between its three NHS 

hospitals in Grimsby, Scunthorpe 

and Goole. Their journeys added 

up to 1.5m miles a year. New 

transport services manager 

Jug Johal found that the trust 

was spending £1m a year on 

travel with the grey-fleet 

users costing more than 

£750,000. He has set a target 

of reducing that by £350,000 

over three years, partly by 

introducing shuttle buses. 

Meanwhile the hospitals’ 

own fleet of leased and pool 

cars is being replaced with lower 

emission vehicles and some of the 

grey-fleet users will be encouraged 

to move to more fuel-efficient leased 

cars. Vauxhall Corsa 1.3 CDTi diesel pool 

cars and Vauxhall Combo diesel vans have 

been introduced to the fleet and, like Red Bull, fuel-cards 

have been introduced to monitor budgets and mileage. 

Johal says: “While cutting transport costs was the 

prime reason behind the ‘green fleet review’, ultimately 

the main beneficiaries will be the hospital patients and 

the environment. We are going to make major financial 

savings: there is no doubt about that. NHS funding is 

limited, so the financial savings that are accruing can be 

re-invested into services to improve patient care.” 

Staffordshire Moorlands district council was one of the 

local authorities that signed the Nottingham Declaration 

in 2003, an agreement by local government to address 

climate-change issues. The council also chose to tackle its 

grey-fleet issues. It found that its mileage re-imbursement 

rates actually incentivised employees to drive extra miles. 

The system encouraged workers to bring their cars to 

work, rather than use public transport, and many saw the 

expense claims as part of their remuneration package. 

A new leasing system encourages staff to move from 

private cars to low-emission vehicles. And while the fleet 

of leased cars almost doubled, their carbon footprint rose 

by just 7 per cent. An annual incentive payment of £125 

was introduced for drivers choosing a leased car with 

CO2 emissions below 140g/km with an additional £125 

for cars below 120g/km. For the grey-fleet, the council 

set a target of cutting the mileage driven by 5 per cent a 

year for several years and imposed emission standards. 

Meanwhile the council cut its van fleet from 14 vehicles 

to 10 and saw emissions fall by 58 per cent, mainly 

because of reduced mileage. The HGV fleet doubled to 30 

vehicles when recycling was brought back in-house – and 

mileage more than doubled – but fuel-efficient newer 

vehicles meant carbon emissions fell by 27 per cent. The 

target is to cut HGV fuel usage by 10 per cent a year. 

Philip Haddock, the council’s special projects 

co-ordinator, says: “The financial savings will be 

ploughed back into improving council services.” 

Other councils are finding that salary-sacrifice car 

leasing schemes can be combined with incentives to 

reduce emissions. Paul Topham, transport services 

manager at Calderdale council, says: “We set a carbon 

cap of 130g/km on the scheme, which we thought was 

appropriate for our needs as it made more family cars, 

such as MPVs and SUVs, available to our staff”. 

Fruit4London is an East London firm with six vans 

delivering fresh fruit to City offices. It considered converting 

to an all-electric fleet and sought help from the Energy 

Savings Trust. Analysis showed that the firm’s operating costs 

would fall by about £9,000 over the three-year leasing period 

if it used Renault Kangoo ZE electric vehicles instead of diesel 

Kangoos. Laszio Mulato, director of the fruit firm, says: “The 

review showed us that going electric is the best business 

decision when expanding our fleet, based on impressive cost 

savings. We now know we can go 100 per cent electric.” 

Now Red Bull, having realised the value of a green 

fleet, is going electric too. Having reduced its fleet costs 

considerably its carbon-saving initiates are now being 

adopted as best practice across the company’s global 

operations. And since last year, Red Bull has been adding 

electric and hybrid options to its fleet. “The journey towards 

minimum emissions never ends,” says David Oliver. 


Anne Lowe headed a London business consultancy and 

a New York promotional company. She now writes for 

financial and trade publications. 



