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CONNECTING BUSINESSES

welcome to the fourth edition of Agenda

I

t has been three months since my appointment as the new Chair of the IoD Isle of Man branch and much has happened in my brief tenure to date.

We have settled into our new branch headquarters at the Claremont Hotel (with our plaque now proudly displayed at the main entrance) and are enjoying the benefits of the lounge, where many Members have already met for business meetings over a coffee. Future breakfast, lunch and dinner events will also be held at the Claremont. Please check the IoD Isle of Man website for upcoming dates.

We have also held our first couple of monthly Committee meetings in the Claremont board room. New subcommittees have been established so that the right amount of focus will be given to the benefits and services that we would like to provide to our local Members. Of course feedback and new ideas are always appreciated, so feel free to reach out to any Committee member, or our amazing executive assistant Claire Veale.

I recently attended a Chair Engagement day at our impressive headquarters in Pall Mall, London. Around 50 Committee Members, many of them branch Chairmen, came together to discuss and compare how branches are managed across the UK and as far away as Ireland, Gibraltar, France, Belgium and the Netherlands. It was exciting to work with such talent in break-out groups which were focused on modernising the IoD so that the institute becomes even more responsive and flexible to Member needs.

Stephen Martin, our new Director General, attended the event and was actively involved throughout the day. I am pleased to confirm that Stephen is visiting our beautiful island for a couple days in September, and is joining us at the Autumn Lunch on 29th September where he will give what I’m sure will be an inspirational speech about his experience as the new DG. The Autumn Lunch will also be attended by the Lieutenant Governor His Excellency Sir Richard Gozney. His Excellency is a keen supporter of local businesses and actively engages with the entrepreneurs and leaders across the many sectors represented by IoD Members.

I hope you enjoy this edition of Agenda, our new IoD magazine with a unique angle on business articles thanks to the great writers that contribute to making the quarterly magazine informative and fun to read.

Lesh yeearreeyn share - with best wishes.

Jennifer Houghton Chairman Institute of Directors - Isle of Man

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CONTENTS UPDATE

5 6 8 10

WELCOME BUSINESS NEWS HANSARD INTERNATIONAL AGILITY, RESILIENCE & INNOVATION CORPORATE CULTURE - BOSSES ARE GETTING OLDER

12

MINDREADING FOR BUSINESS

34 Tax Havens -

Our inconvenient truth

OPINION

36 40

KPMG - DISRUPT AND GROW - THE VIEW FROM THE TOP APPLEBY’ - TIME FOR TRANSPARENCY

62

ROM KESA - MANNIN HOTEL

TECHNOLOGY

42 14 16 17 18 20 24 26

DEPARTMENT OF ENTERPRISE MARKETING COMMUNITY EVENT

4

42

COMMUNICATION TOOLS MARTIN & JAYNE SANDERSON AEROTECH INTERNATIONAL

APPOINTMENTS

64

WOODBOURNE HOUSE THE IDEAL CORPORATE VENUE

WELLBEING

66

IOD-IOM COMMITTEE MEMBERS BANKING ON A STRONG FINANCIAL FUTURE IOD 99 MEMBERSHIP BUISNESS EVENTS LISTINGS

FEATURES

29 30 32

SURE - COMMITMENT IS BEST SYMBOLISED WITH A RING

A CHALLENGE FOR INVESTORS HOW TO PLAN FOR A STOCK MARKET CRASH UNDERCOVER ECONOMIST

WELLBEING THE WORKPLACE

CONTRIBUTORS

48

THE FUTURE IS QUANTUM SOLUTIONS

ENTREPRENEUR

52 56 60

NEIL DUNWELL - DUNWELL JEWELLERS

Claire Veale Wendy Shimmin Tanya Humbles Matt Mosur Les Able Alexander Bell Jaq Greenspon Alexandra Watterson (Appleby)

GAIL CORRIN - UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, ISLE OF MAN

Pilita Clark (FT)

THOMAS RILEY - RILEY’S GARDEN & LIFESTYLE CENTRE

Jason Butler (FT)

Miles Johnson (FT) Richard Waters (FT) Jeremy O’Brien (FT) Tim Hartford (FT)

ON THE AGENDA...

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DUNWELL JEWELLERS 76 STRAND STREET, DOUGLAS, ISLE OF MAN, IM1 2EW. T: 01624 665566 www.dunwell.im

update news

Department for Enterprise plans unveiled at inaugural IOM Marketing Community event

M

ore than 70 people attended the inaugural Isle of Man Marketing Community’s event where plans for the Department for Enterprise were unveiled.

The presentation by interim CEO for the Department of Economic Development Mark Lewin, held at the Manx Museum, highlighted the review into the Department and the proposed ‘executive agency model’ that is core to the planned new approach.

The event saw Mark Lewin introduce the thinking behind the review’s recommendations but also invited the audience to work in breakout groups to brainstorm how the four proposed agencies could work together to benefit the Isle of Man’s economy and to think of solutions to some of the challenges each

APPLEBY ADVISES STRIX ON £190 MILLION STOCK EXCHANGE LISTING

L

eading offshore law firm Appleby acted as Isle of Man legal counsel to Strix Group PLC during the process of scheduling and listing its shares on the London Stock Exchange’s Alternative Investment Market.

The listing went live on 8 August 2017 and raised £190 million. The flotation provided a clean exit for AAC Capital Partners, which invested in Strix in 2005.

Strix is incorporated and registered in the Isle of Man and operates a sizeable commercial operation in the Island, employing more than 65 people locally. Appleby’s Isle of Man office advised on a range of legal areas, including corporate, banking, pensions, property and employment.

The Appleby Corporate team which worked on the project was led by Kyle Sutherland, Partner, Tom Brook, Counsel, and Associate Katherine Johnson.

6

one may face.

The Isle of Man Marketing Community is a new networking group open to anyone with an interest in marketing, PR, promotion, business development and sales whether they are working in those disciplines or not. Its steering group features a mix of client-sided, agency and consultant marketers from both public and private sector.

Sponsor Home Strategic’s Lee McLellan, who is also part of the steering group, said: ‘Home was delighted to sponsor the first IOM Marketing Community event and it was a great success. It was refreshing for the audience to be able to be part of the presentation by getting involved and giving their opinion, which will help shape the future of the Department for Enterprise.

‘Anyone who has an interest in marketing, whether it’s part of their job or not, is welcome to come along to the events. We’ve been planning the schedule for the next 12 months and we’re looking to present a wide range of topics including the latest trends in our industry. We look forward to announcing our next event soon.’

WHIreland launches International brand for Isle of Man

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HIreland has officially launched its new WHIreland International Wealth brand for its Isle of Man subsidiary operation.

The move underlines the international focus of the Isle of Man business and distinguishes it from the WHIreland Wealth Management division in the UK. Currently based on Athol Street in Douglas, WHIreland International Wealth is led by Managing Director Will Corrin.

Commenting on the launch of the new brand, he said: “The history and heritage of the WHIreland name is clearly an essential part of our identity and one that provides our clients with the peace of mind and security of dealing with a successful, longestablished business.

ON THE AGENDA...

Grant Thornton report recommends steps to assess corporate culture

A

global survey of 2,500 businesses across 36 economies has found that 71% of global company boards are establishing internal controls that address culture and employee behaviour.

The Grant Thornton report reveals that half of global businesses now have culture as a standing item on their agenda. The survey also showed that 78% of UK businesses are establishing internal controls, ahead of the global figure and the figure for the EU, which stands at 61%.

Download Corporate Governance 2017 -Building blocks of Corporate Culture from www.grantthornton.global/corporategovernance-2017/

update Hansard International

‘AGILITY, RESILIENCE & INNOVATION’

A PROVEN RECIPE FOR 30 YEARS OF SUCCESS 2017 represents a significant milestone for Hansard International as it celebrates thirty years in business, operating from its head office base on the Isle of Man.

GORDON MARR, GROUP CHIEF EXECUTIVE, HANSARD INTERNATIONAL

8

E

stablished in 1987 and part of the FTSE-listed Hansard Global plc group, Hansard International is recognised as a stalwart within the industry, one of the ‘first on the scene’ to satisfy the demand for flexible savings and investment solutions for internationally mobile clients.

Despite a thirty year span that has presented unprecedented global economic challenges (not to mention pony tails, shoulder pads & perms), Hansard International boasts the claim of being one of only two companies within the industry to have retained its original identity, name and focus since its formation.

