Equiniti Magazine Winter 2014

EnGaGE, innoVatE, DEliVEr.

let’s get started Julie Meyer on egos, explosive growth and getting David and Goliath to dance

INSIDE> copinG With GroWth Follow our four golden rules paGE 4

WinninG marGins Small changes for big business wins paGE 18

prEmiEr lEaGuE Introducing Equiniti Premier Services paGE 26

foreword

words from the front

A time for transformation Stuart Ellen, Managing Director, Registration Services, Equiniti

Managing transformation is key to any business that wishes to grow, develop and thrive. If you consider how our business has developed over the past six years, we have undergone a huge amount of change. One change that was announced towards the end of last year was John Parker’s retirement from his role as Managing Director, Shareholder Solutions. We are fortunate to still have access to John’s knowledge and insight through his non-executive roles with Shareholder Solutions and Equiniti Group, but on behalf of everyone at Equiniti I would like to extend our best wishes and huge thanks to John for his leadership over many years.

Please contact me at: marketing@ equiniti.com

Our first EQ magazine of 2014 takes transformation as its theme. Start-up champion Julie Meyer has seen the impact of explosive growth up close and urges us all to embrace change. Elsewhere we share our four golden rules for coping with business growth and take a closer look at the benefits in implementing marginal gains.

With 30 million people benefiting from our services, a client satisfaction rate of 91% is something that we continually work hard to maintain. This was evident in Royal Mail’s IPO, when our customer satisfaction levels remained the same, despite the increased customer enquiries. This capped a very successful year for us, and I hope that 2014 will be even better.

If you would like to share your feedback on the magazine, please do get in touch.

Stuart Ellen

2 > EQ | winter 2014

6

of the best

business transformations A change is as good as a rest – or in the case of these companies, it’s even better.

Radically transforming their offerings has enabled these businesses to keep ahead and continue making profits.

1

Nokia

A Finnish stalwart, Nokia started life by merging a rubber business, a paper mill and a cable works together. The company then went on to completely transform its core products, becoming one of the largest mobile phone manufacturers in the world. Whilst the recent sale of its mobile business to Microsoft suggests that its skills cannot compete in today’s hypercompetitive market, there is no denying that it pulled off a formidable transformation in its time.

2 Gap

Believe it or not, Gap started life selling records and tapes, as well as jeans. In 1969, when Doris and Donald Fisher opened their first Gap store next to a San Francisco university, they wanted to appeal to the younger generation.

But they quickly decided the best way to do this was to drop the music and concentrate on the product that was proving popular with their target market – jeans. This decision swiftly paid off in spectacular style; in their first year they made $2 million in sales. Nowadays Gap is an international retailer with six brands, over 3,000 stores and more than 133,000 employees to its name.

conTenTS inside this issue

EQUINITI MAGAZINE NUMBER 11 Cover photograph by tony french

EnGaGE, innoVatE, DEliVEr.

let’s get started Julie Meyer on egos, explosive growth and getting David and Goliath to dance

INSIDE> copinG With GroWth Follow our four golden rules paGE 4

WinninG marGins Small changes for big business wins paGE 18

prEmiEr lEaGuE Introducing Equiniti Premier Services paGE 26

rEGulars 6 Thinking aloud

3

Tiffany’s

From humble to high society, Tiffany’s has achieved one of the most extraordinary business transformations of all time by turning its original New York stationery store into a world-renowned jeweller. Famous for its diamonds, and immortalised in Audrey Hepburn’s classic film, this is an exceptional transformation success story.

4

CGi

CGI has come a long way since two entrepreneurs started the company in their basement. What was originally an IT strategic consulting firm has transformed into a full-service IT and business process service company, by adding systems integration and IT and business process outsourcing services to its offering. Today, CGI has more than 69,000 consultants across the globe, and is regarded as one of the leading IT and business process services in the world.

5

Nintendo

Whilst today this Japanese giant is best known for its high-tech gaming systems, its origins lie in playing cards. This company keeps itself at the top of its industry by constantly moving with the times. From playing cards in 1889 to the revolutionary Wii, Nintendo has always known how to give its customers what they want.

reX featUres

6 iBM

Ever heard of the Computing-TabulatingRecording Company? Quite possibly not, but you’ll know the business it went on to become.

Born in 1911, IBM’s original products included commercial scales and punch card tabulators – a far cry from the high-tech software and consultancy services that it offers today.

22 Six steps

Brian White and Jon Wilson on returning to the top of their game

How to successfully manage an IPO

20 Company Secretary profile

Nicola Pattimore discusses the importance of Equiniti’s people

Meet Tate & Lyle’s Company Secretary, Lucie Gilbert

24 My Equiniti

31 What’s new at Equiniti?

A round-up of the latest Equiniti news

fEaturEs 4 Coping with growth What do you need to consider as your business booms?

10 Signed, sealed, delivered Five different Equiniti experiences of the recent Royal Mail IPO

26 Equiniti Premier Services Acquiring Killik Employee Services spells great things for our customers

27 Come fly with me

12 Entrepreneur country

easyJet strengthens its relationship with Equiniti

Julie Meyer is living proof that if you properly articulate the right ideas, the money will find you

Director of Prism Cosec, Chris Stamp, discusses the restructured annual report

16 Charting change Expanding our capabilities

18 Winning with the 1% Small changes equal big business wins

28 Telling tales

30 Adding value Equiniti Investor Analytics’ partnership with Orient Capital shows off our combined technological capabilities

the equiniti Group: the following companies are registered in england and Wales. registered office: aspect house, spencer road, Lancing, West sussex, bn99 6da: equiniti Limited, no: 6226088; equiniti financial services Limited, no: 6208699. registered office: sutherland house, russell Way, crawley, West sussex, rh10 1Uh: equiniti services Limited, no: 756582; claybrook computing Limited, trading as equiniti claybrook, no: 1287205; paymaster (1836) Limited, trading as equiniti paymaster and hazell carr, no: 3249700; equiniti solutions Limited, trading as equiniti paymaster and hazell carr, no: 3335560. While every effort has been made to ensure that information is correct at the time of going to print, the equiniti Group cannot be held responsible for the outcome of any action based on information contained in this publication. the equiniti Group does not give any warranty for the completeness or accuracy for this publication’s content. eQ magazine is produced and published on behalf of equiniti by White Light Media. creative director: eric campbell Writers: White Light Media team, Lisa Labarte, nicola collins designers: islay brown, Lauren Lee, angela McKean www.whitelightmedia.co.uk. Members of the cMa & ppa

eQ magazine has been printed on environmentally responsible paper, manufactured from well managed forests, controlled sources and recycled wood.

www.equiniti.com > 3

coPing wiTh growTh a Guide for eXpandinG Businesses

EQ’s four golden rules for coping with growth AsK ANY business owner about their aspirations

and you’ll no doubt find that they dream of expanding their business, but if it isn’t well managed, growth can quickly turn into a nightmare. EQ has spoken to the experts and compiled the very best advice on how to cope with the challenges of growth to ensure your business remains on the up.

1. Planning is vital David foster, MD, Winning Business

A plan is no more than a route map. You wouldn’t drive to somewhere you have never been before unless you had a map or you wouldn’t know which way to turn out of the drive. Without a plan, you have no idea which direction to drive in and you’ve got no chance of getting to where you want to be.

The need for a plan is fundamental to everything we do. It is as simple as having an understanding of where you are trying to get to, an idea of the vehicle you are going to use, the type of business you are going to run or the structure you’re going to use, and an idea of the costs and the timings involved. For all my clients, big or small, I liken it to going on a trip to a new place.

You have to understand what you mean by growth – is it growth in terms of profitability, employee numbers or market presence?

And then you have to be realistic about it. Planning the growth of any business is vital, but you should also know when to abandon or change those plans. Too many people stick to plans whatever happens, and that’s also a big risk.

2. Know your finances ian Gordon, Head of Leadership & Management Programmes, Lancaster University Management school

Growth is another factor in the business that has to be managed. If you get the cash right, 4 > EQ | winter 2014

then most other things will fall into place. When businesses are growing, they need to know how to count the numbers, and they need to know what the numbers are telling them. Without an understanding of them, you are tying one hand behind your back in terms of your ability to grow, and you’re exposing yourself to unnecessary risk. For all the businesses I work with, I strongly recommend dashboard reports – a one-page report which brings out the key financial measurements that are unique to that organisation, relevant to the customers they are serving and appropriate for the business’s industry.