Top things to think about 

in your corporate fleets 

By Lakshmi Moorthy, 

Managing Director 

(Marketing), GE Capital 

International Fleet Services 

Top cost saving areas to reduce 

Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) 

Reducing TCO remains the clear priority 

for Fleet Managers in our view. While 

the elements of TCO are dependent 

on industry and country, when we look 

at TCO across our global customer 

base, we see some consistent trends. 

Depreciation (and items related 

to it) is the main cost area. Thus 

savings can be identified in areas 

related to depreciation, such as 

vehicle sourcing, vehicle choice / 

selections and contract duration. 

Fuel forms the next major cost. 

In 2014 fuel formed 29% of the 

TCO, but has dropped sharply in 

recent months to 20%, due largely 

to the fall in oil prices. However it is 

still a major area of focus for fleet 

managers with many companies 

focusing on measures such as CO2 

caps, better fuel reporting/auditing 

solutions and eco-driving training to 

help drive down costs in this area. 

Accident Management and Insurance 

is a further area for cost saving, which 

has the dual impact of not just 

improving TCO, but also 

enhancing safety for 

drivers. The use 

of driver safety 

assessment and 

training, as well 

as deploying 

technologies 

to monitor 

ongoing driving 

behaviour, can 

help here. 

These findings 

are taken from 

a new study of 

TCO undertaken 

across customers’ 

fleets globally, 

which will be 

published 

in summer 

2015. 

Industry trends impacting 

Total Cost of Ownership 

The following are some trends/ 

factors that we believe could 

positively impact costs and drive 

down TCO in the long run. 

Big data and the role of telematics: 

data and analytics is a widely discussed, 

yet still an underpenetrated element, 

within the fleet industry. It represents 

a key area of interest for fleet 

managers who can use technology to 

improve fleet productivity, operating 

costs and safety. However, it is not 

just about data. To ensure effective 

implementation it is critical to have a 

clear set of finite goals (i.e. what are 

you trying to improve), and how you will 

then use the insights from telematics 

(what is the data telling us) to define a 

clear action plan to effect changes in 

your fleet policy in order to drive the 

required behaviours. It is especially 

important to take into account data 

privacy regulations which differ across 

countries and be able to articulate 

the clear benefits of the technology 

to secure buy-in and driver consent. 

Eco-driving: in the majority of 

countries, Governments and their 

related tax regimes are causing 

companies to favour smaller, low 

emission vehicles in their fleets. 

Simultaneously OEM developments 

in the areas of hybrid, electric and 

alternative fuel vehicles are making 

low emission cars an appealing option, 

not just for fleet managers, but also 

drivers. High adoption countries such 

as Japan lead this trend, which we see 

continuing for the long-term in line 

with depleting supplies of fossil fuels. 

Outsourcing and supplier policy: 

while the recession and cost pressures 

are driving some companies to search 

for cost savings in the area of fleet by 

moving to a multi-supplier framework, 

others are realising that a strategic 

partnership, with one partner who works 

closely with you to drive down costs 



(through a mix of data, insights/consultancy and proactive 

fleet policies) may, in the long-term, be the better alternative. 

Similarly, some companies are choosing to move their 

fleet activities largely out of their organisations and 

outsource routine administrative tasks to a fleet specialist 

leaving only strategy and oversight in-house, enabling 

them to focus on their core areas of competence. 

Global fleet management: as we see companies adopt a 

more harmonised approach to their global business policies 

in areas such as reporting, data management, systems, 

employee policies and procurement policies, we see this 

trend filter into the fleet operations as well. Increasingly 

large multinationals are beginning to capitalise on the 

economies-of-scale possible through a harmonised fleet 

policy that helps them benefit from centralised procurement, 

supplier management and better access to consistent data/ 

reporting. However, ‘Glocal’ is a word that is widely used in the 

industry, with some strategic elements of fleet management 

managed centrally (OEM choice, type of funding, high level 

policy on aspects like safety) and some aspects driven 

locally (local service delivery partners, exact local models). 