Even now, in March 2017, as many companies within the financial services industry continue to gather their breath and comprehend their future following the many geo-political surprises that 2016 conjured up, with a degree of ‘what on earth is around the corner’ trepidation, Hansard International is busily preparing a blueprint for the next thirty years, confident in its proven resilience and agility, with the freedom to future proof its’ own destiny through the complete autonomy seldom afforded to many of its peers.

A reputation through innovation Hansard International’s longevity can be attributed to many different factors; its people, its focus on customer service, relationships with the advisor community etc., but it is the company’s focus on innovation through technology where Hansard carved a niche over the years, gaining a considerable following of like-minded innovators from the advisor community in a market where the landscape constantly shifted with the arrival of new subsidiary companies of multi-national, global household brands.

With a headline goal of delivering financial products to internationally mobile clients through the use of everchanging technology, Hansard quickly established a reputation as an innovator in the 80s and 90s, scooping numerous industry awards. With the arrival of the worldwide web to the masses in the 1990s, Hansard was quick to realise the potential role of technology in transcending

traditional boundaries, launching ‘Hansard Online’ (or ‘HOL’ as it is known to the thousands of financial advisers that use it every year) in 1999. HOL continues to be central to the Hansard proposition to this day, with over 90% of new business submitted via a seamless, totally online, end-to-end platform, with over 2 million client reports generated using HOL each year.

Of course, great technology counts for nothing if it doesn’t serve as a vehicle to provide customers with what they want (see ‘Minidisc’ and ‘Sinclair C5’ to name but two). With this in mind, and fundamental to the evolution of Hansard Online is the close working relationship that Hansard maintains with its advisors around the world, ensuring that they are central to its development, resulting in an online solution that it can be confident meets their respective needs.

Ambitious goals In 2014 an ambitious strategic growth plan was shared with staff, advisors, shareholders and city analysts. The plan was purposely bold, putting faith in the previously proven strategy of always looking forward, thinking big and being well placed to adapt in an industry that has welcomed many new entrants, and waved goodbye to many others during the last three decades.

Early signs are certainly promising, with Hansard establishing lots of new distribution agreements in its core markets and new business growth driving the group forward, year on year.

A momentous example of this is the recent announcement of Hansard’s strategic alliance with the major UAE insurance giant, Union Insurance.

Leveraging Hansard’s specialism in providing slick online administration systems & intuitive advisor/client technology, Union Insurance launched its new ‘Infinity’ savings and investment proposition to the UAE market in February 2017, which will be powered by HOL technology.

To the next thirty years!

Hansard International is a company that has chosen to never stand still, to ‘thrive rather than survive’ in an industry where innovators are rewarded. So whilst 2017 will be a year of celebration, it will also be a year of looking forward, planning ahead and laying the foundations for the next thirty years.

ON THE AGENDA...

www.hansard30.com Licensed by the Isle of Man Financial Services Authority

update CORPORATE CULTURE

Bosses are getting older

but not more diverse It was hard to ignore Prince Philip carrying out his last solo public engagement at Buckingham Palace recently at the age of 96.

By Pilita Clark (FT)

I

was gripped, mainly out of self-interest.

Watching the surprisingly zippy pace at which the ancient duke strode across the palace forecourt was a cheering reminder of how much biological progress the human species has made, even for those of us without a lifetime supply of valets and in-house chefs.

The average British male born in the same year as Prince Philip was not expected to see his 57th birthday. Today a newborn boy should totter on to at least 79. But there is also the fact that Philip’s wife, Queen Elizabeth, is staying on in the job at 91. That makes the couple a fine, though extreme, example of how much longer we are all living and working.

This is one of the great social trends of our time, along with the rise of working women, the decline of the traditional family, growing global migration and automation. No organisation can afford to ignore such sweeping shifts, least of all a company. And when it comes to the ageing workforce, the people at the top of our largest corporations are definitely on-trend.

The advance of the hoodie-clad Silicon Valley chief executive can give the impression the people running our biggest companies are growing ever younger. But the opposite seems to be happening. Back in 2006, the average age of a CEO running an S&P 500 company

10

in the US was 55. By last year it had risen to 57 according to Spencer Stuart, a headhunting firm.

It’s not just the CEO. As boardroom retirement ages have crept up at those US companies, so has the average age of directors.

The share of boards with an average age of 64 or older last year was nearly double what it was a decade earlier.

It is not exactly clear why this is happening.

In the UK, where figures suggest boards are also greying, some think that as life expectancy has risen, so has the willingness to appoint older directors and chairs.

It might also have something to do with regulators encouraging greater depth of board experience in the wake of the 2008 financial meltdown.

Of course, the boardroom is not the only place showing signs of age. The shock of Donald Trump’s election overshadowed the fact that he was 70 at his inauguration, the oldest US president ever to enter office.

Against that, 39-year-old Emmanuel Macron has become France’s youngest head of state since Napoleon Bonaparte while Ireland’s new prime minister, Leo Varadkar, is the country’s youngest-ever premier at 38.

Yet Mr Varadkar underlines the fact that the boardroom, compared with politics, still looks ON THE AGENDA...

remarkably resistant to change when it comes to other transformations rippling through societies.

Not only is he the son of an Indian immigrant, he is also openly gay. This does not make him that special in Europe. Iceland, Belgium, Luxembourg and Serbia have all had gay leaders in the past five years.

In Scotland, the Conservative, Labour and Green parties all have gay or bisexual leaders, as does the Scottish branch of the UK Independence party.

The corporate world looks unrepresentative in comparison. The number of openly gay or bisexual CEOs has certainly grown in recent times.

Think of Tim Cook at Apple, Qantas’s Alan Joyce and Inga Beale at Lloyd’s of London. But progress still seems slow, as it does for nonwhite top executives and, of course, for women.

The number of female CEOs at the top 500 companies in the US has doubled since 2006 - which sounds impressive until you consider they made up just 6 per cent of the total last year.

This figure looks increasingly bizarre considering women make up nearly 47 per cent of the American workforce and just under 20 per cent of the US Congress. The story is similar in the UK, where women make up a CONNECTING BUSINESSES

record 32 per cent of the House of Commons, but fewer than 8 per cent of FTSE 100 company chief executives.

Does any of this matter? Is there any reason why an organisation charged with providing shareholder returns should reflect the society in which it operates? It is widely thought companies should avoid the dangers of groupthink, by appointing people who don’t all look and think the same way.

Still, the evidence is mixed. Some studies show a correlation between a better gender balance and higher profitability. Others suggest a neutral or even negative effect on company performance.

One large study of nearly 22,000 firms from 91 countries, published last year, found having senior women in a company may improve performance, especially if there is a high share of them in upper management. Simply having a female CEO did not seem to make any difference. That suggests it is important to build a pipeline of managers who look more like the rest of the country, rather than appointing a lone one at the top.

Either way, many boardrooms have a long way to go. It’s fine to reflect an ageing workforce, but not if that is the only social shift our largest companies end up following.

11

update feature

Mindreading

For Business By: Jaq Greenspon

W

ouldn’t it be amazing if you could read minds? Imagine, for example, you knew exactly what a potential customer was thinking, or what figure a negotiator would readily accept?

The question may seem pointless, since everyone knows mindreading is pure fiction... isn’t it?

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ON THE AGENDA...

One man who begs to differ is speaker and trainer Ian Rowland, who works professionally as The Mind Man. Teaching people how to read minds is part of what he does for a living. To date, his ever increasing client list includes the FBI, British Olympic sports psychologists, the Ministry of Defence and top executives from Marks & Spencer, Unilever and The Crown Estate.

“I can’t give you the gift of telepathy,” the Mind Man explains. “But I can teach you several techniques that come as close as possible to real-life mindreading.,” he pauses, smiling. “Business is about people,” he says. “The closer you can get to reading people like a book, the more successful you’ll be when it comes to sales, management and negotiation. It also boosts your confidence when dealing with people, because you can tell more about them than they can about you.”

But what do the Mind Man’s clients get out of it? Before setting up his own business, Rowland enjoyed a successful career in creative media and IT, and was UK Sales and Marketing Director for net technologies company Valtech.

He understands the corporate mind-set and these days is known for his rather distinctive approach to executive training.

