Link, share, join, listen ...
Link, share, join, listen ...
I received my first mention in the HSJ in February off the back of a PR piece we recently put together about some of the current market drivers for interim management in the NHS. The publicity has been welcome, I have certainly had three or four decent enquiries that may not have reached me without the article, but the mixed response across the comments has been very interesting.
For those that haven’t seen it, the article is titled “Mergers pay boost for NHS Interim Mangers” and highlights an Ipsos Mori poll which found that day rates for interims in the NHS rose 11% between Q3 2010 vs Q3 2011.
Surprising? Potentially so. Then again, the supply/demand balance is shifting. I checked my numbers and Q3 of 2010 was my worst quarter in two years at Interim Partners for new requirements coming through, Quarter 3 of 2011 has been my second best.
The HSJ reader base comprises some interims of course, but the majority will be permanent employees in the NHS, and understandably there has been some vitriol from those who have been displaced or made redundant. I can understand that when redundancies have been made, or your employer is heading for a year end deficit, it would be galling to see an interim appointed in your organisation, or to see interims enjoying pay rises whilst your pay is frozen.
But as one person commented;
“Quite frankly if an organisation needs to employ interims then it must ask itself some fundamental questions.”
Interims bring the skill and expertise not found in-house, or they cover the gaps that an organisation struggles to fill on a substantive basis, which could be for any number of reasons. Another comments:
“My own view is that using interims/consultants was fine in the days of plenty when the NHS was a growth industry.”
If anything I think the opposite is true, when the NHS was growing, money should have been invested in training and development, to increase the skills and expertise of the NHS substantive workforce – interims rescue, solve, turnaround and improve and I think the fundamentals of the current state of the NHS bode well for NHS interim managers.
I’d be interested to hear your thoughts.
Steve Melber is Head of Healthcare for Interim Partners.
Game Stores Group, once the darling of the city has appointed PwC to help the retailer form a long term strategy for the business.
I sympathise with the current management team who are trying to trade in this environment but the obvious problems of the business are:-
PwC has been hired to assess the medium to long term outlook and to understand how much of the businesses issues are down to a structural decline of the gaming market and how much is cyclical. The fortunes of the gaming market were at an all-time high with the release of the Nintendo Wii and Sony Playstation 3 only a handful of years ago and while this market is in decline Apple are about to hit 25 billion App downloads. Game are looking at offloading their international business and are making strides in multi-channel by selling Sony digital downloads in store but surely the more savvy consumer can cut out the middleman?
There will inevitably be scepticism around how effective this review will be. With the rise of online gaming there will be a drastic need to downsize their high street presence and to use the remaining stores to give customers the ultimate gaming experience rather than just selling products (is anyone else thinking Apple?). A business so heavily rooted in entertainment retailing should be innovating and leading online but arguably this should have been done long before now. So what can PwC tell them that deep down, they don’t already know? For those involved in the retail interim management community I am really interested to hear your views on this. Is the strategic review prolonging the agony or is it Game Over?
Jonathan Flynn is Head of Retail for Interim Partners.
Having recently been appointed as Head of Banking at Interim Partners it is time to produce my first blog!
I wanted to use this initial blog to introduce myself, give a little background and talk briefly about the sector I will be working in.
I began my career at Deutsche Bank before spending almost five years with JP Morgan in London where I supported their structured finance business. That was in days when acronyms like CDO, SPV and so on were seen as innovative!
Following a period recruiting for the investment banking sector in Dublin I joined Albemarle Interim Management in London. Albemarle was, at the time, the leading supplier of interims in the retail and commercial banking market.
This was shortly after the financial crisis and involved working on extremely challenging but timely and interesting assignments such as those at Northern Rock, Lloyds/HBOS and Bank of England.
Having spent time out of sector I was lured back by the prospect of joining Interim Partners, an ambitious business but one which is determined to maintain a high standard of ethics in the way it does business. I will be based in London but also cover the Dublin market (6.30am flights are great!) so things should be busy in the year ahead.
Much has changed in London over the past couple of years but thankfully many of the same people are still in the market so it’s great to rekindle old connections. It would be interesting to get any thoughts on where you see the challenges and opportunities for the senior interim market in financial services for the year ahead.
Charles Geoghegan is Head of Banking for Interim Partners.
I was delighted to see that the government is taking the rising costs for the Insurance industry seriously.
David Cameron met a delegation from the ABI, RBS, Admiral, Axa, Aviva and Zurich at Downing Street this week to talk about whiplash claims. In Britain there are 1500 whiplash claims made per day, the majority for minor incidents which costs the Insurance industry £2bn per year, adding £90 per year to the average premium. The Government states that there has been a 70% increase in injury claims over six years, with whiplash accounting for 70% of them.