Beyond TCO…growing focus on the driver 

With many companies reorganising the way they manage 

their fleets internally, we see a trend towards multiple 

stakeholders (HR, general managers, finance, procurement) 

with often multiple priorities for their fleet operations. 

It is not just about cost, and service quality and driver 

safety are increasingly important areas to manage. 

Driver safety is an important area and legislation for 

employers around driver care, high costs associated with 

accidents, and new technological developments that can 

improve safety statistics are all leading to advancements 

in this area. Many companies are investing in remote and inperson 

driver training, integrated with ongoing risk profiling 

and assessments, to build a culture of safe driving. The many 

after-market technologies to help monitor driver behaviour on 

an ongoing basis are also fuelling this trend, and though initial 

cost outlays may impact the business case, it is important 

to focus on the eventual savings that can be realised in the 

form of lower accident management, service/repair costs, as 

well as the savings in terms of life and wellbeing for drivers. 

From company cars to alternate Mobility: Mobility 

means many different things to different people. But 

the concept of helping employees get from A-to-B in the 

most efficient and pragmatic way possible is becoming 

the main goal. We see increasing demand for alternative 

forms of mobility, especially in densely populated urban 

areas, where the public transport infrastructure is well 

developed, and the younger millennial generation is 

leading the way with the concept of a sharing economy. 

Government support and focus for mobility solutions is also 

expediting the adoption in some regions such as Benelux. 

The future of fleet 

To summarise, the fleet management market is influenced 

by many factors, and will continue to evolve to accommodate 

technological advances, the limited availability of internal 

resources, Government policies, the corporate’s own business 

strategy, demographic changes and cultural demands. 

How companies adapt to and adopt these changes to 

drive productivity and cost savings in their fleets will 

be a key topic of discussion over the coming years. 

Top tips for driving efficiencies 

in international fleets 

There is a very clear recipe for success; 

n Consolidate reporting and analysis, and manage and 

monitor via KPIs and SLAs. Align the fleet organisation 

and standardise fleet policy, where possible. 

n Use technology to influence your driver behaviours 

towards greener and safer driving. It will lower 

fuel consumption and reduce accidents. Fuel and 

accident costs represent 20 per cent and 11 per cent 

(respectively) of a fleet’s Total Cost of Ownership. 

n CO2 cap car policies are now relatively common but you 

should make sure you have a process in place to review 

the current cap at a minimum on a yearly basis. OEM 

technologies evolve fast and you can now source C or 

D segment cars for less than 100 g CO2 / km. Consider 

hybrid or full EVs for low mileage / urban drivers. 

n OEM concentration is a key opportunity – and benefits 

are possible by executing a pan-European or even 

a global OEM concentration exercise. At the other 

end of the spectrum, do not neglect the benefits of a 

preferred dealer network, which your lease company 

provider can offer you. It can often bring extra 

discounts and extra services free of charge. 

Image source: GE Capital Fleet Consultancy research 2015. Data based on 

GE Capital’s customers’ fleets in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, 

Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, New 

Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, UK, USA. 


GE Capital is a major global fleet leasing and management 

company, managing over 1 million vehicles across 25 

countries. In Europe we finance/manage over 200,000 

vehicles and are continuously expanding our presence 

through strategic alliances. We offer not just financing but 

also extensive digital tools and applications to help manage 

your company fleet, and our in-depth fleet consultancy 

offering (‘Key Solutions’) can help you optimise your total 

cost of offering. 

With over 40 years’ experience in fleet services, we 

are uniquely placed to understand the trends that are 

impacting the industry and the challenges that are faced 

daily by fleet managers. Some of these insights are shared 

in this article. 

GE Capital Fleet Services, The Ark, 201 Talgarth Road, 

London W6 8BJ. Tel: 020 7302 6300 



Will a higher speed limit 

really allow faster journeys? 

The government gave 

way to hauliers but may 

be giving away little, says 


FROM APRIL 2015, HEAVY-GOODS 

vehicles can be driven faster on dualcarriageways. 

Will quicker journeys 

increase profits for fleet operators? 