Take two businesses providing the same services to the same market. The business with a good cash reserve will survive longer and be in a more competitive position than another which has an equally good service but hasn’t got the same financial reserves. You can run an entire business on cash flow in the SME sector. You don’t have to look at the profit and loss balance sheet – not that these aren’t critically important – but for the management of the growth of a business, you can do all of that on cash flow.

3. Keep your staff engaged Peter Rogan, MD, future Positive Consulting

I find the challenge with growth is that so much is changing in the business, it is so easy to lose good people, but it is your staff who will drive your growth. To fail to constructively engage with your staff is to lose what I call their ‘discretionary potential’ – what they would bring to the table had you given them the opportunity. People are natural problem solvers, so they want to be involved and contribute. There are eight key things to remember: Positive leadership: let people know how they fit into growth and how they will benefit.

Clear expectations: outline what will change and what this will mean for people’s roles or the structure of the business.

If you do these eight key things, people will see growth as an opportunity, and actively help their managers. If you miss out parts, you aren’t engaging with your staff, and you may struggle to deliver the levels of service required to capitalise on market opportunities.

4. focus on customers Colin Mason, Professor of entrepreneurship (Management), Adam smith Business school, University of Glasgow

Information, tools and resources: if people aren’t properly equipped, they can become demoralised.

Effective processes: everybody on the front line can use a simple tool, like root cause analysis, to continuously improve processes.

Skills and knowledge: do they have what they need at the right time?

Accountability: ensure there is someone taking an interest in employees.

Regular constructive feedback: feedback is a process, and as the business is growing, people will have to grow in experience, confidence and range.

Opportunity to discuss problems and ideas: this is the ability to discuss any of the above.

What struck me from working with highgrowth firms is how heterogeneous they are.

They come from all sectors of the economy, not only technology. For many of them, their philosophy is to have a deep relationship with their customers, to understand and anticipate their needs, and to work closely with them.

Several companies, particularly in manufacturing, sell themselves as solutions providers to their customers. They recognise that if they are only providing a product, there is a danger this would just become a commodity and then, they would have to compete on price. Instead, they wrap service around whatever products they are selling. This means they have on-going relationships with their customers and they have multiple revenue streams from their customers.

This business model may not work for every sector, but it is applicable for B2B. Businesses need to be customercentric. What your business is going to do has to be based on a conversation with the customer. It has to come first, rather than your R&D lab deciding what to produce and then figuring out who will buy it. I did economics at university, and the most useful concept was ‘opportunity cost’: when you’ve used an hour in the day, you can’t have that hour back again. Businesses evolve, and you have to really think through your customer base. Do you want to focus more on certain customers? Who are your most profitable customers? www.equiniti.com > 5

Thinking Aloud

Brian White and Jon Wilson

portraits by david anderson

Managing Directors of Client Relationships at Equiniti, Brian White and Jon Wilson, talk returning to the top of their game and what this means for clients Transitional times

Jon We have come so far in the past six years.

We have worked hard to ensure that the service we provide reflects the individual requirements of our clients. This has recently been recognised by our clients as Equiniti returned to the position of number one share registrar in the UK according to the Capital Analytics* Survey.

One of our differentiators is that we recognise our customers as individuals and we will tailor our solutions to fit their needs. We don’t believe in a one-size-fits-all philosophy; we listen to our clients’ needs.

Brian As part of our commitment to keep

delivering the very best service for our customers, we have recently changed the Relationship Management structure. In a market and business that is fast changing, our new approach will allow us to better cater our offering and service delivery to our clients.

Jon As Managing Directors of Client Relationships Brian and I have as our primary focus ensuring that we continue to deliver the best possible service to customers. To ensure this happens we are continuously working with our Relationship teams making sure that our clients’ needs are fully met, and where possible, exceeding our clients’ expectations. We have recently refocused our approach and we are delighted with the way this is starting to take shape.

Brian Equiniti has also made a number of

acquisitions in recent years, particularly in the Shareholder Solutions environment, which have delivered benefits to our clients, in terms of

*Overall satisfaction results in the Capital Analytics UK Registrars Benchmarking Survey 2013.

6 > EQ | winter 2014

what Equiniti can offer and also have improved the breadth of our service. With this in mind, changing the structure of our teams was really important – as our client base broadens, we needed to make sure we have a structure that is fit for purpose and that can still deliver the level of service our clients have come to expect from Equiniti.

Keeping customers at the heart

Brian Every client is important to us and Jon

will talk about this later. For me it is about understanding our clients but also being aware of their niche requirements and this is where the Relationship Management team is really important. Having this depth of understanding makes Equiniti’s and the client’s lives easier.

Jon For me, it’s about listening to the voice of

the client and understanding that each client has different requirements. We look after a whole breadth of clients from those that have millions of shareholders, to those that have very few, and we recognise that. We care about our clients’ businesses and keep our customers at the heart of what we do, and in doing that we can’t apply just one approach. It needs to be more proactive than that and this new approach allows us to deliver on this.

Complementary acquisitions

Jon Shareholder Solutions is at the heart of

what Equiniti stands for and the acquisitions we have made over the last five years have complemented and broadened our offering.

www.equiniti.com > 7

Thinking Aloud

>Brian White and Jon Wilson

Our recent purchase of Killik Employee Services (KES), now Equiniti Premier Services, has given us the opportunity to offer further services to our clients in international markets. Equiniti Premier Services helps us to present a service offering to our corporates that we couldn’t this time last year, so it’s definitely a good thing.

Brian Our clients have a huge impact on the

acquisitions that we look to make. Every acquisition that we have completed in the last six years has complemented Equiniti and helped in delivering to our clients and growing and taking the business forward.

Gaining capital

Jon When the Capital Analytics results were

published six years ago, we were ranked pretty low – in fact we were last. As a result of this, as you may expect, an action plan was developed which along with other initiatives used working groups and the principle of continuous improvement to tackle each category. Plans and workstreams were put in place that we worked through each year until we got back to the top spot.

Brian We also looked at the root causes of where

we were making errors or where we weren’t getting the best feedback and we eradicated those.

That really helped us to turn around the areas of the business where we weren’t performing as well as we could. We enjoy being number one and our ambition is to stay there.

8 > EQ | winter 2014

Jon We absolutely strive to be number one,

so even though we are there at the moment, we won’t become complacent – we will keep working with our clients to ensure our service continues to improve.

A year to remember

Brian From a business perspective, being

appointed to handle Royal Mail Group’s IPO against a competitive tender was a real highlight in 2013. The all-round delivery from across the Equiniti teams was outstanding in such a short delivery timescale. Our relationship with easyJet has also developed this year and we now handle all of its services in registration and employee share plans. I’m also really proud of our handling of the Barclays rights issue, a corporate action over a very tight timescale, where we had to communicate with 700,000 shareholders and deal with their varying requests.

Jon There have been many highlights this

year but for me the biggest achievement is having returned to the top spot in the Capital Analytics Survey. We couldn’t have done this without the help of all our colleagues across the business that are also being recognised within their own sectors. As an example, the Contact Centre has retained its Customer Contact Association (CCA) accreditation for the fourth year in a row. It has been a real team effort to get to where we are now, and we only intend to do better with every year that follows.

For more information, please contact your Relationship Manager

All change

onwards and upwards

Equiniti David Venus Managing Director Doug Armour looks forward to another busy year in company law as is often the case at the start of a

new year in company law, the only thing company secretaries can be certain of is that nothing will stand still.

The march towards mandatory dematerialisation of share certificates continues apace. As discussed in our last issue, this must be seen now as a case of when, not if. But the when is still not entirely clear. The draft guidance says only that it will happen some time between now and 2025, but there is general agreement that 11 years is too long to wait and it remains to be seen what end-date for dematerialisation is in the final text. The likelihood now seems that the Government will make the final decision on timing in the UK subject to the EU’s mandatory date. The trilogue began late in 2013 with the intention of finishing it by the end of the year, and until we know what comes out of that, any new UK model cannot be fixed in stone.

Concerns have been expressed about the implications for company mailings and communication with shareholders.