He never uses PowerPoint or slides, and creates every training session around three rules: (1) nobody learns anything when they’re bored, (2) active learning is better than passive, and (3) it has to be memorable to be usable.But do these ‘mindreading’ techniques really work? The Mind Man offers two simple examples anyone can try. First of all, suppose you’re selling something and the prospect seems to be expressing interest. Is their interest real or feigned? “It comes down to something called the Duchenne smile,” the Mind Man explains. “A genuine smile involves two sets of muscles, around the eyes and the mouth respectively. A fake smile only involves the mouth. Fake smiles mean fake interest.”

“Another tip: conversation tracking.

When you’re talking to someone, deliberately leave an incomplete thought dangling in the air. For example, you might say you want to raise two points and then only mention one. If the other person picks up on this and asks about the second point, you know they’re actively paying attention.

If not, then you know their interest is only feigned or superficial, so you either need to

CONNECTING BUSINESSES

Ian Rowland - The Mind Man www.ianrowland.com

“It’s easy to know what someone’s thinking if you shaped their thoughts in the first place.”

re-engage with them or stop wasting your time.”

All of which is great for business, but law enforcement? What could the Mind Man teach FBI agents? “I covered a range of mindreading and communication tools they could use. For example, it can be hard to persuade a witness to provide information. It’s much easier to get them to give away information without realising.

One way to do this is by studying vocalics, which means considering every aspect of what someone says apart from the actual words they say. This can be very revealing.”

Another area the Mind Man loves to explore is what he terms influential mindreading. “It’s easy to know what someone’s thinking if you shaped their thoughts in the first place. For example, you can use techniques such as ‘priming’ and ‘anchoring’ to make someone feel £30 is a reasonable price for a bottle of wine. They will then accept £20 as a ‘bargain’ price, when it’s actually relatively expensive.”

As for making his training events memorable, the Mind Man has one extra trick up his sleeve: he’s a member of the Inner Magic Circle. His training sessions usually involve a few miracles and touches of the impossible. This is not just a gimmick. “People often say, ‘The last trainer we had was okay, but it was a bit flat and dull’. Nobody wants a dull session.

Training works best when people are entertained, intrigued and fascinated. A few miracles and surprises help to sustain interest and get people thinking. They’re also fun to watch.”

Teaching real-life mindreading is just one aspect of the Mind Man’s work.

He also teaches skills such as creative thinking, persuasion techniques, how to solve ‘impossible’ problems and how to have a perfect memory. “You can have 100% perfect recall,” he promises. “It’s simple once you know how.”

Showing people how to read minds for business purposes, or giving them an infallible memory — it’s all in a day’s work for the Mind Man: “The skills I teach may seem unusual, but they do help companies to be more successful, which is what matters.” His growing client list would suggest he’s on to something. Maybe mindreading isn’t pure fiction after all!

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update events

Department for Enterprise plans unveiled at inaugural IOM Marketing Community event

M

ore than 70 people attended the inaugural Isle of Man Marketing Community’s event where plans for the Department for Enterprise were unveiled.

The presentation by interim CEO for the Department of Economic

14

Development Mark Lewin, held at the Manx Museum, highlighted the review into the Department and the proposed ‘executive agency model’ that is core to the planned new approach.

The event saw Mark Lewin introduce the thinking behind the review’s recommendations but also invited the audience to work in breakout groups to brainstorm how the four proposed agencies could work together to benefit the Isle of Man’s economy and to think of solutions to some of the challenges each one may face.

The Isle of Man Marketing Community is a new networking group open to anyone with an interest in marketing, PR, promotion, business development and sales whether they are working in those disciplines or not. Its steering group features a mix of clientsided, agency and consultant marketers from both public and private sector.

Sponsor Home Strategic’s Lee McLellan, who is also part of the steering group, said: ‘Home was delighted to sponsor the first IOM Marketing ON THE AGENDA...

Anyone who has an interest in marketing, whether it’s part of their job or not, is welcome to come along to the events.

Community event and it was a great success. It was refreshing for the audience to be able to be part of the presentation by getting involved and giving their opinion, which will help shape the future of the Department for Enterprise.

‘Anyone who has an interest in marketing, whether it’s part of their job or not, is welcome to come along to the events. We’ve been planning the schedule for the next 12 months and we’re looking to present a wide range of topics including the latest trends in our industry.

We look forward to announcing our next event soon.’

CONNECTING BUSINESSES

15

update Movers & Shakers

PwC Isle of Man Promotes Alison Cregeen to Director in it’s Advisory services practice

A

lison joined PwC in 2009 and has 20 years’ experience working in Big 4 accountancy practices, both in London and the Isle of Man. Alison is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales. Prior to moving to the Isle of Man she specialised in forensic accounting, with experience in both commercial disputes and financial investigations. More recently she has qualified as a Data Protection Practitioner and in addition to her ongoing forensic work leads the growing data privacy practice in the Isle of Man. ‘Since I started work at PwC more than eight years ago, I have seen the Advisory department grow from just a couple of staff to a dedicated team of more than 10, with a range of general and specialised skills,’ said Alison.

‘It has been very rewarding to be a part of that, and I believe that we will continue to see the practice go from strength to strength in the future.

International Institute of Space Commerce announces new Executive Director

T

he International Institute of Space Commerce (IISC), the world’s leading open source think tank on the economics and commerce of space, has announced the selection of its new Executive Director, Mr Robert Alexander.

“I am very honored and excited to be given this responsibility,” he said. “The IISC has a unique position in the global space industry, where it serves companies, customers, governments, individuals and investors who daily work beyond our atmosphere. We are at a crucial time in human history, where people can make a living beyond the Earth; it is my intent to make the commerce of space more enticing.”

Mr Alexander plans to begin his term with a global outreach effort to recruit both people and corporations in joining the IISC. “The bigger our global ‘footprint’, the more doors the IISC will be able to open for our members,” he explained. “My dream is to help as many people achieve space flight as possible, and to have a good portion of them make money doing so.”

Estera Director shortlisted for UK Director of the Year Awards

E

stera Director Gary O’Connor has been shortlisted in the UK Finals of the Institute of Directors (IoD) ‘Director of the Year’ Awards 2017.

It follows his recognition as Director of the Year by the IoD Isle of Man in May, which qualified him for the national awards against winners from across the IoD network.

Gary, who joined Estera in 2013, has been nominated in the Young Director of the Year category.

The awards celebrate individuals who display professional expertise and strong corporate leadership alongside promoting social and economic development.

Gary said: ‘It is a great honour to

16

represent the Isle of Man and its thriving business sector at the national awards.

The other nominees are highly respected professionals and I am delighted to be included alongside them.’

Sean Dowling, Managing Director of Estera Isle of Man, added: ‘This year Estera has experienced rapid expansion through acquisitions and organic growth which has required strong leadership throughout all sectors of the business, and I am delighted that Gary has been recognised for his role.

The results will be announced on 22 September at a ceremony held at The Royal Lancaster London Hotel.

ON THE AGENDA...

Welcome home:

Woodbourne House, the ideal corporate venue

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oodbourne House is a home from home for businesses looking for the perfect corporate events venue. The warm, welcoming ambience is evident as soon as you enter the building which is one of the Island’s finest examples of early 20th century architecture. Exuding style on a grand scale, but with the classical yet intimate feel of a British country house, it really does make guests feel like they are coming home.

Woodbourne House is the perfect backdrop for any business function with the flexibility to cater

for events large and small, ranging from a conference or presentation in the magnificent Harrison Hall, to smaller events in one of the elegant meeting rooms. Whatever the event, Woodbourne House offers a flexible choice of spaces that can be tailored to meet specific requirements, and there is ample parking.

Excellent cuisine is assured – the head chef at Woodbourne House not only insists on using the best locally sourced produce wherever possible, he also makes sure that everything on your bespoke menu is made by hand, right down to delicious fresh bread.

This means Woodbourne House offers

inspirational dining inspired by your specific requirements.

At this time of year many businesses are already planning their Christmas events, and Woodbourne House has recently announced its ‘Woodbourne Winter Wonderland’ corporate parties which will take place every Thursday, Friday and Saturday from 30th November to 23rd December, and also on 5th and 6th January 2018.

The parties are an ideal way to share your celebrations with colleagues, business partners and clients, and include a glass of winter fizz on arrival, three course meal, disco, photobooth and live music.