Or will it mean more road accidents? 

But what if it makes no difference 

at all? The industry is divided. 

After a consultation last year, the 

government announced an increase in 

the national speed limit from 50mph 

to 60 mph for HGVs of more than 

7.5 tonnes on dual-carriageways 

in England and Wales. It follows a 

decision to raise speed limits on 

single-carriage way roads and has been 

welcomed by fleet operators, who 

claim that it could be worth £11m to 

the industry. However, it is opposed 

by some road-safety lobbyists. 

Julie Townsend, deputy chief 

executive of Brake, one safety charity, 

says: “This decision runs against work 

to more effectively manage traffic 

speeds and reduce casualties and 

emissions on roads. As with the decision 

to raise HGV speed limits on singlecarriageways, 

the government is making 

a leap of faith, in spite of the legitimate 

concerns of road-safety groups.” 

The Road Haulage Association, 

which has lobbied for the increase, 

is pleased with the change, however. 

Chief executive Geoff Dunning says: 

“The current limit is long out of date 

and the frustration it generates causes 

unnecessary road-safety issues. 

This evidence-based decision by 

ministers to increase the limit from 

50mph will be strongly welcomed 

by haulers and their drivers.” 



And at the Freight Transport 

Association, the head of its road 

network management policy, 

Malcolm Bingham, says: “We strongly 

support this decision as we believe 

there is evidence confirming that 

road safety will be improved if the 

differential between HGVs and other 

road users is reduced. It will allow 

changes to enable our roads to be 

used safely and will save time for 

hauliers, resulting in an economic 

benefit which has been estimated 

as being worth £11m a year across 

the freight and logistics industry.” 

Several arguments were advanced 

for raising the limit, including the 

changes to truck design since the 

50mph ceiling was introduced half 

a century ago. Claire Perry, the 

transport minister who agreed the 

increase says: “It is really important 

that speed limits for lorries reflect the 

needs of a modern transport network 

and improved vehicle technology.” 

She is echoed by Bingham, who adds: 

“The 50mph speed limit was introduced 

in the 1960s and since then, technology 

has advanced considerably. The 

change will modernise an antiquated 

restriction that is not matched in 

most other European countries.” 

It is also argued that the lower limit 

means other drivers are held by lorries, 

becoming frustrated and making 

dangerous attempts to overtake. 

This frustration also applies to HGV 

drivers, conscious that they are causing 

delays, and the 50mph limit also meant 

they are behind the wheel for longer, 

risking tiredness. Further, as large 

goods vehicles are typically set up for 

their engine to provide optimal torque 

for maximum fuel economy at about 

50mph, allowing them to operate at 

closer to that optimal speed will mean 

environmental, as well as cost, benefits. 

And not all road-safety charities 

oppose the higher speed limit. The 

Institute of Advanced Motorists says 

updating of limits is long overdue. 

Policy director Neil Grieg says: 

“Today’s modern trucks are much safer 

and this move should make journey 

times more predictable without 

jeopardising safety on our main roads.” 

But the truth, according to the 

Department for Transport, is that 

raising the speed limit is unlikely to 

make much difference to safety or 

speed. Its research found that 80 per 

cent of HGVs exceed 50mph in freeflow 

conditions – but that the average 

speed in those conditions is only 

53mph. For much of the time, hauliers 

will find the new limit theoretical. EU 

regulations mean that speed-limiters on 

vehicles are fixed at 56mph, but some 

big operators such as Sainsbury set 

their limiters for just 52mph to achieve 

fuel efficiency. So even on motorways 

that have long had a 60mph limit for 

heavy lorries, few travel at that speed. 