On 2 December Euroclear UK & Ireland announced the move of standard settlement from T+3 to T+2 with effect from 6 October 2014. Currently there remains a carve-out allowing extended settlement and as a consequence T+2 settlement will not require dematerialisation of all shares. For issuers the only change will be to the standard dividend timetable where the record date will remain as Fridays but the ex-dividend date will now move to Thursdays.

The results of the Government’s consultation on ‘Transparency and Trust’ should be made available soon. There has been discussion about Companies House having a register of beneficial ownership and whether or not this should be made public in the interests of transparency. This would have little

“There is general agreement that 11 years is too long to wait and it remains to be seen what enddate for dematerialisation is in the final text.” impact on public listed companies as details of ownership are already known and shareholders already have to disclose interests of over 3%. But, for the smaller unlisted companies it could be quite onerous, particularly for those set up with structures to keep ownership secret where they have nominee shareholders. We may also see proposals on employment agencies and whistleblowing.

The Government is planning changes proposed to annual returns, simplifying company filings, particularly for companies where there haven’t been any changes. There are also to be changes to the statement of capital to tidy up a long-standing problem which means some companies can’t properly complete if they have bought back shares issued at different amounts over the years and can’t be sure of the price they were issued at.

There are a number of EU initiatives which could re-surface, including a roadmap on share ownership, amendment

to the Shareholder Rights Directive, proposals on gender and other diversity, changes to the Securities Law Directive and guidance on legal certainty relating to investor cooperation, but with no draft proposals ready yet it is unlikely the impact of any of these will be felt in 2014.

The year will kick off for many with the new requirements in narrative and remuneration reporting (for more on this, see page 28). We know what the content has to be but it is the style and the level of detail that are in question and everyone is eagerly anticipating the first half dozen that file and publicise what they have done. The best advice to those filing later in the year is to go through all the guidance from the GC100, the ICSA and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and to act as early as you can. From next year everyone will have a year’s experience behind them and a consensus will start to form around the best style of report. www.equiniti.com > 9

royal mail ipo

Signed, sealed, delivered Equiniti did so much more than successfully handle the privatisation of Royal Mail. It also opened doors for the future

A

s organisations go, Royal Mail is one of the most recognisable in Great Britain. For years, this company has delivered our parcels, popped letters through our letterboxes and helped get messages to businesses across the world. So it’s no surprise that when government took the decision to privatise this very public service, it became one of the highest-profile Initial Public Offerings (IPO) that Equiniti has ever processed. Here are five different Equiniti perspectives on the project and what it meant for them to be involved.

Bob Birkhead, Senior Service Delivery Manager, Employee Benefit Solutions

Working on a project as high profile as this was very rewarding. When the project started, a lot of the finer details needed to be established, including around the Employee Priority Offer and exactly how Royal Mail employees would be awarded 10% of the business in shares. So we had to work simultaneously on four different scenarios, until our client the Government decided on using the Share Incentive Plan (SIP). Following this, I was the lead on the employee share plan dealing, so I worked closely with different Royal Mail work streams to coordinate the process.

In addition to written communications, we participated in drop-in clinics over a three-week period at 109 Royal Mail sites.

To accommodate employees’ shift patterns, we worked with Royal Mail representatives to hold these clinics from early in the morning until late in the evening. In total we saw around 8,000 people.

This project went really well and we have had some great feedback from our client.

This was the biggest privatisation we have worked on in a very long time, and the success of it is sure to open doors for us.

Claire Vaughan, Senior IT Project Manager

The IT team was made up of a number of workstreams to deliver the systems supporting this project. It was vital that milestones were met in each area to provide an integrated system solution for each stage of the offer. This meant working closely with a number of internal and

10 > EQ | winter 2014

external workstreams, as well as multiple third-party suppliers to establish timelines, implement infrastructure, coordinate data exchanges and align delivery of various components.

We provided the marketing and application websites, which needed to cater to high volumes of users and surges in demand. As well as the websites that the public and Royal Mail employees used, there was also a great deal of work going on to provide back-end systems. We needed to deliver solutions to scan paper applications received and capture the PDF applications downloaded from the website. We also had to make sure our systems provided the functionality to reconcile the applications and online payments, apply the correct allocations and produce all of the print files for the email notifications, share certificates, refund cheques and welcome packs.

This was the biggest online share offer that we have ever done and great teamwork and dedication ensured its success.

Darren Charles, Contact Centre Manager

The Contact Centre was involved in the Royal Mail IPO process from tender right through to completion of the project.

Given the size of the task, we didn’t have a point of reference in the marketplace when planning for potential call volumes, so we had to use the expertise we have at Equiniti to build models and work with our client, the Government, to make reasonable assumptions as to what the interest and call volumes would be following the floatation.

This task provided us with the opportunity to implement new ways of customer contact. Royal Mail was keen to have a web chat feature, which was something we hadn’t used before, however we implemented it and staffed the facility from 6am until 11pm to accommodate Royal Mail staff’s working hours. We also created a social media presence via Twitter, open for eligible employees wanting information on the ESO (employee share offering) and fielded vital enquiries via this channel.

Naturally, our call volumes increased significantly. We normally handle 160,000 calls a month, but when the IPO was in progress, we answered an additional 140,000 calls in a single month. Even

though our call numbers almost doubled, we still retained our excellent customer satisfaction rate of 92–93%. That was really down to the commitment of staff across the Contact Centre.

Neill Sullivan, Senior Manager, Investment Services

On the back of the Royal Mail IPO, we provided a number of different share dealing services for shareholders, one of which was a new facility, an automated telephone instruction (ATI) channel. This service allowed shareholders to sell their shares by placing an instruction through an automated telephone service.

ATI was established as Royal Mail was keen to offer shareholders a range

Ultimately, this was the biggest online share offer in the UK and great teamwork and dedication ensured its success of ways to place their share instructions.

We responded with ATI, which as well as helping with the huge volume of calls we anticipated, was also designed to be easy to use, especially for people who had little experience in share dealing services. By the end of the task we had successfully processed over 56,000 sale instructions, selling over 14 million shares.

We are renowned for our customer service. To make sure that our service levels remained high, we reviewed our operational structure and took on additional resource to support us throughout this project.

ATI also helped minimise the impact on business as usual.

This was a really exciting project and there was a lot of thinking on your feet

and responding quickly as the client’s requirements evolved. As a team, we were flexible and adaptable and I was very proud of how committed my team was.

Gavin Lane, Senior Manager, Corporate Actions

After 17 years of working within the Corporate Actions team, it was a fantastic opportunity to be responsible for the operational design and delivery of the Royal Mail IPO. Our team’s combined experience of delivering a number of large corporate events over the past five years meant that we had the expertise to successfully manage this project.

With no major online IPO precedence to assist with forecasting application volumes, we needed to take full advantage of our online capabilities to be operationally effective. Our dynamic web system resulted in thousands of online applications per second with real-time 24/7 application data being available. We also applied scanning technology with character recognition software to record new shareholder registration details for all paper applications.

We welcomed a very strong team of individuals from a number of different areas of our business, and around 130 agency staff members joined us. This ensured we were adequately resourced to successfully deliver this task.

This IPO culminated in the creation of a new FTSE 100 share register with over 400,000 shareholders. Being involved in such a large task and seeing the great partnerships formed was incredibly rewarding. The exceptional teamwork and our technology offering were what made this project such a great success.

A bright future lies ahead

Winning the Royal Mail IPO allowed Equiniti to demonstrate that it could cope with a task on such a grand scale. Not only did it meet the demands of a high-profile client, but Equiniti also showed that it could balance a very demanding project and still deliver the levels of service that its customers have come to expect.

Teamwork, commitment and Equiniti’s expertise has resulted in the Royal Mail IPO being a huge success and will undoubtedly create further opportunities of this scale in the future. www.equiniti.com > 11

interview

portraits by tony french

f

Don’t go west, go to Entrepreneur Country Start-up champion Julie Meyer talks matchmaking David and Goliath, respecting the ego and coping with explosive growth

J

ulie Meyer steps out of the boardroom mid-interview to freshen up. She is not gone longer than five minutes but when she returns she is wrestling with a currency sum. Her client Seamless has landed more than 300 million Swedish krona in funding and, when armed with the exchange rate, she does one terrifyingly quick calculation and announces that her company Ariadne Capital has made £300,000.