Tickets are sold for tables of 10 – phone 01624 675365 or email enquiries@woodbournehouse.im for more information and booking.

update IOD-IOM MEET YOUR INSTITUTE OF DIRECTORS ISLE OF MAN COMMITTEE MEMBERS

JENNIFER HOUGHTON (Chairman)

SUE PRESKEY (Secretary) Duncan Lawrie Private Bank

DAWN WEBB

INSTITUTE OF DIRECTORS - ISLE OF MAN The Claremont 18-22 Loch Promenade Douglas, Isle of Man IM1 2LX www.iod.com

Treasurer Dawn Webb Advisory Limited

Isle of Man Member Benefits CLAIRE VEALE (Executive Officer)

PAUL MCAULEY

Lloyds Bank International Limited

CLAIRE MILNE Appleby

QUICK LOOK n Discounted entry to

Rendezvous Lounge and Speedy Park at the IOM Airport

n Discounted VIP Business Travel and Airport Transfers with K&B Carriage

n Discounts on Leisure and

JOHN HUNTER

Department of Economic Development

Alex Mcnee Boston

PETER REID

Lloyds Bank International

Business Travel with Richmond Travel and MannLink Travel

n Discounts on selected training courses with TLC

Additional Benefits for all members

n Access to our local HQ and Business Hub and locations throughout the UK

n IoD Car Rental, provided by

Hertz www.iod.com/carrentalÂ

SALLY BOLTON

Corlett Bolton & Co

ALICE MARTIN

Isle of Man Government

MARK WATERHOUSE

Isle of Man Financial Services Authority

For all benefits www.iod.com/home/ membership/membershipbenefits/default.aspx Institute of Directors - Isle of Man www.iod.com/events-community/ regions/isle-of-man

DEB BRYON

Hansard International

18

clive parish CPD Associates

ON THE AGENDA...

Intelligent and insightful offshore legal advice and services.

Delivered with perspective. applebyglobal.com

The Isle of Man Workplace Pension A modern pension driving down costs for you and your employees For more information please contact clientsupport@msrs.im or call us on +44 (0)1624 697240

www.msrs.im

PRECISE. PROVEN. PERFORMANCE.

Moore Stephens Retirement Solutions Limited is a company incorporated in the Isle of Man No.123460C and is registered with the Isle of Man Financial Services Authority as a Professional Retirement Benefits Schemes Administrator. August 2017

update IOd-iom Member Interview

“The Isle of Man was built on financial services, and financial services will always be a key part of the economy so it’s essential we have a fully qualified banking sector.”

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ON THE AGENDA...

Banki n g on a strong financial future Education and professional qualifications are the key to a successful financial services industry says Institute of Directors committee member and former banking CEO Mark Waterhouse

I

By: Wendy Shimmin Photo: Matt Mosur

t would be hard to meet a more experienced banking professional on the Isle of Man than Mark Waterhouse – or one whose career has reflected the changes in the financial services industry in the past 20 years quite so clearly.

Arriving in the late 1990s, Mark has steered a number of Isle of Man financial institutions through both good times and more challenging periods as the industry has adapted to increasing regulation, the consequences of the financial crash in 2007-2008 and the introduction of the Alternative Banking Regime.

CONNECTING BUSINESSES

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“I am certain that my own training and experience through the IoD, the theory if you like that supplemented my practical experience, helped me to obtain the position at the FSA. It allows you to speak with authority.”

He has also contributed much to the evolution of the Isle of Man’s financial services sector through active membership of various professional banking associations as well as the Institute of Directors and, more recently, a position at the Isle of Man Financial Services Authority.

Throughout it all Mark has remained convinced of the Isle of Man’s ability to adjust and make the most of new opportunities - and of the need for those in the banking industry to be properly qualified and exemplars of good governance.

“The Isle of Man was built on financial services,” he says, “and financial services will always be a key part of the economy so it’s essential we have a fully qualified banking sector.

Born and bred in Yorkshire, Mark began his own career at the Leeds Permanent Building Society, a mutual

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organisation which, he says, “set the standard in terms of putting customers and members first”.

His move to the Isle of Man was a chance one when the vacancy for Managing Director of the Halifax came up although there was a touch of fate about it as Mark had previously met his wife Jackie in the Three Legs pub in Leeds and they had come to the Isle of Man for their honeymoon.

Tasked with merging the Isle of Man and Jersey Halifax operations into one, Mark found himself in the unusual position of requiring an Act of Tynwald but found the Isle of Man Government “very supportive” as he worked to keep the larger part of the bank in the Isle of Man. After a spell at Alliance & Leicester prior to its merger with Santander, Mark joined Zurich Bank as CEO until Zurich’s controlled exit from the banking market to concentrate on its core insurance ON THE AGENDA...

business. The closure has given Mark time to reflect on where he wants to focus his future efforts and he is keen to pass on his experience in non-executive roles as well as championing the role of professional education, appropriate qualifications and good governance across the industry.

His recent appointment to the Board of the FSA is a “fantastic opportunity to make a difference,” he says. “Having joined at an interesting time with the merger of the FSC and IPA, there is a good blend and balance in the Board.

We’re there to protect customers and shareholders, reduce financial crime and protect reputation but we’re also there to support the future of financial services on the Isle of Man.” Previously Mark was instrumental in setting up the Association of Licensed Bankers (now known as IOMBA), where he spent five years as President working closely with the Isle of Man Government CONNECTING BUSINESSES

in meeting international compliance requirements and responding to the UK Government’s plan to ring-fence retail banking.

More recently Mark has become President of the Isle of Man’s branch of the London Institute of Banking & Finance, which provides financial education for people at all stages of their lives, and he is proud to have helped introduce a new set of qualifications in Retail or Business Banking to those working in the industry. Leading by example, he was one of the first to take the new exams and was relieved to be among the 85% of students passing on their first attempt!

The LIBF is now working with Ballakermeen High School on a pilot project to offer a Level 3 (A-Level equivalent) Certificate in Financial Studies to 40 students this September.

For Mark, the skilling and qualification of people in the financial services industry is a key requirement to its future success and it’s a theme that recurs in his role as a committee member for the Island’s Institute of Directors branch.

“The IoD is all about equipping people to understand their responsibilities and fulfil their roles to the best of their abilities and in the best interests of their company. Just as at the FSA, there is a drive to see that everyone working in regulated sectors has appropriate qualifications and of course the IoD also offers great networking as well as support through meetings, libraries and online advice.

“I am certain that my own training and experience through the IoD, the theory if you like that supplemented my practical experience, helped me to obtain the position at the FSA. It allows you to speak with authority.”

Looking ahead, Mark believes the Isle of Man will continue to be a strong player in the financial services industry. “The Isle of Man has been very successful in diversifying its financial services, which has been the right thing to do whether that’s through traditional banking, insurance or e-gaming. We have been successful by being innovative, and by being pioneers, and we need to carry on doing that.”

With regards to his own future, Mark is looking forward to sharing his knowledge and expertise where he can as well as the occasional round of golf. “I feel very fortunate to have gained a lot of personal satisfaction in my career on the Isle of Man,” he says, “and it’s good to be able to use that experience through the IOMFSA and the IoD to help a new generation seize the opportunities that the next few years will undoubtedly present.”

AGENDA FACT FILE REVALTATIONS

FAMILY? Wife Jackie - we’ve been married 39 years. Daughter Charlotte and granddaughter Sydney plus son, Joel, who just got married last month to Vicky.

BEST GADGET? Leaf blower – saves me loads of time in the garden.

SPARE TIME ACTIVITY? Golf and socialising.

FAVOURITE MEAL? My Mum’s Sunday roast with Yorkshire Puddings, naturally.

WORST CHARACTER TRAIT? According to my wife, it is not listening - but for me to put this down must disprove this!

FAVOURITE FILM OF ALL TIME? Where Eagles Dare.

MOST EMBARRASSING MOMENT? Too many to mention and, if I do, I may get into trouble!

GUILTY PLEASURE? Sweets, especially a large bag of Revels and maybe Sports Mixture.

BIGGEST INSPIRATION? My former boss at Leeds Permanent, Roger Gray. He taught us the importance of looking after customers and staff, and to always ensure you have fun along the way. Never has the saying “work hard and play hard” had more meaning.

FAVOURITE SONG? “Que Sera, Sera” (Whatever will be, will be) by Doris Day. A PERFECT DAY? Early game of golf, home for my wife’s breakfast/ brunch, watching Leeds United thrash Manchester United on TV in the afternoon followed by meal and drinks with family and friends in Douglas.

BEST PIECE OF ADVICE YOU’VE EVER HAD? I suppose it has to be “work hard and play hard” although another saying of my boss was “a career is a long time” which I think a lot of people should reflect on.