The impact assessment prepared 

for the Department for Transport 

states: “The limit is out of date and 

systematically ignored by professional 

HGV drivers”. But asked to reveal the 

economic impact of raising it to 60mph, 

the experts state: “None – as we do 

not expect HGVs to increase speed 

as a result.” Their report attempts 

to calculate the effect of a 1mph 

increase in speeds, which they think 

the maximum likely, and concludes: 

“There will be small increase in 

accidents of the order of one fatal 

accident per decade”. At present, 

on a comparable basis, there are six 

fatalities a year on dual-carriageways 

and 22 serious injuries. The DfT 

assessment argues that because 

‘ 

It is really important 

that speed limits for 

lorries reflect the needs 

of a modern transport 

network and improved 

vehicle technology 

’ 



there will be less overtaking if lorries travel faster, so there 

would be no difference to the frequency of accidents. 

Using the same addition to actual speeds, the DfT’s 

sensitivity tests conclude a 1mph increase would create a 

saving for business as a result of decreased travel times. It 

reckons freight drivers spend 35.6m hours a year covering 

3bn kilometres on dual-carriageways. A saving of 659,000 

driving hours, costed at £15.71 an hour, gives a £10.3m 

annual saving which the department says is equivalent 

to £96.9m over 10 years. Adjustments to those figures 

produce a net annual benefit of £8.9m, but across the whole 

freight industry – like the 1mph speed increase – the effect 

is small, though positive. There would also be savings for 

government in not having to issue so many speeding tickets 

for lorries and less trouble for fleet operators in dealing 

with those cases and paying fines – though the Department 

refuses to calculate the ‘benefit’ of not breaking the law. 

The government consultation asked whether the speed 

limit should be held at 50mph or increased to 55mph or 

60mph. Two-thirds of the 520 responses favoured 60mph and 

just 10 per cent wanted the smaller increase. One in seven 

respondents wanted no change, most arguing on safety or 

environmental grounds. But the DfT states: “It is clear that 

they did not agree with, or understand, the Department’s 

view that actual speeds of HGVs are unlikely to increase.” 

Julie Townsend at Brake is unrepentant, however. 

“Increasing the HGV speed on single- and dual-carriageways 

sets a dangerous precedent, sending a message that if 

traffic laws are persistently flouted, the government would 

rather change them than get tough with the law-breaking 

drivers putting everyone at risk. The government itself 

admits that, at best, there will be no economic or roadsafety 

benefit. At worst, it risks increasing deaths and 

serious injuries on our roads. So why take that risk?” 

The government concedes that motorists have little 

knowledge of the old or new limits for lorries. At the Freight 

Transport Association, Bingham admits: “Many motorists do not 

understand that the limit for lorries has been only 40mph and 

this can lead to frustration and, occasionally, risky overtaking.” 

A survey for the AA found that 81 per cent of drivers 

were unaware that lorries were limited to 40mph on singlecarriageway 

roads. Jill Kirkwood, managing director of 

DriveTech, which trains HGV drivers, said: “Many motorists say 

they feel intimidated by lorries but this research highlights how 

a lack of understanding of the laws surrounding lorries, and how 

best to drive round them, could be contributing to this. Drivers 

who find themselves frustrated because they are stuck behind 

a lorry they perceive to be going slowly need to remember 

that there are different speed limits for different vehicles.” 

The government has agreed to spend £50,000 to inform 

drivers of the new lorry limits. Claire Perry says: “The change 

will ensure that HGV speed limits are proportionate and 

better aligned with the limits for HGVs on motorways and 

single-carriageways, and with other vehicles such as coaches 

and cars towing caravans.” But even she admits: “Our evidence 

indicates that actual average speeds are unlikely to change 

in response to the change in the national speed limit.” 


Richard Northedge is managing editor of Today’s CEO. 



Milan: 

city of fashion, football and finance 

Enjoy a pre-dinner 

Campari after the Last 

Supper, says Jeff Mills 

EVERY SPRING AND AUTUMN, 

fashionistas, designers and 

supermodels arrive to take part in 

Milan’s fashion weeks. Armani, Dolce & 

Gabbana, Gucci, Prada, Pucci, Versace 

and the rest may manufacture their 

clothes elsewhere, but the northern 

Italian city is where they choose to put 

them on show. But the city is also one 

of the centres of many of the country’s 

other businesses: big names that are 

found here include the Alfa Romeo car 

maker, tyre company Pirelli and Telecom 

Italia, Italy’s biggest phone operator. 