It seems a striking confirmation of her maxim that if you have the right ideas and articulate them well, the money will find you. Ariadne Capital is an investment and advisory firm formed by Meyer in 2000 that matches tech start-ups with established entrepreneurs and corporates so they can grow and share revenues. She has form when it comes to championing tech entrepreneurs having been involved in deals with Skype, Monitise and Zopa.

Meyer, who was raised in Palo Alto, California, first came to the UK in 1986 to study for a year at Cambridge University as part of a degree in Humanities and English Literature and returned to Europe to live in Paris at the age of 21. “I tried to study French and I couldn’t handle the fact I tried to do something and it was unsuccessful,” she says.

“So, I said ‘it’s over to Paris you go and figure out the language’. The experience gave me confidence

12 > EQ | winter 2014

to go where you don’t know anybody, figure it out, and really understand how the market values what you do. Without home turf advantage, you have to figure out quickly how you’re going to make your livelihood, how the market perceives you.”

And after moving to London (which she describes as the “centre of the anglosphere”) in 1998 it did not take her long to find her niche.

Within months she was working with a venture capital firm and had established networking organisation First Tuesday, which allowed Internet start-ups and financial backers to meet.

It eventually sold for $50 million in cash and shares, allowing Meyer to set up Ariadne Capital.

Still London-based today, she is evangelical about the strength of British tech firms and how borders are irrelevant to the success of start-ups.

“Having just had breakfast with the great Greek entrepreneur behind Matternet, who’s building a whole new ‘go aerial’ strategy in the transportation industry, aka drones, I know great entrepreneurs can come from anywhere. Niklas Zennström [co-founder of Skype] was an obscure Swedish entrepreneur with a base in Estonia when we started working with him 10 years ago.

“And yet, the structure and infrastructure haven’t caught up. It is a sizeable market opportunity to build that structuring opportunity so entrepreneurs

interview

“What I do in my role is try to appreciate, and respect the ego of the entrepreneur and say ‘hey, I think you can do it too’.” can not only come from anywhere, but can be successful anywhere. That’s what we’re doing. I want to be on that side of history.”

Meyer published her book Welcome to Entrepreneur Country in 2012 in which she attempts to explain how society is reorganising itself and encourages everyone to embrace these changes. Ariadne Capital helps entrepreneurs back entrepreneurs and has 60 leading businesspeople as core shareholders. In September 2013 she launched the entrepreneurcountry global network with representatives in 15 regions, establishing a community connecting corporates and start-ups and building a searchable database.

“Our vision is that great entrepreneurled start-ups – the Davids – and large companies – the Goliaths – must dance.

David brings new digital revenues to Goliath; he brings distribution to David.

“I wouldn’t pigeon-hole it as venture capital. I would say I am there to facilitate the success of entrepreneurs that I believe really have something positive to add to the world and who work towards the common good. I think that is one of the most profitable things you can do. This is not CSR; the best thing you can do is create value for the common good.

When you do that, you create sustainable, profitable, valuable businesses.

“Every entrepreneur has a customer acquisition problem: how are they going to acquire customers? Are they just going to deal with an app marketplace, or can they actually work with the local mobile carrier and the bank and the retail shop and all those non-tech companies? It is clear that technology businesses are taking over the

world. If you are a bog-standard bank or retailer, and are not thinking about disruptive economics, if you’re not kept awake by that, you’ve got a big problem.”

She sees their role as a delicate balance of backing entrepreneurs but also often providing a moderating influence.

“The dominant thing that entrepreneurs have is an ego not under check. Most of society learns to keep it in check. We don’t allow people with big egos to run things because we will bop them down to size.

What I do in my role is try to appreciate and respect the ego of the entrepreneur and say ‘hey, I think you can do it too’. But I also act as the voice of reality on how we can be successful.”

Meyer has seen what it takes for a small business to survive explosive growth and says a balance must be struck between the skills of the entrepreneur, chairman, product techs and business salespeople.

“You need people around you that believe in you and care about the company.

When you think of children turning into good adults, how does that happen?

Through a good family,” she says. “I’ve

Women’s work: one of the Wall Street Journal’s 30 most influential women in Europe on the feminisation of business I believe the world is becoming more feminine because we are working more in networks. Women are wired to think of the group – not to say men can’t – but because of history, women naturally have

14 > EQ | winter 2014

to think, “Is everybody with me?”

In reality, good leaders have both gender characteristics and it is becoming clear to me that companies do well when there is a balance of different kinds of skills.

I think what the 30 Percent Club is doing is very interesting but I work with entrepreneurs because I love people that are a bit odd and who think differently. You could be a bog-standard white guy and think

differently. You could be a woman, who is the most traditional person, who hasn’t had a diverse thought in her life. I believe in diversity, but I don’t think that it is defined by colour of skin, sexuality or gender.

seen the bad stuff and have an idea how to build a positive architecture for a business that has to get into rapid growth mode, and if it doesn’t get those foundations in place by the time it’s hurling through the atmosphere – talk about explosive!”

Away from Ariadne Capital, Meyer starred in the online version of the BBC’s Dragon’s Den and is currently setting up a Dads and Daughters Foundation to support her thesis that women’s identities are shaped – for good or bad – by the messages they receive from their fathers as children. She sits on Vince Cable’s Entrepreneurs Panel, but, as with many in business, would prefer politicians to keep their interference to a minimum.

“For me it’s interesting, but not essential to follow what the Government does. I think the positive thing that is happening is that technology is helping create collective action and social justice. We can decide that we want to see a specific school infrastructure, or a homeless shelter or whatever we want for our local environments and we can, as a community, leverage a lot of things driven by new technological services and create that same collective action. And we can do that more cheaply, and more effectively.

“Strong people have a responsibility to care for weaker people. But I don’t believe that the Government, as it is currently structured, does that effectively. I see the entrepreneurs as problem solvers and when I see people tackling social problems effectively with an entrepreneurial mind, I get really excited. I’d rather see that than watch the Government pump more public money into solving the problem. I believe if you reduce that percentage of tax overall, you’re going to get more revenue. There are many things we can do for SMEs.” Meyer sees these SMEs and their wealth creation as the key to recovering from the global financial crisis alongside a readjustment of the relationship between financial services and industry.

“I’m a financier, but financial services is not an industry, it’s a service industry.

Throughout history, capital has followed ideas. Queen Isabella put Christopher Columbus on a retainer but he’s the guy that found the New World. It’s not about the Medici family, it’s about Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci.

“For a while we lost the concept of what is business. It’s about the people who are building the business and not the financiers who are essentially very

high-priced employees making a cut for providing finance. That readjustment and reattaching financial services to industry are the positives coming out of the financial crisis. But there shouldn’t be a question in anyone’s mind at this point that you have to create wealth.”

And when the recovery does kick in, where will the big growth areas be?

“Transportation is an industry we are very interested in. I’m interested in drones and the impact an aerial strategy could have when you look at the economics of building roads,” Meyer says.

“I also think that areas which have been the bastion of the state – health and education – are being transformed by entrepreneurs right now. If I fast forward, there is no way in which I can foresee these areas being constructed as industries as they are today in the public sector. They will be driven by entrepreneurs transforming them for the common good by leveraging disruptive economics, consumer data and ecosystem economics in order to serve the people better.”

When Meyer speaks of her father you know why she is so keen to become involved in health. She describes him as her business hero who created a whole industry in America. He was a doctor but created the first pulmonary medical practice and while Meyer says it played “havoc” with his marriage, she says he set her a great model for how hard you have to work to be successful.

“I have never gone into anything as a businessperson and thought, ‘this is going to be easy’. My father showed me that much.” But the challenges and the ups and downs of working with new businesses have done nothing to dampen her infectious enthusiasm.

“It doesn’t get better than this; even a bad day is a good day. I never have to go to ‘work’, I get to talk to and work with such amazing people. When you see an entrepreneur do something in the market, which they ought not to be able to do, it is the best ringside seat you can ever have.”