WHAT DO YOU MOST DISLIKE? Hypocrisy.

IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME, WHICH AGE WOULD YOU GO TO? Probably my 20s, newly married with a great social life and not a care in the world.

WHERE IS YOUR FAVOURITE PLACE IN THE WORLD? Possibly San Pedro in Spain where we share an apartment and have enjoyed many great times with family and friends.

YOUR BIGGEST EXTRAVAGANCE? In Yorkshire we don’t do extravagance although some would argue that is hypocrisy as we have an apartment in Spain.

TOP OF YOUR BUCKET ‘TO DO’ LIST? The Ashes series in Australia.

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update iod-iom - 99 membership program

F

irst, you need to know what you want by identifying the outcome you’re looking to achieve; experimenting with a careful cocktail of knowledge application.

Mixing what you trust with innovative thinking - and taste testing it.

That’s why the Institute of Directors started the 99 Membership – it’s now the UK’s fastest growing network for entrepreneurs.

The benefit? Transforming them into ‘scale-up’ businesses by providing free access to thousands of co-working spaces; inviting them to over 600 events; and serving them with access to over 30,000 business giants – for only £99 a year.

There’s a wide range of sectors joining; manufacturers, games designers, fin-tech innovators, tailors, lingerie makers, and full-service marketing agencies; like Bold Consultancy; the very first Manx member.

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Buoyant, intelligent business begins

with strategic networking…

By: Tanya Humbles Photo: Matt Mosur

ON THE AGENDA...

Agenda met with directors Richard Corlett, and Helen Ward: HELEN: It all began around two years ago, now. We want customer-centricity; it’s what we’re passionate about. We’ve established a process; spending time with prospective clients before we get to the contract.

Bold spends up to 12 hours with any one potential client, so any work we’re setting out to implement is based on true business need. It’s a jigsaw puzzle. We need to fit into their business; that’s marketing.

Agenda: Why spend so much time with the client beforehand? Is it well spent?

HELEN: Meeting customer needs establishes you as a business – if you’re not doing that, you don’t have a respectable business.

By making that investment up-front, they can get closer without having to worry about the financial investment; they can see what we’re going to deliver, and the benefit before making a commitment.

We’re doing what we feel is right for us; building long-term relationships based on trust.

Agenda: How do you stand apart from the other agencies that operate in the Isle of Man? RICHARD: Plenty of agencies that have successful relationships. We’re doing what we feel is right for us; building longterm relationships based on trust.

We do have local clients, like Roots Beverage Company. When we first started our own marketing campaign; we went out to a number of local businesses.

Ultimately, though, the Manx market is quite small - mainly, we’re looking to the UK to negate any competition with local agencies. There is only a finite amount of business, and that’s mostly tied up.

We don’t want to take work off other agencies; we just want to work with people who understand how we function, and what our process brings. It allows people to get to know us on a business level first.

Agenda: Outsourcing is a great way to cut costs - but what is it about the way you do it that makes this operation different?

It’s about getting the right person for the job: Specialists; for example, if you have a wide range of clients, you don’t have one copywriter, or one designer working on every facet of each industry.

It’s much better for us, and for our clients, to outsource to the wider marketplace; get the right person for the job to meet expectations.

Agenda: What is it about the IoD 99 Membership that interests you?

HELEN: The opportunity to establish CONNECTING BUSINESSES

Meeting customer needs establishes you as a business – if you’re not doing that, you don’t have a respectable business.

ourselves within a niche.

By working with the IoD in this way; we have an opportunity to start our own network. It’s an exciting group.

It’s grown massively in the UK, and now has around 1,700 members – they’ve recruited around 140 in the last month alone.

As much as we’re keen to go global, we want to see development on the Isle of Man too. This is one way we’re looking to establish ourselves here.

There’s a really good, strong presence within the IoD locally – but it’s with people who know each other very well, many of them more experienced.

What the IoD is looking for is to recruit younger people into the organisation. This is the best way they can do that. It’s a Britain-wide initiative, but something the local membership wants to see thriving here too.

RICHARD: There are plenty of businesses on the Island, many under the age of 40; their mindset, and the way business is run can be a little bit different.

We’re not talking large corporations, which is where the normal IoD membership comes in… Having that ability to network with people who are perhaps on your wavelength is less of a barrier; less intimidating.

Agenda: Bold Consultancy measures the success of its work for clients, so how do you intend to measure the benefit of the 99-er?

HELEN: By looking at the financial benefit of travelling to the UK, and how we would have to pay for meeting space; that’s one way that we would do it. We would also look at who we’re targeting, and how we can use the IoD to support that: Method that works into bigger plans, enabling us to be more cost-effective.

ANDREW: I’ll add to that by saying there are other key offerings from the IoD; like business intelligence services, and they do their own market research. As a 99 member, we have access to all of that too…

Possibly not so much for the Isle of Man market, but certainly for the UK market - which is where we’re growing at the moment.

We can research new markets, new sectors – that gives us confidence to approach new businesses. The confidence to grow.

AGENDA: So, if you’re a founder or co-founder of your own business with an annual turnover of less than £3 million – and you’ve been around for five years or less; this could be for you.

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update buisness events

Isle of Man

Isle of Man Business Network - Private tour of Tynwald with the ultimate “insider” DATE: Thu, 7th September TIME: 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM LOCATION: Tynwald Building, Finch

Road, Douglas, Isle of Man PRICE: £5 per person

The Isle of Man Business Network is delighted to be in a position where they can invite members to take a private tour of the Tynwald Building, conducted personally by the Speaker of the House of Keys, the ultimate ‘insider’, The Hon. Juan Watterson SHK. Mr. Watterson will take you around the three Chambers and give you an overview of the history of the world’s oldest continuous parliament, from 979 to the current day. There will be plenty of opportunity to ask questions. www.iombn.im

EVENTS ELSEWHERE

The Isle of Man Maritime Group: Raising the Bar at Tower Bridge DATE: 13th September TIME: 19:00 - 22:00 LOCATION: Tower Bridge, London PRICE: Invitation Only

LISW has quickly become a must attend bi-annual event in the maritime calendar. It attracts business leaders from all sectors of international shipping from regulators, to charterers, ship owners, ship managers, lawyers, ship brokers, bankers, insurers, and to shipping service providers.

Participating members of the Group include: the Isle of Man Ship Registry, KPMG, InterManager, MHG Insurance, Bernhard Schulte Ship Management, PDMS Maritime, Department of Economic Development (DED), Appleby and Döhle.

More than a drinks reception, the Group’s events provide an excellent networking opportunity and are remembered and talked about for years to come.

BVCA National Dinner Series 2017 North West Dinner DATE: 14th September TIME: 18:30 - 02:00 LOCATION: Hilton Manchester

Deansgate, Manchester PRICE: See website

Sponsored by the Isle of Man Wealth and Fund Services Association, supported by the Department of Economic Development, senior representatives from IOMWFSA membership committee use the opportunity to host key contacts and raise the Island’s profile through networking with general partners, advisers and their guests from each region.

Featuring high-profile speakers from an array of backgrounds including Katherine Grainger DBE, James Cracknell OBE and Denise Lewis OBE, these events provide an educational element as well as giving back to local charities through fundraising. www.whereyoucan.com/events www.bvca.co.uk/calendar

Register your interest in attendance, sponsorship and/or membership. www.iom-maritime.com | www. londoninternationalshippingweek.com |www.whereyoucan.com/events

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ON THE AGENDA...

BVCA Summit 2017

DATE: 11th - 12th October TIME: Two daysLOCATION: One

Belgravia (Day 1) & The Landmark Hotel (Day 2) London PRICE: See website The Isle of Man Government join 800 comrades for the British Venture Capital Associations ‘revolutionaries’ event where the focus is on this changing industry in a changing world - political and business intelligence, latest market developments and new fund investment strategies.

This year’s speakers include Tim Hames – BVCA, Catherine Lewis La Torre – British Business Bank Investment and John Van Rossen – EY. The Isle of Man Department of Economic Development will join exhibiting

sponsors to share what the Isle of Man is doing to help existing and relocating businesses grow and expand, including a £50 million Enterprise Development fund, new regulations for banking licences

(the Alternative Banking Regime) and regulations supporting the establishment of on-island crowdfunding platforms. www.whereyoucan.com/events www.bvca.co.uk/calendar

Isle of Man

Monaco Yacht Show 2017 DATE: 27th - 30th September TIME: Three - Days LOCATION: Port Hercules, Monaco PRICE: See website

The Isle of Man Ship and Yacht Registries will once again be attending the Monaco Yacht Show.