The Insurance industry is facing headwinds from margin erosion due to increased competition and higher regulatory costs through Solvency II. It is not fair that the majority of honest motorists have to pay increased premiums to cover the costs of spurious whiplash claims from unscrupulous people.
The government has already pledged to ban referral fees, where personal injury details are be exchanged between lawyers, insurers and claims management businesses. My wife had a non-fault accident last year and has been plagued by unsolicited text messages ever since telling her how much compensation she could claim, despite the fact that nobody was injured at all. Clearly this serves to drive the market for claims and pushes up prices for consumers. In 2010 to 2011 there were 554,000 claims in the UK for whiplash, that’s over 10,000 per week!
Is it just me or does anybody else think the current system needs a major rethink?
Andrew McIntee is Director of Financial Services at Interim Partners
It occurred to me recently that we are quite an insular nation, us British.
In a previous life, I remember being headhunted for my cross-sector industry experience. During the interview process, I was told that it would be incredibly helpful to have a “fresh perspective” – i.e. to take the learnings from my previous companies and think about how they could do things differently.
The reality couldn’t be further from the truth. I quickly learnt that mentioning best practice from my other company had the new team running for the hills, determined that their way was the best!
In my current role, it would seem that that trend is continuing.
Understandably, clients are keen for interim candidates to have relevant experience of their sector (although you could argue that, as in my case, other sectors may be useful too). So we place financial services lifers into Financial Services companies, retailers into Retail and so on – and in this risk-averse economic market, it doesn’t look set to change any time soon.
But a constant refrain from interims across our network is that they do have transferrable skills on the whole, whether it be Business Transformation, HR or Finance to name but a few.
And with a little faith on the part of the client, they believe they can do a great job.
What do you think? As a client, would you take a risk and hire an interim from outside your sector?
In my view, the only time it really happens nowadays is when someone comes recommended through direct sources – and I don’t hear of too many failures in these cases.
Liz Sinclair is the Account Director at Interim Partners.
I read with amazement yesterday regarding the Federal Communications Commission’s withdrawal of support for LightSquared’s US national rollout of LTE equipment.
LightSquared had hoped to rollout 4G or LTE equipment to provide broadband services to 260 million Americans. One hedge fund has sunk $3bn into the project. Today’s news is somewhat of a shock – however, the alleged potential interference of GPS signals caused by LightSquared’s infrastructure has been hotly debated for some time now.
What amazed me is how can a company’s product attract so much investment, be approved by federal government yet not have been properly tested?
I’m sure there’ll be an outcry as to whether the interference is real or whether this is all politically motivated and so on, but one figures that where there’s smoke there’s usually fire – even if it’s merely smouldering away quietly under a business plan somewhere…
I wonder if anyone knows of any other instances where a product which has attracted so much investment has ultimately been found to be fatally flawed?
Answers on the back of a postcard please! (Oh and by the way cigarettes and the like don’t count!)
Steve Blake is Head of Technology, Media and Telecommunications at Interim Partners.
BG Group is well positioned in developing markets. They have significant presence in Asia and Brazil, and these large emerging economies are continuing to witness strong growth in comparison to the more mature traditional nation states.
These emerging nations’ population dynamics are also outstripping the west. According to figures from the most recent UN Census report, between now and 2035 the world’s population will rise 1.7bn from 6.9bn to 8.6bn. Importantly, 110m of this figure will be within OECD counties and 1.6bn from developing counties. OPEC is also suggesting an increase in energy demand of 51% by 2035.
Therefore BG is well positioned to capitalise on this increased demand!
So, investment in BG Group’s stock should provide sustainable earnings and is a long term capital appreciation play?
I look forward to your thoughts.
Jonathan Mooney is the Energy & Utilities Senior Consultant at Interim Partners.
It seems that there is a lot of love to share at the moment, with Trade buyers and Private Equity alike looking to court businesses and build market share.
This is with a back drop of an extremely tough couple of years in Mergers & Acquisitions. According to the recent OC&C merger market analysis on UK Food & Drink Manufacturers’ M&A activity, 2010 almost flatlined with only four deals valued over £20m!
The good news is that Food & Drink companies big and small are turning to M&A to boost top line growth and gain market share and use as leverage with retailers – this is set to continue in 2012.
2011 started to mark a change with a number of transactions – such as Boparan 2Sisters and Northern Foods, Brookes Avana, Hain Celestial and Daniels, First Milk Group and Kingdom, Princes and Premier Canning, Baxter’s and Frey Bentos, Young’s Seafood and Cumbrian Seafood. Which leads me to a number of questions:
What impact do you think consolidation will have for Food & Drink Manufacturing in the UK?
Match-making?
Looking at recent transactions and future deals there appears to be two main courting tactics:
Love at first sight – targeting the obvious match with businesses operating in the same vertical category such as sandwiches to build category depth.
Opposites attract – targeting businesses that in isolation are not an obvious match but partnered with have the potential to become category powerhouses by building breadth (soups, salads, sandwiches, fruit pots) in a core category such as Food to Go.
