The CEO Forum will give chief executives a chance to study business leaders who are achieving success, writes FRANK DILLON
ABOUT 350 of the country’s leading chief executives will gather next week in Dublin Castle for the 21st annual CEO Forum, organised by Deloitte and Enterprise Ireland. It takes place against a backdrop of difficult trading conditions, poor consumer sentiment, a fiscal crisis for the Government and expectations of a harsh budget next month.
Not much cause for optimism on the part of Irish business leaders, one might think.
The organisers, however, feel that the gathering could help inspire the corporate sector to think beyond immediate difficulties and to explore the opportunities that are available, especially in global markets.
The forum theme is Keys to Success in the new Business Environment. Nick Mernagh of Enterprise Ireland says that over the years it had proved a useful event in exchanging business growth ideas and opportunities, and this was even more relevant today.
“At this critical time in Ireland’s economic development, the forum gives Irish business chief executives the time to listen, reflect and learn from leading Irish business leaders who are achieving significant success,” he says.
One of the keynote speakers who will provide such inspiration, it is hoped, is Mike Fitzgerald, chief executive of Altobridge, a technology company that provides low-cost solutions for communication between wireless devices. Among the ideas that Fitzgerald will share is his belief that the economic downturn provides a great opportunity to recruit top talent that otherwise might not be available.
Fitzgerald credits a large part of the success of Altobridge to his ability to recruit a talented team out of Motorola after it shed staff at its Cork facility in 2006. “We got a top team with leading-edge experience out of Motorola, resources that would not typically be available to a firm in our position. We also picked up talent from Ericsson’s during an earlier downturn. Similar opportunities exist for others now,” he advises.
Altobridge is just the type of internationally focused company Enterprise Ireland is keen to encourage. Founded in Tralee in 2002, the company quickly established itself as a world leader in the development of mobile communications over satellite for the aeronautical and maritime industries.
Its patented technology has been used to provide GSM services on commercial flights and to provide communication facilities in locations including Mongolia, Malaysia and South America. Fitzgerald’s achievements with the firm were recognised when he was named Ernst Young Entrepreneur of the Year in the Emerging category last month.
Fitzgerald used to think it was a disadvantage having no Irish customers, but his global focus is working to his advantage in the downturn, where he can focus on growth markets such as southeast Asia. Despite his firm’s success, Fitzgerald says he sees little recovery in global markets yet. With customers finding it difficult to justify large-scale capital purchases, he is working on providing a leasing-based solution for them and hopes to finalise a funding package for Altobridge to allow this.
Another forum speaker focused on the international market is Peter Gray, chief executive of pharmaceutical company Icon. “You can either resist or embrace globalisation, and we’ve embraced it from day one. Some of our major competitors in the UK and Germany concentrated on their domestic markets and have lost out. We are the only non-US global player in our industry,” he says.
Gray, who has been chief executive since 2002, says embracing the diaspora – especially in respect of the cultural connection between the US and Ireland – has been a key feature of the success of the firm, something others could replicate.
Icon’s growth in the past two decades has been spectacular. In 1990 it employed just five staff, while today it employs over 7,000 in 70 locations around the world. Its business is centred on organising clinical trials for pharmaceutical companies, and its outsourced solution has proved popular.
Gray says that as the business has grown, one of management’s challenges has been to balance maintaining its entrepreneurial spirit with developing consistency across a global platform. “Giving local managers a good level of autonomy – within certain necessary parameters – has proved to be a successful formula for us. Our experience has been that if managers feel they have a good degree of freedom, they have grown the business faster.”
While the pharmaceutical industry is considered to be more resilient than most sectors, Gray says it faces its own pressures. “A lot of drugs are coming off patent over the next five years and less new ones have been brought to market than the industry expected. This is driving a focus on cost reduction.”
Gray says he sees a cautious improvement in business confidence, but feels we are some way off a full-blown economic recovery.
This is echoed by speaker Andrew Langford, chief executive of FBD, who is more exposed to the downturn of the Irish market. “We have quite a way to go before we see a recovery, and the next 18-24 months will be difficult. Consumers are pulling in their spending, cutting the high levels of debt that they had built up,” he notes.
FBD has been reconfigured over the past year, reducing staff by 120, but Langford says the company has also focused on growth opportunities. Its “no nonsense” insurance brand has been very successful in targeting the budget end of the market he says, and the lesson is that recessions provide opportunities for nimble operators to take market share, he explains.
In tough times, a key task for management is to have good communication with staff, he advises. “You need to be honest and let people know the implications of not reacting to a new market environment . . . Those who have the ability to implement the necessary change in a timely way, with the support of management and staff, will ride out the crises and be stronger as a result.”
The CEO Forum takes place on November 12th in Dublin Castle