An evening with andy mcnab

DATE: 27th Ocotber TIME: 19:30 - Lat LOCATION: The Palace Hotel, Douglas PRICE: £79 per person + Vat | £790 per

This year they are pleased to welcome leading superyacht service providers based in the Isle of Man onto Stand Darse Sud QS35 alongside the Isle of Man Ship and Yacht Registries and the Isle of Man Superyacht Forum, including Abacus, Affinity, Baker Tilly, Boston MFO, Cavendish Trust, KPMG, Manx Telecom, MHG Insurance Brokers, Ocean Web, Riela Yachts and Zedra.

table of 10 + Vat

www.whereyoucan.com/events

Andy will be sharing his extensive life experiences on overcoming the greatest

www.iomsf.im CONNECTING BUSINESSES

Prestige Artist Events are pleased to announce an Evening with Andy McNab (DCM, MM), ex 22 SAS, Best Selling Author.

As a member of 22 SAS Andy was at the center of covert operations for nine years – on five continents.

of odds to survive. Including motivation, inspiration, endurance, through his own life experiences and surviving to tell his story. This includes recent expeditions to both poles. An evening truly not to be missed with an distinguished and accomplished individual.

Each ticket will include a copy of Andy’s Newest fiction book being released in Autumn 2017.

Part of the proceeds from this IoM event will be donated to Help for Heroes and Hospice Isle of Man. The evening will also have a Luxury Prize draw with exclusive items.

BOOK your tickets now: www.prestigeartistevents.com

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update Institute of directors events a 2 course lunch and update from Stephen Martin. The lunch is scheduled to finish no later than 2pm.

IoD Isle of Man Breakfast Seminar How do we synchronise the Digital Strategy & Implementation between Public and Private Sectors?

DATE: 11th September TIME: 08:00 - 09:00 LOCATION: The Claremont Hotel,

Douglas PRICE: Member free, £8.33 +VAT

The IoD-IoM are delighted to invite you to join them for the September Breakfast Meeting with Kurt Roosen, CEO of MICTA. MICTA are a true representative body for the ICT industry working in close partnership with DED and GTS and Chamber of Commerce and IoD. Kurt Roosen will be joining us for this event to provide us with an overview of MICTA’s aims and achievements and provide their view of the Digital Strategy.

In 2013 the IoD-IoM welcomed Simon Walker, previous IoD Director General, to the first prestige lunch and 25 year anniversary, the event was such a success that they have continued to hold the lunches bi-annually. Now in its 4th year they have a great pleasure in announcing the 9th speaker as Stephen Martin, IoD Director General.

Stephen Martin became Director General of the Institute of Directors in February 2017.

He began his career as a quantity surveyor, before going on to hold a series of management positions at engineering and construction companies.

Originally from Northern Ireland, Stephen is a long-standing member of the IoD and has been involved in the business community in Yorkshire and the Humber for many years, acting as a business mentor to start-ups in the region and an Apprenticeship Ambassador.

In 2009, he appeared on the first series of the Channel 4 television show Undercover Boss.

For additional information and to book contact Claire Veale, Executive Officer, Institute of Directors – Isle of Man. E: admin@iod.im T: 07624 355160

Iod events Elsewhere

IoD Jersey Annual Debate DATE: 21st September TIME: 17:30 - 22:30 LOCATION: Royal Jersey Agricultural &

Horticultural Society, Jersey PRICE: £87.50

IoD Isle of Man Autumn Lunch

We are delighted to advise that Stephen Martin, IoD Director General, will be joining us for our Autumn Lunch supported by Barclays.

DATE: 29th September TIME: 11:45 - 14:00 LOCATION: The Claremont Hotel PRICE: £35

This prestigious lunch begins with a drinks reception at 11.45am followed by

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Jersey’s most anticipated business event returns this year to focus on ‘Funding our Future’ with the aid of moderator Alastair Stewart OBE and expert panellists.

The event begins with a drinks reception at 5.30pm with the Debate starting at 6.30pm. A 2 course supper will be served at 8.00pm before the Debate continues at 9.15pm followed by carriages at 10.30pm. www.iod.je/Events

The Director of the Year Awards UK Final DATE: 22nd September TIME: 12:30 - 17:00

LOCATION: Lancaster London Hotel PRICE: £150 + vat

This popular awards ceremony celebrates directors at the forefront of leadership excellence.

The Director of the Year Awards UK Final is held every year because we believe in the value of leadership. In big corporates, small businesses, the public sector and charities, the difference between success and failure is leadership. Directors who win these awards have been recognised as the best in their field by the organisation for business leaders, the IoD. www.iod.com/events

Guernsey Annual Convention

DATE: 28th September TIME: 16:00 - 22:30 LOCATION: Dave Ferguson Hall, Beau

Sejour, Guernsey

PRICE: £80

Having focused on Population (2015) and Health Wealth and Happiness for Guernsey (2016) the 2017 IoD Guernsey Branch Annual Convention topic of ‘Infrastructure’ will explore what more the island can do to remain a great place to live and work for generations to come. www.iod.gg/events

IoD North West Enterprising Women Conference 2017 DATE: 22nd October TIME: 09:30 - 16:30 LOCATION: Salford Professional

Development, Salford PRICE: £75 + VAT

The IoD North West - Enterprising Women Conference celebrates the best in female business leadership and talent across the region.

The theme of this year’s conference is ‘Aim High & Stand Firm’. The IoD are creating a superb line-up of some of the region’s top business women, and influential and inspirational experts from across the UK to help you enhance your leadership skills, further build your business acumen and continue to strengthen your personal impact. Also on offer is superb networking opportunities throughout the day and a closing drinks reception as the finale. www.iod.com/events

ON THE AGENDA...

features - Investments

Matching ethical and financial criteria

a challenge for investors Green energy and education are the most popular investment themes

By Miles Johnson (FT)

F

or foundations and family offices that want to put their money into so-called impact investments, one of their biggest challenges is finding opportunities that meet both their ethical and financial

criteria.

This was one of the findings of the most recent Financial Times Investing for Global Impact report, which surveyed 246 family offices and foundations about philanthropy and impact investing.

More than 30 per cent of the

CONNECTING BUSINESSES

respondents, which manage between less than $50m to more than $10bn, said that a lack of good impact investment opportunities was their main preoccupation. Green energy and education were the most popular investment themes for impact investment, with climate-specific opportunities seeing one of the largest increases in interest from 2016 to 2017.

Green energy and education were the most popular investment themes for impact investment, with climate-specific

opportunities seeing one of the largest increases in interest from 2016 to 2017.

At the same time many of the respondents said that they were aiming for ambitious financial returns from these sorts of projects.

Almost a fifth said they were targeting a gain of more than 15 per cent over the next 12 months and more than a tenth were aiming for between 11 and 15 per cent.

At a time when low interest rates around the world have made financial returns harder to find, 75 per cent of respondents said that the performance of their impact investments had met or exceeded their expectations.

This, the survey concluded, showed that “slowly, but surely, impact investing is becoming embedded in high-net-worth portfolios� and was now being increasingly treated as a credible companion to mainstream and traditional financial opportunities.

90% the proportion of family offices and foundations that said they had achieved market rate or above returns from impact investment over three years.

5% the percentage of foundations that said they are not involved in either philanthropy or impact investing.

6 the percentage point increase in family offices and foundations that plan to invest in climate-related investments from 2016 to 2017 $40tn the amount estimated that will be inherited by the millennial genration. $10bn 6 per cent of respondents said they currently managed assets in excess of $10bn.

42% the number of single family offices surveyed that manage firstgeneration wealth.

5-10 years the time frame over which the largest number of respondents tend to hold their impact investments. $35m the amount the Rockefeller Brothers Fund is seeking to divest in fossil fuel investments.

30 the percentage of family offices and foundations that said a lack of good impact investment opportunities is their biggest challenge.

1 year only 1 per cent of those surveyed said they held impact investments for less than a year.

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features Investments

How to plan for a future

stock market crash

I

By Jason Butler (FT)

n March 2009 I held a review meeting with a client - I’ll call him Nigel - who was a senior executive at a large quoted company.

He was extremely agitated about the recent falls in the stock market, which had seen the FTSE 100 plunge by nearly 50 per cent over the previous 15 months.