What other acquisition strategies do you think make sense in this market?
Why marry now?
As food & drink manufacturers fight for survival (against a wave of commodity cost increases from the supply side and retailers squeezing margin from the customer side), it has never been tougher for manufacturers to hold onto margin and remain profitable. Growth needs to be realised at speed and this means buying out the competition or being bought out – consolidation in market means power in size, market share, shelf space and lobbying power. If anything is going to make the retailers nervous it will be consolidation, as fewer suppliers means weaker negotiating position. So if done properly the benefits are immense!
Love match?
Post-acquisition benefits include economies of scale and supply chain efficiencies – offering an immediate benefit against rising commodity costs. Eliminating the competition and gaining market share can also result in dominant shelf space and a position of strength with retailers – how will they respond as the supply market shrinks?
Heart break?
Many post-acquisition businesses soon find the honeymoon period is over! Certain love-blind facts hidden during the courting process become irritating habits to overcome, or even deep personality flaws that could wreck the long term future of the relationship. What resources will businesses need for a successful integration?
Match made?
As with any relationship there is a distinct phase when good due diligence can be unravelled if the integration is not planned out and delivered in good time. All too often the most important element when planning the integration is overlooked: culture. As two cultures collide the unforeseen obstacles can seem insurmountable, using inexperienced or culturally bias internal resource to implement change.
Interim Programme leads can work best in this environment as they offer independence, neutrality and most importantly experience to cut through the cultural, process and system differences. Used to over-arch the process from pre-acquisition (i.e. operational due diligence) to post-acquisition integration and leadership, Interims can provide that helicopter view and clear pathway for the integration.
They are experienced in managing people from different cultures, managing businesses through change successfully, providing Counsel and ear-marking potential pitfalls/opportunities – an invaluable resource through a period of adjustment.
The Food & Drink market is picking up on the value of Interim Managers, with the thinking moving from a useful tool for gap cover to using Interims as agents for change – i.e. Project/Programme leads, Turnaround Directors and International Development specialists. As they start to reap the real value that Interim Managers can add to a business going through change, do you think 2012 will be the year for the career interim in Food & Drink?
I’m sitting here on the train at 6.00am trying to warm up by writing my blog. Why? Well it’s certainly not a New Year’s resolution that I’m going to be far more efficient with my time. I have to put it down to the fact that the start to the year has been a little bit frenetic.
Just before Christmas I was reading articles from a series of economists who were trying induce an Ebenezer Scrooge-style festive period with their talk of “double dip” and Armageddon. But since then I’ve been buoyed by the fact that my meetings are about deals that are back on the table and more interestingly, commercial growth strategy! I was also lucky enough to have a piece published in the FT last week that has received some interesting feedback regarding the involvement of the lender community in appointing senior level interims. All in all I believe we have an interesting year ahead!!
Maybe we’re trying to talk ourselves out of the issues that surround us or possibly we’re trying get our business done for the year nice and early so we have the summer free to enjoy the splendour of the greatest show on earth coming to London in July. I have noticed a spring in the step of a number of the clients that I’m meeting right now and long may the positive attitude continue. I’d be interested to hear your thoughts and dare I say predictions are for the year. Do you get out of the blocks quickly if you’re running a marathon?
Simon Gough is Director of Private Equity & Advisory at Interim Partners.
I was thinking recently of an Institute For Turnaround (IFT) lecture I attended in the summer of 2008 where Sir Stuart Rose was inducted as an Honorary Member and made to ‘sing for his supper’. On reflection I wonder if Sir Stuart is in possession of a crystal ball as he made what have turned out to be some frighteningly accurate predictions on the retail sector and economy as a whole. I won’t go into the negatives because you’ll be more than familiar with the bad news in retail in recent times but if his predictions continue to be accurate then I’m going to share some good news with you……….he talked about four years of pain before things got better and by my calculations that makes it this summer – hooray!
On the subject of predictions, I recently presented my business plan to our team at Interim Partners and BrightPool and highlighted the areas I think will be most prevalent for interim managers operating in retail this year. On the proactive side I see roles for interim managers who can look at opportunities for retailers to diversify and create more reason for consumers to spend. Sir Stuart summed it up nicely by saying M&S was continually trying to ‘persuade you to part with every pound that we can’. There is also the continued growth of on-line retailing. I spoke with a major parcel delivery business who have more than doubled the amount of parcels delivered in December over the last three years. Retailers will continue to invest in on-line and need operational support to make sure the growth can be supported by their supply chain. On the reactive side there is going to be continued work around Finance (cash management) and HR (business re-organisations).
I’m interested to hear your predictions for the sector in 2012. Are the good times going to return to UK retailing in time for the Olympics?
Jonathan Flynn is Head of Retail at Interim Partners.