For Ariadne Capital, the focus is on building capacity and helping more entrepreneurs grow faster. Meyer talks of turning their work with seven explosive growth businesses to 70. As for her book, Welcome to Entrepreneur Country, she views it merely as a first installment. The second will perhaps deal with the next 10 years of their own explosive growth. www.equiniti.com > 15

Charting Change £267m turnover

For a combined 212 years we have been supporting the UK’s leading businesses and public sector institutions. Our capabilities and solutions have changed and expanded into new areas and we now help more than 1,600 organisations. But, as the recent Capital Analytics Survey demonstrated, one thing that won’t be changing is our commitment to our clients.

people benefit from our services Xafinity Hazell Carr

ProSearch

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360 Clinical

Equiniti Group

2007

Sirus Platform

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+ + 47

£31.4m operating profit £92.6m operating cashflow

£72bn 18m

30m

Paymaster 1836

+10% year on year growth

Equiniti Data Services

Global Share Alliance

in payments processed each year

shareholders’ records held

Our History NatWest Exec Dealing

myCSP Mutual JV

Killik peterevans Prism Employee Cosec Services

Capabilities development

2013

Solutions development ESP Portal

Auto Paymaster enrolment International Payments

Bank residuals

capital Analytics

Dividend service General meeting management Willingness to recommend registrar Account management Service to the company Overall satisfaction Service to shareholders Call Centre knowledge about company * Overall Satisfaction results in the Capital Analytics UK

2010

2011

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Registrars Benchmarking Survey 2013.

23 uk

Registrar for

and off-shore specialist service centres and a London HQ

49% of fTse 100 companies

87% of UK work-based pension scheme members

2,737 colleagues our Values

27%

staff retention

Trust

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longest client 176 years relationship

91%

89%

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Client satisfaction rating (corporate), satisfied or very satisfied would recommend to others

Belief

People www.equiniti.com > 17

MARGINAL GAINS

When it comes to making major improvements, sometimes it pays to sweat over the small stuff

‘‘Y

ou cannot improve one thing by 1,000% but you can improve 1,000 little things by 1%.” Wise words from Jan Carlzon, a Swedish businessman who famously lived and breathed this approach to help turn Scandinavian Airlines from one of the industry’s worst performers to one of the best.

The Great British Cycling Team is perhaps the most celebrated advert for this approach – commonly known as ‘marginal gains’. We all watched as it scooped medal after medal at the London 2012 Olympics. Rigorous training plans and unrivalled commitment are obvious factors in its success, but this is something that all athletes at that level possess. What we were all looking for were answers as to how the GB Cycling Team stood head and shoulders above the rest. And it would seem that its secret was to sweat over the small stuff.

Performance Director of British Cycling, Sir Dave Brailsford, clearly had the words of Jan Carlzon ringing in his ears when he implemented a programme of marginal gains that would see the GB Cycling Team achieve great success.

“Essentially, the approach is one of accumulating performance gains by making small, i.e. marginal, gains in all or many of the processes that contribute towards the final outputs of achieving the desired aim,” explains Dr David Hall, Principal Lecturer at the University of Portsmouth Business School.

Sir Dave thought of every possible area where a marginal gain could be made and took action. Taking this approach away from the cycling track, it can also prove to be effective in the world of business as Dr Hall explains: “Marginal gains have the same principles as the ‘lean’ approach, a well-known business strategy, which has its roots in Total Quality Management (TQM), a systematic management approach to continuous improvement born out of Japanese manufacturing in the 1950s and 1960s. The most well-known TQM system is Kaizen, which is most widely deployed in manufacturing, but it can be used in all business environments.”

When implementing a marginal gains approach, it is important that the whole organisation takes a unified approach. It’s not something that can be isolated to one specific person or team.

“People are the most fundamental part of marginal gains,” says Dr Hall. “To make it work, everyone should believe in it and be committed to it. The approach also needs to feed into everything the organisation does, from recruiting the right people, to rewarding people in the right way.”

18 > EQ | winter 2014

Small change for big wins “It’s a great example of an approach that crosses boundaries between business and sport,” says Dr Hall.

Once the organisation has committed to marginal gains and the areas for improvement have been identified, small wins should start to accumulate.

But as with any plan, there should be measurement criteria in place to make sure it is working. “Any business that wants to use the marginal gains approach, but has lots of processes involved in the day-to-day running of the organisation should consider Pareto Analysis, which will help it to prioritise,” Dr Hall says. “Furthermore, valid metrics play an important part in monitoring progress.

Making use of Statistical Process Control (SPC) is a technique that is well known in business for analysing the measurement of improvements, and one that I would recommend.”

A number of organisations have used this approach to great effect, including the car

Mark Gunter/AFP/Getty Images

:: “It’s part of our ethos” manufacturer, Toyota. “Many manufacturing companies, particularly where advanced technologies make an important contribution, use a marginal gains approach in their continuous improvement management,” Dr Hall says.

Adopting this approach spells potentially huge improvements in efficiency and effectiveness, and following the London 2012 Olympics it is gaining popularity again as a business tool. “The story behind the success of the GB Cycling Team put marginal gains under the spotlight,” Dr Hall says.

“It’s a great example of an approach that crosses boundaries between business and sport and there is no doubt that it has caught the imagination of more people and is perhaps an ‘unintended legacy’ of the London 2012 Olympics.”

“There is always room for improvement.

There is always a way to make things better,” says Fiona De Antonis, Head of Operational Excellence at Equiniti, where continuous improvement is built into the company’s ethos. “We have subject matter experts and process owners throughout the organisation who take responsibility for reviewing and improving processes across the business. As a result, we have an incredibly low number of complaints – 0.02% of transactions processed. This is down to continually improving our processes to make sure the customer journey is the best that it can be.”

Continuous improvement is something Equiniti lives and breathes, along with a number of other related strategies, all of which involve establishing the root cause of any issues to prevent them from re-occurring. “Across the company we use CAPA – Corrective Action, Preventative Action – as a way of getting to the root cause and thus preventing future issues. This is a company-wide initiative, which has really paid off. We have even had customers complimenting us on our complaints resolution process, which tells me that we are doing something right,” Fiona says.

www.equiniti.com > 19

company Secretary proFile

out with the old Company Secretary Lucie Gilbert tells us more about Tate & Lyle’s ongoing transformation, and the importance of never making assumptions Tell us a bit about your role with Tate & Lyle

I’ve structured my department into four key areas: the first is PLC, board and corporate governance, which is my key focus and where I spend the largest proportion of my time: secondly, listed company regulation and shareholder services, which includes the various requirements we need to adhere to as a company on the London Stock Exchange. The two other areas are group subsidiaries and executive share incentive schemes – a number of secretariats don’t have the latter in their remit, but it’s something we really enjoy as it gives us an opportunity to interact with colleagues from different areas of the business.

We’re a central department with a very central role, which is what I love about the job.

You’ve been Company secretary at Tate & Lyle for just over a year.

How has the past year been?

I’ve really enjoyed it. I was very lucky as when I was Deputy Company Secretary I attended all of the board meetings and committee meetings – not all deputies get the opportunity to do this. Since I was already operating with the board a lot, I was used to this aspect of the role, but what I had to adapt to was the level of visibility that comes with being a Company Secretary. I’m now on the stage at the AGM and I’m in the annual report, whereas deputies tend to be more in the background.

20 > EQ | winter 2014

What made Tate & Lyle stand out when you were looking for a new opportunity?

I didn’t target company secretariat as a career specifically, I moved into it as a graduate at Eagle Star. Before I joined Tate & Lyle, my career was spent in financial services, principally insurance and re-insurance. It is a transferable role, so I was able to move out of financial services and into a different industry.

When I started to research Tate & Lyle I realised it was so much more than a company that produces sugar. It had much bigger interests than that and it was really interesting to see how those had developed.

For me personally, taking on the role within Tate & Lyle was an opportunity to create something that wasn’t there before, build a team and develop a function.

Has the recent economic downturn had an impact on the company?

It’s hard to think of a company that hasn’t been affected. But Tate & Lyle has continued to grow, despite the fact that it has been challenging. Our current CEO joined the business in 2009 and he implemented a new strategy to focus on speciality food ingredients. We took a number of actions to reposition our business to enable us to grow within this market. Part of our transformation process also involved us moving away from our sugar business, which we sold in 2010, but that is still what people in the UK associate us with the most. We have also become much more focused on working closely with our customers and on delivering the innovative solutions that meet their needs.