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ON THE AGENDA...

Nigel feared that the stock market might continue falling. In any case, he couldn’t see it recovering its previous fall for many years. He wanted to sell the holdings in his investment portfolio, move the proceeds to cash and sit out the market turbulence.

All the academic research shows that emotions have a significant influence on investor behaviour and how we make decisions. This can often lead to investors failing to capture the returns that are there for the taking, and as a result suffering poor financial outcomes.

Research also shows that we are twice as sensitive to financial losses as we are to making gains and so, given a choice, we would much prefer to avoid losses than to seek returns.

This can lead us to adopt an overly cautious investment approach that pretty much guarantees we will run out of money. If you are like Nigel and want to move risky investments to cash after a large fall, you risk making a temporary loss permanent.

How a situation is presented to us known as framing - can also influence our financial decisions, without our being conscious of the effect, leading to illogical investment choices. Our financial expectations also have a big impact on behaviour because feelings of disappointment, regret or greed are powerful emotions that cloud good judgment.

The overall direction of global developed stock markets is a relentless and continual rise in value over the very long term, punctuated by regular and sometimes very significant falls. As a rule, stock markets are rising one-third of the time, falling another third of the time and recovering another third of the time.

World stock markets will, therefore, experience a significant crash in the future. It’s not a case of if but when, by how much and over what time period the crash will happen. The key question is: how will you react when it does?

In 1972, the UK stock market had a total return of 17.9 per cent, so £100,000 invested at the beginning of that year would have grown to £117,900 before costs. In 1973 the market fell 27 per cent, meaning that the same portfolio would have fallen to about £86,000.

The following year saw the market fall by an eye watering 50.4 per cent, reducing our hypothetical portfolio value to £42,700.

Had the portfolio been established at the start of 1973, the value at the end of 1974 would have been even lower at £36,200.

Imagine now that the 1972-74 stock market performance happened to you today. In the space of less than three years

CONNECTING BUSINESSES

The key to navigating the next crash is to have a written investment policy statement which states how and why you are investing, based on a proper assessment of your psychological risk tolerance.

your equity portfolio will have fallen in nominal terms to about one-third of its original value. What would you do?

If you are like many (irrational) investors, driven by the pain of seeing their portfolio lose so much money, you’d probably encash your holdings and put them in a savings account. As a result, you would then miss the market rise of 145.2 per cent that happened in 1975, the 2.6 per cent rise in 1976 and the 48.7 per cent rise in 1977.

By the end of 1977 your cash would be worth about £54,000 with compound interest, compared to the portfolio which would be worth nearly £160,000. That difference of £104,000 represents what is referred to by academics as the “behaviour gap”, demonstrating the real cost of making emotionally driven financial decisions.

For most people, their investment time horizon will be much longer than it is likely to take for equity markets to recover from a crash and make new gains.

The average 65-year-old couple in good health will have a typical investment holding period of about 30 years. Younger people, still accumulating wealth, might be looking at investing for 50 or 60 years.

A market crash, while very unsettling and

unpleasant, should be seen in the context of one’s remaining lifetime.

One of the only free lunches in investing is to be diversified across different asset classes. If your portfolio holds some less risky assets then your return journey will be smoother, because you won’t experience 100 per cent of the equity market falls. The price you pay, however, is likely to be lower long-term investment returns.

Stock markets have been described as a voting machine in the short term, reflecting the current sentiment and confidence of investors. In the long term, they are more like a weighing machine, reflecting the present value of current and future earnings from capitalism.

When Nigel came to see me during the 2009 market crash, I asked him three questions: 1. Do you have enough cash held on deposit to meet your spending needs for the next two to three years?

2. Do you believe in capitalism and its ability to create wealth over the long term?

3. Is your time horizon for your investment portfolio more than 25 years?

Nigel answered yes to all three questions. I therefore suggested that he stop worrying about what he couldn’t control - the stock market - and instead focus on what he could - his emotions and leave his portfolio alone.

His portfolio today is showing gains of about £2m, compared to a loss of £1m that he would have suffered had I let him encash his portfolio. This compares to the £800,000 loss he made on another portfolio he held with a well-known private bank, which merely followed his instructions and encashed his holdings during the depths of the 2008/9 downturn.

A stock market crash will happen, because they always happen. You might think: if a crash is inevitable then I’ll cash everything in now and reinvest it all at the bottom of the market. The problem with this approach is that you actually increase risk because you also have to make a decision about when to re-enter the stock market. Missing just the few best days of stock market returns in a year, because you are uninvested, leads to much lower long-term returns.

The key to navigating the next crash is to have a written investment policy statement which states how and why you are investing, based on a proper assessment of your psychological risk tolerance and the return you need to fund your lifetime spending goals. Then all you need is a clear understanding of how you might react emotionally - and someone you can call on to keep you disciplined in the face of uncertainty.

31

features Undercover Economist

Soci e ty and the profiteroles paradox ‘Can a society really want anything coherent? Arrow’s impossibility theorem drives a stake through the very idea’

By Tim Hartford (FT) Illustration by Harry Haysom

32

ON THE AGENDA...

K

en is in a restaurant, pondering his choice of dessert. Ice cream, profiteroles or a cheese plate?

He’s about to request a scoop of ice cream when the waiter informs him that the profiteroles are off the menu. “I see,” says Ken. “Well, I’ll have the cheese, please.”

Ken’s behaviour is odd enough to be a piece of surrealist comedy. But what seems ludicrous from an individual is easy to imagine in an election. Think of George W Bush as ice cream, Ralph Nader as profiteroles and Al Gore as the cheese plate. If Nader had not been on the menu in the 2000 US presidential election, then Gore would have been president instead of Bush. Since Nader himself was never a serious contender, it seems odd that his presence changed the result. But we’ve grown used to this sort of thing in politics.

Still, we might ask: is there a way to assemble individual preferences into social preferences without generating surreal outcomes? That was the first of many big problems studied by the great economist Kenneth Arrow, who died in February at the age of 95. His answer: no.

To understand Arrow’s answer, imagine a society in which every individual has a ranking expressing their preferences over every possible outcome. Let’s say that we can read minds, so we know what each person’s ranking is. All we need is some system for combining those individual rankings into a social ranking that tells us what society as a whole prefers.

Arrow named this putative system a constitution. What properties would we like our constitution to have? It should be comprehensive, giving us an answer no matter what the individual rankings might be. And it wouldn’t fall prey to the profiteroles paradox: if society prefers ice cream to cheese, then whether profiteroles are available or not shouldn’t change that fact.

We want the constitution to reflect people’s preferences in common-sense ways. If everyone expresses the same preference, for example, the constitution should reflect that. And we shouldn’t have a dictator — an individual who is a kind of swing voter, where the constitution reflects only her preferences and ignores everyone else.

None of these properties seem particularly stringent — which makes Arrow’s discovery all the more striking.

Arrow’s “impossibility theorem” proves that no constitution can satisfy all of them.

Any comprehensive constitution will suffer the profiteroles paradox, or arbitrarily ignore individual preferences, or will simply install a dictator. How can this be?

Let me now attempt the nerdiest move in more than 11 years of writing this column. Since there’s no idea in economics more beautiful than Arrow’s impossibility theorem, I’m going to try to outline a proof

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for you — very sketchily, but you may get the idea.

Imagine that our constitution must deliver a choice between ice cream, profiteroles and cheese.

Step one in the proof is to note that there must be a group whose preferences determine whether society as a whole prefers cheese or ice cream — if only because the constitution must respect a unanimous view on this. Call this group the Cheese Group. The Cheese Group might include everyone in society, but maybe it’s a smaller group of swing voters.

The next step is to show that the Cheese Group doesn’t merely swing the decision between cheese and ice cream, but also over profiteroles and any other dessert we might add to the menu. We can show this by creating cases where it’s impossible for the Cheese Group to express a preference between cheese and ice cream without profiteroles being caught in the middle.

This means that the Cheese Group actually gets to decide about everything, not just cheese and ice cream.

Finally, having established that the Cheese Group is all-powerful, we show that we can make it smaller without destroying its power. Specifically, we can keep dividing it into pairs of sub-groups, and show that at each division either one of the sub-groups is all-powerful, or the other one is.

In short: we prove that if any group of voters gets to decide one thing, that group gets to decide everything, and we prove that any group of decisive voters can be pared down until there’s only one person in it. That person is the dictator. Our perfection constitution is in tatters.