The city’s enormous Fiera Milano 

exhibition centre and trade-fair 

complex is one of the most important 

in the world, playing host to countless 

international exhibitions, business 

conferences and other events. Then 

back in the centre of town there is the 

stock exchange as well as corporate 

headquarters representing sectors 

such as publishing and banking. There 

is also La Scala opera house and, 

of course, two of Italy’s top soccer 

teams, AC Milan and Inter Milan. 

Unlike many Italian cities blessed 

with countless beautiful buildings and 

priceless works of art, Milan does not 



immediately encourage you to fall in 

love with it and stay smitten forever 

more. As with many successful affairs 

of the heart, that can take rather longer. 

At first glance the city can appear to 

be made up of rather more instant style 

than lasting substance. But get to know 

it and you may be pleasantly surprised. 

Milan may lack some of the cultural 

masterpieces, grandeur and splendour 

of cities such as Rome and Florence, 

but when it comes to doing business in 

Italy, with a little fun and entertainment 

thrown in for good measure, it does 

have an awful lot going for it. 

Milan is an easy place to visit 

on business but it’s still worth 

remembering a few points of etiquette. 

Just as in other major Italian cities, good 

manners are important at business 

meetings, though timing can be, shall we 

say, flexible. Remember to shake hands 

when arriving and leaving and don’t be 

surprised if you also get a hug: Italians 

tend to be much more tactile than 

businessmen in some other countries. 

Hours of business are normally 

8.30am to 4.30pm but remember 

that some businesses, including 

banks, close for around at hour at 

lunchtime. Meetings usually take 

place in offices, bars or restaurants 

but don’t be surprised if you are 

also invited to visit your contacts’ 

homes for a family supper. In which 

case, be sure to take a suitable gift, 

such as flowers or chocolates. 

Business may take you to virtually 

any part of the city but for convenience 

you are probably better off staying in or 

close to the centre. And if you want to 

be seen staying at what many consider 

to be the best hotel in Milan, opt for 

the 400-room Hotel Principe di Savoia 

Milano at Piazza della Repubblica 17 

(www.hotelprincipesavoia.com), where 

facilities include a fully-equipped 

business centre and Wi-Fi throughout. 

There’s also a fully-equipped fitness 

centre and swimming pool. An 

alternative, particularly if you plan to 

stay for some leisure time over the 

weekend, is the118-room 

Four Seasons Milan at Via Gesu 6-8 

(www.fourseasons.com/milan), which 

is housed in a fabulous 15th century 

building that was originally a convent. 

After-work entertaining is the 



a visit to the monastery 

of Santa Maria della 

Grazie where you can 

gaze in awe at Leonardo 

da Vinci’s masterpiece 

‘The Last Supper’ 

‘ 

’ 

norm, so be prepared for a few late 

nights. If it’s down to you to find 

somewhere to take your contacts 

for a spot of business entertaining 

a good bet is to head to the Navigli 

area to the south of the city centre 

where there is an excellent selection 

of bars, many serving free ‘aperitivo’ 

buffets of antipasti with the drinks 

between about 6pm and 9pm. This 

area is also a good option if you want 

to make a late night of it, with plenty 

of restaurants and clubs to be found. 

When it comes to choosing a suitable 

restaurant, being Italy, you are spoiled 

for choice. A good option is to follow the 

lead set by Milan’s movers and shakers 

and make a booking at Cracco at Via 

Victor Hugo, 4 (www.ristorantecracco.it), 

where there will be plenty of innovative 

contemporary dishes on the menu. 

There’s also an exceptional wine list. 

Alternatively, if you fancy joining 

the fashion set, head for the Italian 

version of Nobu in Armani World at Via 

Pisoni, 1 (www.armaninobu.it), which 

is sure to be awash with designers, 

models and their entourages, even 

when Milan Fashion Weeks have 

not taken over much of the city. 