We’ve committed to investing in

growing the business in emerging markets as well, so alongside managing the economic downturn, we’ve been broadening our horizons and managing a major transformation.

What are your current priorities?

There’s a lot going on at the moment, so staying on top of governance and regulatory changes is a big priority. One of my key deliverables is the annual report to shareholders and there have been a lot of changes to narrative reporting requirements, so it’s important that our annual reporting evolves to reflect these changes. It’s also essential that we evolve as individuals – I’m very keen for my team to continue to be challenged and for individual members to continue to develop.

What are Tate & Lyle’s strengths?

Our people are a huge strength. We have some very dedicated people across the business who really care about what they do. We have a set of company values that our people really believe in and act upon.

We’ve also got a strong leadership team, which has outlined a very clear vision, which everyone supports.

What are the benefits of working with equiniti?

We’ve had a long relationship with Equiniti, and we’re not its biggest client by any stretch of the imagination, but from a service perspective, we are never made to feel like we are one of its smaller clients. Equiniti is always willing to share emerging and best practice with us and I see it very much as a business partner. Equiniti also supported us in delivering a similar level of service to our overseas employee shareholders as we do to our UK employee shareholders. So Equiniti has

luciE GilbErt tatE & lylE cV

1995 – 2000 Eagle Star Re/GE Frankona Reinsurance – various posts including Graduate Trainee, Marketing Officer and Company Administrator 2000 – 2001 Independent Insurance PLC, Assistant Company Secretary 2002 – 2006 Brit Insurance Holdings PLC, Deputy Company Secretary 2007 Experian PLC, Interim Deputy Company Secretary 2008 – 2012 Tate & Lyle PLC, Deputy Company Secretary 2012 – date Tate & Lyle PLC, Company Secretary

if you could invite three people to dinner, living or otherwise, who would they be?

portrait by tony french

really taken the time to get to know us as a client and work with us to develop our offering and make sure that we do what we can to deliver a first-class service to all of our customers.

What would you say is the single biggest lesson you have learned throughout your career?

Never assume anything. You can’t assume that everyone understands what’s going on and you can’t assume that everyone understands a particular process. If something doesn’t feel right, never be afraid to check and always ask questions.

How important is transformation for a company to grow?

It’s absolutely vital and not just for growth. In today’s market things are moving so quickly that companies constantly need to change to ensure they remain competitive.

if you were able to choose a completely different career, what would it be?

This is a really hard question because I love my job. But, I am really interested in volcanoes, so a career as a geologist is something I’m sure I would enjoy.

The first would be Thomas Jefferson. I studied him at university and when you study a president in that way, I think you always end up wanting to ask them why they made certain decisions. The second is a lady called Becky Higgins. One of my hobbies is scrap-booking and memorykeeping, and she revolutionised this industry. And the third is Gary Barlow – I’ve been a Take That fan for years.

How do you like to relax outside of work?

My biggest hobby is making handmade greetings cards. I find it really helps me to relax, as I can’t focus on anything else when I’m making cards. I also really enjoy photography - I have recently bought my first DSLR camera, and I’m learning to use it properly.

Do you have any secret talents?

If I told you what they were, they would no longer be secret! www.equiniti.com > 21

Feature SiX StepS to a SucceSSFul ipo The road to an Initial Public Offering (IPO) can be challenging and preparing for a float requires resources, commitment, time and trusted partners. As the UK’s market leader in share registration, Equiniti has unrivalled experience in the IPO market. This allows us to provide expert guidance, direction and support to a company as it takes its first steps towards listed status.

Although market conditions tend to define where and when it’s a good time to float, there are other fundamental elements that need to be considered when a company is looking to list, which is why we’ve put together our six steps to help towards a successful IPO.

MANAGEMENT OF THE EXISTING PRIVATE SHARE REGISTER

1 Leading up to an IPO, a company may undertake placings (pre-IPO fund raisings) and restructures of its share capital. Having a registrar in place at this point will help to make it a smooth and efficient process, as they will look after the day-to-day maintenance of the register, including AGM mailings and shareholder communications (including promotion of e-comms).

This will allow the company to run its share register as a plc, promote good practice, remove the administrative burden and feel more comfortable when it does float.

22 > EQ | winter 2014

2

GET THE RIGHT SUPPORT AND ADVICE

A company should start adopting plc disciplines and practices ahead of the IPO, as this will put it in a good position post float.

Establishing plc-standard Board and Committee processes – for example, terms of reference, schedule of matters reserved to the Board, a proper Board calendar and Board papers processes – is a good idea.

Implementing Audit Remuneration, Nomination Committees and other appropriate committees should also be considered, alongside getting policies and procedures in place that are relevant to a listed company, such as disclosure procedures and the share dealing code. This could feed into the Financial Review process, therefore it is important that the company chooses its advisers carefully to ensure it receives the correct support and guidance throughout the IPO process.

EMPLOYEE SHARE SCHEMES

3 Many companies will want to incentivise and retain their employees leading up to the IPO or at the IPO stage. This can be achieved by offering employee share schemes, which promote employee ownership and can greatly assist with staff retention and recruitment, as well as improve performance levels.

Feature

ADVICE ON POST IPO MANAGEMENT DON’T UNDERESTIMATE THE IPO PROCESS AND THE TIME IT TAKES APPOINT THE RIGHT PEOPLE

4 Selecting the right management team to coordinate resources is crucial. Your investors will need to have full confidence in this team.

At least 50% of the Board should be made up of Non-Executive Directors, excluding the Chairman.

You should also bear in mind that financial due diligence will uncover everything, so make sure you identify any issues or risks which may impact on the IPO so that these can be addressed.

6 5

Remember you still have to run your business alongside the IPO. Preparation is key for things to run smoothly, so it’s wise to carefully allocate your responsibilities and work streams.

The first year following an IPO can be challenging with lots of changes. This is why Equiniti provides its clients with a dedicated Relationship Management team who are there to offer guidance and support. In addition to regular meetings, there is also the opportunity for Equiniti’s clients to participate in customer collaborative events aimed at sharing best practice, as well as Equiniti-led focus groups, while of course providing on-going company secretarial support and advice.

:: EQuiniti’s ipo support equiniti has the capability to provide and support a full end-to-end online iPo offering or a hybrid offering as well as getting involved much earlier in the iPo process with administering the private share register.

If you would like to find out more about this, please contact Karen Bolding, Head of Business Development, Registration Services, on 0207 469 1873. Alternatively, you can email Karen.

Bolding@equiniti.com. More information is available on Equiniti’s website, www.equiniti.com.

www.equiniti.com > 23

my equiniti: Nicola Pattimore Head of HR, Nicola Pattimore, tells EQ why Equiniti’s people are at the heart of everything it does and how the HR team is recognising all their hard work

I often describe HR as a contact sport; as Head of HR, I’m always in contact with people, whether it’s supporting and leading the HR team, meeting managers or running workshops. I’m very proud of how the HR team has grown and flourished since I joined Equiniti two years ago.

Working in HR is very rewarding because you can help the business be successful through its people.

One of the key themes of the people strategy is employee engagement.

An engaged workforce, that understands what the business is trying to achieve and why, is more motivated. So, the business will achieve its goals more efficiently. To encourage employee engagement, we have focused on how to best recognise the work of our employees, and as a result, we re-launched a recognition scheme called the ICON Awards.

The ICON Awards were refreshed around Equiniti’s new set of values and behaviours, which the HR team rolled out as part of Equiniti’s rebrand, One Equiniti.

The rebrand aimed to integrate different parts of the business and encourage 24 > EQ | winter 2014

employees from across the group to work together. A way of articulating the rebrand, the values – Trust, Excellence, People, Belief and Client Focus – bring our people together and help to drive the success of the business.

Employees are nominated by their colleagues for the ICON Awards and the

nominations must clearly show how the values and behaviours have been demonstrated. Our people are critical to what we do, and they are often the difference between our competitors and us. I believe that having a motivated and happy workforce has a massive impact on our clients’ businesses. Our people want to do their best and strive to offer the

portrait by micha theiner

A big part of my role involves working closely with People & Change Director Clancy Murphy to develop our people strategy, which outlines how our people are fundamental in achieving the overall business strategy. I then work with the business and the HR team to implement the strategy and shape and refine it as necessary.