Executives staying in the city centre 

can walk to many appointments – but 

if you do get tired of dodging motor 

scooters and cavalier Italian car 

drivers as you try to cross the street, 

there is a comprehensive transport 

system operated by Azienda Trasporti 

Milanesi (ATM), which allows you 

to swap between the metro, buses, 

trams and trolleybuses using the same 

tickets. Alternatively taxis, which are 

usually white or yellow, can be hailed 

on the street or, better still, hired at 

taxi ranks outside train stations. 



But hopefully your visit to Milan 

won’t be all business. There is plenty 

to see and do and it would be a shame 

indeed if to leave the city without 

building some time off into your 

itinerary or, better still, staying for a 

couple of extra days, perhaps over the 

weekend. Even if you have limited time 

for leisure, make a point of heading 

off to explore the Navigli canal area, 

a very old district of Milan made up of 

winding alleys with tiny atmospheric 

shops and boutiques selling almost 

everything you could imagine. 

If you are lucky you may also be 

there when the Mercatone dell’ 

Antiquariato takes place. This is when 

hundreds of antiques dealers line 

the canal towpaths offering anything 

and everything you may imagine: 

however, not all the goods are genuine 

antiques, so take extra care before 

you buy anything. When you have had 

your fill of this area you can change 

pace with a visit to the monastery 

of Santa Maria della Grazie where 

you can gaze in awe at Leonardo da 

Vinci’s masterpiece ‘The Last Supper’. 

Those with more limited spare 

time should head for the Duomo, the 

cathedral that took more than 500 

years to complete and which dominates 

the city centre. If you feel up to it, climb 

the medieval spiral staircase that brings 

you out onto a onto a roof terrace with 

a view you will remember for some time. 

Or take some time out for shopping. 

As Milan is fashion central, clothes are 

probably the best gifts to take home, 

provided, of course, you are certain 

you know the right sizes. Check out 

Il Rinascente or UPIM department 

stores, where the quality is high but 

the prices reasonable. But if you want 

to give your credit cards a workout, 

there are plenty of designer boutiques. 

And if you are a sports fan try getting 

tickets for football matches involving 

Milan’s top teams. Best bet is to ask 

your hotel concierge, who almost 

certainly will have a way of finding 

hard-to-get tickets. If culture of a 

different kind is more your thing, use 

the same source to obtain tickets for 

performances at La Scala opera house. 

Alternatively, for one of the greatest 

pleasures to be found in Milan, simply 

choose a table outside almost any 

city-centre bar and enjoy a pre-dinner 

Campari and soda, as you watch the 

start of the evening parade of beautiful 

people window-shopping. 


Jeff Mills has visited most countries 

of the world at least once. He edited 

the leading travel industry newspaper, 

Travel Weekly, and was travel editor 

of Sunday Business. His column now 

appears in The Times most days of 

the week. 


In 2014 Airports Authority of Trinidad and 

Tobago will announce a Request for Proposals 

and invite suitably qualified companies and 

individuals to submit proposals for leasing and 

developing greenfield land at the Piarco AeroPark. 

This is an attractive opportunity to lease land and 

operate in one of the most high-traffic areas in 

Trinidad and Tobago. 

The Piarco AeroPark is the first aerotropolis or airport city in the 

Caribbean. It will contain zones for various activities including: 

• a hotel and conference center; 

• retail; 

• indoor entertainment and outdoor recreation; 

• offices; 

• technology and service companies; 

• warehouses; 

• international trade; and 

• aviation-related services. 

Airports Authority of Trinidad and Tobago 

Airports Administrative Centre Piarco International Airport 

South Terminal Golden Grove Road, Piarco 

Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, W.I. 