Three quick questions Tell us something surprising about yourself.

I completed the GRIM last year: a 10-mile off-road run, through waist-high icy puddles and mud!

“Working in HR is very rewarding because you can help the business be successful through its people.”

best possible service. The ICON Awards are a great way to say thank you.

We recently won the Best Recognition Strategy at the Benefits Excellence Awards for our ICON Awards.

It was a very proud moment for Equiniti, particularly because the Benefits Excellence Awards are the first in the world

to focus entirely on voluntary employee benefits. Winning the award proves we are committed to our employees and value the work they do. We not only recognise our employees through the ICON Awards, we also invest in their training and support their charity work – we want Equiniti to be a great place to work and a great place for our customers to do business.

What are your passions outside of work?

Cooking with my girls (who are 10 and 8) is a real passion of mine. I love experimenting and coming up with new ideas. I’m also addicted to cookery books – my house is filled with them.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?

Things don’t always have to go to plan to work out well. It’s important not to panic, and instead re-strategise and come up with an alternative approach when things aren’t going to plan.

Nicola and Helen Mills with the award for the Best Recognition Strategy at the Benefits Excellence Awards

www.equiniti.com > 25

Equiniti Premier Services Getty Images

Equiniti Premier Services offers our corporate clients a great deal more from their share plans

E

Get promoted to the premier league

quiniti Premier Services was launched following the purchase of Killik Employee Services (KES) in October 2013, merging the expertise of both companies to offer corporate clients a great deal more from their discretionary, executive and global share plans.

Martin Osborne-Shaw, former Managing Director of KES and Director of Equiniti Premier Services, founded KES in 2000 as part of one of the largest stockbrokers in the UK specialising in executive and global share plan administration. “Now that KES is part of Equiniti, the proposition we can offer clients remains focused on our core strengths but has been greatly enhanced,” says Martin.

KES was renowned for the superior level of service it provided its executive share plan clients, which can often be complicated in nature, due to the variety of client and participant demands. As Director of Equiniti Premier Services, Martin intends to deliver the same level of service to Equiniti clients. “Principally, I’m responsible for making sure that the clients we looked after when we were at KES are 26 > EQ | winter 2014

successfully migrated across to Equiniti Premier Services, whilst maintaining the service levels they are used to. We will then extend this across the Equiniti client base, who will benefit from our bespoke approach and leading technological platform. Our systems are customisable, have user-friendly web interfaces, and are always tailored to our clients’ needs. Now that Equiniti and KES have come together, our wider client base will be able to make the most of our enhanced offering.”

KES’s sophisticated technology system will be fully integrated with Equiniti’s existing systems and provide a number of benefits. “We had to implement a flexible system that could manage the complexities of executive share plans and so we developed a bespoke administration platform that very much caters to our clients’ needs,” says Martin. “We’ve recently improved the front-end, so when employees log in, they have a much clearer view of what they’ve got, they’re able to transact online and they’re able to see their share plan history. We’re really trying to use technology to bring us closer to the individual.”

The technology that Equiniti Premier Services now has spells great things for Equiniti’s Employee Benefit Solutions (EBS). “A priority for the future is growth, which this system will help us to do in a controlled way, which won’t compromise client service levels. The technology that we bring will provide us with a great platform to help us grow into this very specialist area,” Martin says.

As well as benefiting from the new technology systems, clients will also see the advantages of the combined expertise that Equiniti Premier offers. “Feedback from our current clients is very positive,” Martin says. “They have told us they are happy with what we are doing and how we are doing it, so that’s a very positive message for us. And since Equiniti EBS is already an award-winning, industry-leading service, combining our knowledge and expertise will allow us to deliver a more enhanced overall proposition to clients, whilst retaining the personalised level of service we provide.”

For more information on Equiniti Premier Services, please contact your Relationship Manager.

easyjet

Come fly with me A dedicated project manager and sophisticated technology are just two of the reasons why easyJet chose Equiniti to manage its employee share plans

O

ne of the most dynamic and recognisable FTSE 100 companies, easyJet is hailed for being fast-paced, lean and innovative. So when it came to streamlining the management of its employee share plans, having an organisation on board that could tailor its offering to suit easyJet’s needs was very important. “We work in a streamlined way and we wanted to take the same approach to our employee share plans,” explains Ken Lawrie, Head of Reward at easyJet. Prior to Equiniti winning a bid to manage easyJet’s employee share plans, two different providers had responsibility for this area. “We’ve always had a good relationship with Equiniti, and as we’ve grown as a company, it has made every effort to get to know us better, and adapt to our needs as they have evolved,” explains Bruce James, Group Company Secretary at easyJet. Earlier this year, easyJet was looking for better efficiencies, and one way of achieving this lay in combining its share registration with its employee share plans. “As well as streamlining our processes, we were keen to make things more straightforward for our employees, of which 91% are shareholders. So we held a competitive tender and selected Equiniti to manage both areas. We were really impressed by their ability to offer a broader service for all of our shareholders, including our employees, and an overall improved level of service made Equiniti stand out.”

“The technology that Equiniti has is really impressive and is providing a much better experience for all of our employees who have share plans. It is so much easier to use, which has had a really positive impact on employee engagement,” says Bruce.

Since easyJet’s relationship with Equiniti has developed, not only has the feedback from staff been positive around the improved functionality of the technological offering, but easyJet’s staff have also been impressed with the level of service they have received. “In the instances that our people have had to speak to Equiniti directly, they have found the staff to be helpful and the process overall to be speedier,” explains Ken. As well as staff praising the improved service, Bruce and Ken have also been impressed with Equiniti’s offering: “Equiniti has a real can-do attitude, which we admire at easyJet,” says Bruce.

“The level of knowledge and expertise is clear and Equiniti is very good at passing on any learnings gained from working with other companies,” Ken says. “The migration process also went well given the volume of data we had amassed. We had a dedicated project manager to see us through this period, who had experienced this scenario before and was able to guide us through it. If anyone finds themselves in our position, I would strongly recommend getting a project manager on board. Having this dedicated person with us all the way through the process was a real help.” www.equiniti.com > 27

feature

What’s the story?

Company Secretaries must act fast to ensure their restructured annual report is well thought through and value-adding, says Chris Stamp, Director of Prism Cosec

28 > EQ | winter 2014

reGulation Feature

T

he first of the annual reports prepared in accordance with new regulations are set to be published soon and, for those reporting later, planning well and making time to think through what’s required this year will reap rewards.

As those who have been wrestling with the new format for the end of 2013 will already know, new regulations require the ‘front half’ of the annual report to include a Strategic Report, featuring, among other things, company strategy, business model, and information on social and community issues; while the back half must include a Directors’ Report incorporating supporting information.

As before, there will also need to be a governance section, including the corporate governance report and reports of board committees.

With new requirements applying to annual reports after 30 September 2013, the main wave of new reports is expected to be the December year-ends coming through from March to May this year.

But for now it is important to start the process earlier than usual. Traditionally people have left it until after the end of year to start work on the annual report but the trend is to bring it forward.

Design agencies working on annual reports have been working on pitches much earlier this year.

To a certain extent the creation of the Strategic Report appears to be more about form than substance; however, there are still challenges in deciding what information needs to be presented where in the front half of the annual report. Therefore, by acting early and giving it a bit of thought, there is a good opportunity to differentiate your business from its competitors and communicate something of its story to shareholders and stakeholders, thus making your annual report a marketing document as much as a regulatory document.

The Financial Reporting Council guidance encourages companies to “tell

:: thE nEW rEport format front half

Strategic Report Company strategy, business model and information on social and community issues

their own story” and report “smarter” rather than just adding more layers of information to comply with requirements.

Avoid boilerplate text and consider how you can incorporate the new information required into what you already do.

Try to be as concise and structured as possible and where applicable make the information more easily digestible by using graphics, graphs and tables.

The area causing the most angst among many company secretaries is the Directors’ Remuneration Report, which is expected to be split into three main sections and is, overall, expected to show a clear link between strategy and remuneration policy and will be subject to two votes at the next annual general meeting. The policy should include a table setting out a three-year policy for each element, subject to a binding vote every three years. The annual report on remuneration (subject to an annual advisory vote) covers implementation of the policy during the year. Whilst investor groups will respect good “honest” disclosure under the new regulations, it is likely that they will take a dim view of companies that do not embrace the spirit of the new remuneration reporting regulations.

Another new requirement to consider for premium listed companies is the new UK Corporate Governance Code requirement, which challenges boards to approach their review of the new annual report so as to ensure that it is fair, balanced and understandable. Company secretaries, among others, will need to think through how the board satisfies itself of this and how it communicates this in its corporate

Back half

Directors’ Report Supporting information plus the corporate governance report and reports of board committees

governance reporting. Again boards are likely to want to look at drafts of the report earlier and, indeed, plan their whole approach to reviewing it at an earlier stage.

These changes are unlikely to be the final word on annual reports. Lessons will be learned from the 2013 annual report, and there will be some taking stock at the end of the year-end reporting season from both the regulatory and corporate points of view. There may not be further major structural changes but after the first year’s reports have been published under the new regulations, there may be more guidance provided to companies.

Also on the horizon is an initiative coming out of the European Parliament on corporate governance reporting and that could have an impact in two or three years’ time. So, watch this space.

For those who feel they need assistance there are a number of players in this field depending on where help is required.

There are design agencies, which can help with the structure and layout and there are remuneration consultants specifically focusing on remuneration reporting.

But for company secretaries who need a resource to assist in assessing and implementing the new requirements, help with drafting and proofing, or advice on the new corporate governance report, Prism Cosec can assist, bringing all our company secretarial knowledge and experience to bear.

For more on this subject, please contact Chris Stamp at Prism Cosec, 020 3008 6446 or Chris@prismcosec.co.uk. www.equiniti.com > 29

Investor Analytics Getty Images

Adding value A new partnership between Equiniti and Orient Capital gives clients access to the best share analysis system on the market

A

s modern technology continues to develop, the demand for readily available information is growing. This has extended into the share analysis world, where clients are keen to see technology working with them to provide a quicker and more succinct approach to share analysis reporting.

Investor Analytics is an area of the Equiniti business that has recently transformed its client offering by partnering with Orient Capital, a global leader in share ownership analysis.

“Equiniti was really keen to enhance the suite of services it was offering to its clients in the Investor Analytics space, and leading edge technology was key to being able to offer this,” explains Louise Rutter, Investor Analytics Manager at Equiniti.

“We already had a good relationship with Orient Capital and we were aware of its strengths on the technology front.

By partnering with them we were able to combine our strengths as share registrars with Orient Capital’s unique technology offering, to provide our clients with the best analytics service in the marketplace.

This partnership also allows us to turn things around much more quickly for our clients,” says Louise.

Orient Capital’s online system, miraqle, available to Equiniti clients through the Equiniti Selector portal, allows clients across the world instant access to their share analysis reports, which is an important factor as David Geddes, CEO of Orient Capital, explains: “Listed companies are increasingly hungry for the sort of information we can capture: they recognise its importance in managing effective communications with the capital 30 > EQ | winter 2014

Leading-edge technology enhances the services Equiniti provides markets and in maintaining the highest standards of corporate governance.

Knowing who owns their shares holds real value when a company wants to be a proactive communicator, and similarly, if there is potential for a contentious vote, having as much information as possible as to voting intentions and outcomes can be critical – this is the sort of knowledge that is held in Orient Capital’s miraqle system.”

David and his team’s expertise in this area appealed to Equiniti. “We wanted to partner with someone that could help us enhance our offering to our clients. Now that we have Orient Capital on board, we have a greater depth of experience in the marketplace to offer our clients,” says Paul Matthews, Managing Director of Corporate Markets at Equiniti.

The positive aspects of this partnership are already being realised and in the future, growth is a priority. “In recent months we have really fine-tuned our proposal, which our customers are already seeing the benefits of,” explains Paul.

“We’re really proud of getting the Office for National Statistics (ONS) on board, which is testament to the strength of our offering.”

The partnership between Equiniti and Orient Capital is an important element of the Global Share Alliance (GSA).

“For clients with dual-listed companies, looking at each company’s share analysis separately is time-consuming and far from practical,” Paul says. “The GSA, miraqle and our combined offering with Orient Capital allows our clients to look at one joined-up piece of information that is stored in one place. This is a really powerful tool for our clients.”

Clients will also see benefits around both the speed and clarity of the information available to them. “The share register changes every single day, so allowing our clients and brokers to keep up to date with this means they are aware of any potential large or new movements on a register, meaning they can be aware and act sooner if they wish to,” says Paul.

we taKe a looK at tHe lateSt newS From acroSS equiniti

wHat’S new at equiniti? aWarD WinnErs

If you have any feedback on EQ Magazine or would like to take part in future editions please email marketing@ equiniti.com. To find out more, please speak to your Relationship Manager.

EnGaGE, innoVatE, DEliVEr.

let’s get started

November was a fantastic month for Equiniti with three tremendous achievements that show our commitment to continuous improvement and reinforce our position as the number one share registrar.

We were crowned ‘Best Shareholder Services Provider’ at the Shares Awards 2013 for the second year in a row. The event is one of the most widely acknowledged benchmarks of excellence and innovation across the financial services community, and the awards are particularly prestigious as they are voted for by the investors and shareholders of our client companies. We’re delighted to receive this positive endorsement directly from them.

On an individual note, Ceri Charles from Equiniti David

Celebrating 10 years of the EBS Forum The annual Employee Benefit Solutions Forum celebrated its 10th anniversary with a one-day CPD accredited event.

Throughout the day, attendees enjoyed presentations and panel sessions from advisors, Equiniti employees and clients, including BT, Centrica, Edwards and Smith & Nephew.

Informative updates on OTS reforms, AGM insights, international share plans and other global issues affecting the share plan world were all up for debate. Phil Ainsley, Managing

Julie Meyer on egos, explosive growth and getting David and Goliath to dance

INSIDE>

copinG With GroWth Follow our four golden rules

paGE 4

WinninG marGins Small changes for big business wins

paGE 18

prEmiEr lEaGuE Introducing Equiniti Premier Services

paGE 26

Ceri Charles (left) winning the ‘One to Watch’ award at the ICSA Awards 2013

Venus was recognised at the ICSA Awards 2013, winning the ‘One to Watch’ award. The judges were impressed by Ceri’s commitment to her colleagues’ professional development and the feedback from her secondments.

And finally, our Contact Centre has

achieved the CCA Global Standard award for the fourth year running, making Equiniti the only business in our sector to do so. Furthermore, the Contact Centre was shortlisted for two additional awards at the CCA Excellence Award Ceremony 2013 for Training Approach and Complaint Handling.

Director, commented: “Aside from knowledge sharing, it is a great opportunity to catch up and network with our clients and advisors. I am delighted that so many were able to join us in this special 10th anniversary year.”

Bookings for the 2014 eBs forum are currently being taken. if you’re interested in attending, please email marketing@equiniti.com.

Management report in collaboration with thought-leaders to explore the challenges in more detail.

Although regulation is the most-touted challenge, rapidly changing customer expectations are also placing increased pressure on UK wealth managers. The report aims to help senior-level executives consider the need to focus on proposition and brand, the position of the middle and back office in the equation of business development and outsourcing as a potential solution.

You can find a full copy of the report at www.equiniti.com.

Equiniti’s Wealth Management report As significant changes impact the wealth management industry, Equiniti has prepared the Wealth

The Process launches Equiniti Pension Solutions has launched The Process, a sister magazine to EQ. The new publication not only focuses on the world of pensions but also discusses news and views from the wider outsourcing sector.

The magazine is available to view online at www. equinitipaymaster.com.

Happy birthday, Equiniti We celebrated our sixth birthday last October, and we are extremely proud of how far we’ve come. We now employ 2,700 employees across 23 locations, process £72 billion in payments each year, and we were named the UK’s number one share registrar for Overall Satisfaction results in the Capital Analytics UK Registrars Benchmarking Survey 2013.

www.equiniti.com > 31

Betterconnected, but still best practice Equiniti Premier Services, formerly Killik Employee Services is a Global share plan provider, offering the flexibility and in-house technology to deliver tailor-made solutions for complex global share plans.

Services: • Outsourced Share Plan Administration • In-House Administration Solutions • Employee Web Interface • Global Share Dealing & Nominee Services • KESmedia Communications www.killikes.com