For further information contact: 

Tel.: (868) 669-2288 extensions 2250/2254 

Fax: (868) 669-4705 

Email: marketing@tntairports.com 

Website: www.tntairports.com/aatt/nabpark.html

BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES ARE SET TO TAKE OFF AT THE 

CARIBBEAN’S FIRST AEROTROPOLIS, THE PIARCO AEROPARK 

IN TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO 

Companies seeking to expand their operations in Latin 

America and the Caribbean will also soon be able to 

access prime real estate in one of the most dynamic 

economies in that region, Trinidad and Tobago. This is 

the case as Airports Authority of Trinidad and Tobago 

prepares to launch the Piarco AeroPark, the first 

aerotropolis in the Caribbean. 

An aerotropolis is a city like urban development that is 

formed around an airport. The term aerotropolis was 

coined by Professor John Kasarda who recognized that 

airports are a magnet for economic development. 

Louanna Chai-Alves, Executive Director of the Trinidad 

Hotel and Restaurant Association, Trinidad and Tobago 

(THRTA) firmly believes that Trinidad and Tobago stands 

to benefit from the Piarco AeroPark. Chai –Alves stated 

“we look forward to the development of the Piarco 

AeroPark as an enhancement to the travelling experience 

and the tourism product of Trinidad and Tobago.” 

Airports Authority of Trinidad and Tobago is the 

organization responsible for managing international 

airports in Trinidad and Tobago. The Authority was 

responsible for developing the infrastructure for the 

Piarco AeroPark. The name of the Park was selected 

after a competition that was open to all employees of 

Airports Authority of Trinidad and Tobago. Phase 1 of this 

development, the Piarco Aeropark, occupies 168 acres 

of prime real estate just metres away from the Piarco 

International Airport in Trinidad. 

The Piarco Aeropark will help bolster Trinidad and 

Tobago’s reputation as the business and entertainment 

capital for the Caribbean. It will contain zones earmarked 

for: 

n international trade; 

n a four star airport hotel and conference center; 

n retail shopping; 

n entertainment; 

n offices; 

n warehousing; 

n manufacturing and 

n a Maintenance Repair and Overhaul Facility (MRO). 

Aerial photograph showing the proximity of the Piarco Aeropark to 

the Piarco International Airport. 

Information on leasing opportunities can be found on the 

corporate website for the Authority, 

http://www.tntairports.com/aatt/nabpark.html 

The Piarco Aeropark is an excellent location for 

companies seeking to access South America and the 

Caribbean. Companies based at the Park will be in an 

excellent location to reach potential clients from other 

Caribbean countries as well as Venezuela. Historically, 

a significant number of persons from the Southern 

Caribbean shop in Trinidad and Tobago for gifts, parts 

and for wholesale purchases of foodstuff and hardware 

items. The air cargo links between Trinidad and Tobago 

and the southern Caribbean support this activity. 

It is anticipated that a worldwide call for Requests for 

Proposals for leasing of space at the Piarco Aeropark 

will be announced in May 2014. Companies that are 

interested in leasing space at the Piarco Aeropark should 

contact Airports Authority of Trinidad and Tobago’s 

Marketing Department at marketing@tntairports.com 

The Piarco International Airport, in 

Trinidad and Tobago. 

For further information on these opportunities contact: marketing@tntairports.com

Advertisers’ Index 

Actifio UK Ltd 

IFC 

Airports Authority of Trinidad & Tobago 68, 69 

Aruba Airports Authority NV 63 

Atradius Credit Insurance NV 8 

Bluescope Building North America Inc 6, 7 

British Virgin Islands International Finance Centre 30, 31 

Confirmit Ltd 4 

Cranfield Management Development Ltd 24 

European University Business School 34 

Fleet Logistics International NV 55 

FWU Global Takaful Solutions 18 

GE Capital EMEA Services Ltd IBC, 2 

Henley Business School 39 

International Relations Dublin City Council 12, 13 

Teleperformance Ltd 47 

Volkswagen Financial Services AG 

OBC 

Zenith Bank plc 17 

72 Today’s CFO

François Terrade 

MD, Cross Border 

Receivable Finance 

GE Capital 

David Meltham 

Group Finance Director 

Vita Group 

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CEO Issue 3

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