That’s Arrow’s impossibility theorem.

But what does it really tell us? One lesson is to abandon the search for a perfect voting system. Another is to question his requirements for a good constitution, and to look for alternatives. For example, we could have a system that allows people to register the strength of their feeling.

What about the person who has a mild preference for profiteroles over ice cream but who loathes cheese? In Arrow’s constitution there’s no room for strong or weak desires, only for a ranking of outcomes. Maybe that’s the problem.

Arrow’s impossibility theorem is usually described as being about the flaws in voting systems. But there’s a deeper lesson under its surface. Voting systems are supposed to reveal what societies really want. But can a society really want anything coherent at all? Arrow’s theorem drives a stake through the heart of the very idea.

People might have coherent preferences, but societies cannot. We will always find ourselves choosing ice cream, then switching to cheese because the profiteroles are off.

If any group of voters gets to decide one thing, that group gets to decide everything 33

features tax havens

TAX HAVENS:

OUR INCONVENIENT TRUTH

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earth, it was time to face reality. Many businesses suffered. But for those attuned to what Gore was saying all along, the film arguably did fewer favours. In a post-9/11 world, the film’s attachment of liberal leaning dogma to what should have been purely scientific reason gave the American right a pedestal from which to deny Gore’s plea. Climate change grew into a political wedge, with fascists in the blue corner and long-haired commies in the red. One only has to look at Trump’s America - which has just signaled its departure from the Obama-crafted Paris Agreement - to understand the ramifications.

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By: Alexander Bell

he early 2000s were simpler.

A sepia-toned dreamworld where we got on with Europe, credits hadn’t been crunched, and Donald Trump was just an average billionaire, content with merely upsetting the hoi polloi of rural Scotland.

Back then, the man in charge of nuclear codes and such was a friendly lothario named Bill Clinton, who, in spite of cigar-shaped foibles, managed to swan out of office with the highest approval rating of any president since World War II. Willie’s right-hand man, Al Gore, will likely be remembered less for his race against George W. Bush in 2000 (where he lost despite winning more votes; you do the math), and more as the man who finally got America talking about climate change. The Democrat’s 2006 PowerPointThriller An Inconvenient Truth made 66% of viewers ‘change their stance’ on global warming; it won two Oscars; and a multi-million dollar sequel was released last month.

Sadly, the truth turned out to be inconvenient on both sides. For die hard deniers, now faced with rock solid evidence that they were killing the CONNECTING BUSINESSES

And so follows my point.

New research from the University of Amsterdam has concluded, to some surprise, that the Isle of Man can no longer be classified as a tax haven. The study was conducted not by abstract political philosophers, nor tower-dwelling neoliberal economists, but by data scientists - who rigorously analysed more than 77 million trust and corporate structures worldwide to rank the worst offenders for stashing cash, and those who let them stash it.

Topping the list of so-called conduit nations is the British Virgin Islands, which makes no bones about its status as a place to conceal wealth. 40% of business there comes from China’s ruling classes, beguiled by offers of lucrative and clandestine methods to hide their Yuan from even the watchful eye of ‘Tax-manchu’ (sorry.) Below BVI, Jersey, Cayman, Gibraltar… But no Isle of Man. Why? Are we so shrouded in smoke that not even experts know we’re here?

Far from it, argues Manx advocate Paul Beckett. What separates us from the others, he says, is ‘a level of secrecy and concealment we simply do not offer’. We have no interest in the arcane financial structures utilised by BVI et al to thrust offshore wealth into the economic netherworld. Sure, we are a low tax jurisdiction; but our dealings are conducted firmly in the open. We have a compulsory, central registry of beneficial ownership. We are party to dozens of international tax information agreements.

Our regulatory regime, now thirty years old, is world-enviable.

But therein lies our inconvenient truth. It’s bound to be exasperating for government and business here, which, in spite of this shift, will still struggle to shake off the enduring image of a harbour for dodgy deals and Baines’ bucks. Even Tynwald’s President, Steve Rodan, has conceded much of the world still considers us a ‘dodgy tax haven’. Eight thousand mentions in the Panama Papers didn’t help. And with Brexit looming, Europe is now threatening us with the dreaded blacklist - something Westminster has vowed to prevent.

But this research from Holland is an even more inconvenient truth for those who preach against our regime: inconvenient for the tax justice campaigners who have practically made a living writing diatribes against Britain’s ‘dirty little secret’; inconvenient for our Chief Constable, whose defence against relentless cost-cutting in his force was the need for an expanded Financial Crime Unit; Then there’s our population, the Squeezed Manx Middle, who are bombarded weekly with spin about the Isle of Man being a ‘great place to live and work’ for corporations, but rarely see any benefit to their own pocket. Their unifying cry against the wolves of Athol Street - the ‘street that’s shady on both sides’ - is being dimmed by cold reason, and yet, they still feel the wealthy are screwing them over.

Unlike climate change, tax legislation isn’t going to make the world burn (though some would beg to differ). But compromise is needed. Government needs to understand that being low-tax and transparent doesn’t necessarily equal pragmatic, if individuals’ needs are ignored in favour of business cosying.

Industry must realise that, in today’s world, social responsibility is as vital as profit churning. And the Mann on the street should remember change doesn’t happen overnight - and his nation, once the home of the Great British Tax Holiday, is now cleaner than most others.

Just remember to pop your lights out on the way - you might just save the planet.

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Opinion Global CEO Outlook - Russell Kelly, Managing Director of KPMG in the isle of man

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Disrupt and grow – the view from the top

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6 10

More than in CEOs see disruption as an opportunity, not a threat, for their business.

K

PMG’s annual Global CEO Outlook provides fascinating insight into the current thinking, hopes and fears of nearly 1,300 Chief Executive Officers from around the world, working across 11 key industries. We asked Russell Kelly, KPMG in the Isle of Man’s Managing Director, whether the results reflect the situation in the Isle of Man and what things should be on every CEO’s agenda.

Last year’s Global CEO Outlook report flagged up cyber-security, the pace of change and customer loyalty as the most significant risks for businesses. This year, perhaps not surprisingly given the events of the past 12 months, the impact of disruption and market uncertainty was at the forefront – both as a risk and an opportunity.

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64% 65% of CEOs say they are effective at sensing market signals.

of CEOs are confident about global economic growth during the next 3 years, down from

80% of CEOs in 2016.

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Opinion Global CEO Outlook Disruption n In the Global CEO Outlook, more than six in 10 CEOs see disruption as an opportunity for their business, not a threat, with 74 per cent claiming their business is aiming to be the disruptor in their sector.

RK We’re certainly seeing people on the Isle of Man taking the opportunity presented by market disruption - whether that’s Brexit, new technology or other factors in the economic environment - to make changes that may have been needed for quite some time. That’s not to say this means technology taking away jobs: it’s doing things better and differently, and that sometimes means more jobs.

Locally there are businesses that have embarked on, restructuring and transformation programmes in the past six to 12 months. Those are interesting examples of people seeing disruption as a way of running their business differently and changing their focus.

Uncertainty n Confidence among CEOs in global economic growth over the next three years has dipped from 80 per cent to 65 per cent.

RK It’s understandable that people are slightly less optimistic because, although it is a global survey, Brexit is weighing heavily across most British and Commonwealth countries who have historically traded with the UK as their gateway to the European Union. In the future they won’t be able to do that so there is bound to be some uncertainty. But people are, on balance, confident because the economic environment is getting better if you look at it in overall terms from the low point in 2008 through to today. We are seeing higher activity levels on the Isle of Man. It’s not necessarily something that retailers or restaurants are experiencing but we are seeing more people travelling, the air routes much busier, more client business coming in and that’s new business for the Island, not just existing businesses looking to change advisor.

Changing geo-political climate n 52 per cent of CEOs believe the political landscape has had a greater impact on their organisation than they have seen for many years and 31% believe protectionist policies will rise in their country in the next three years.

RK There’s been a lot of talk across Europe about increased nationalism, especially since Brexit, but no other countries have actually stepped over the line and voted to leave the EU. There have been some emerging trends, with nationalistic parties scoring very high percentages of votes in some countries. That’s been in part a consequence of migration and displacement across the Middle East and

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More than

7 10

in CEOs correlate being a more empathetic organization with higher earnings.

Reputational and brand risk is one of the top three most important risks CEOs face today.

North Africa which is likely to continue.

Protectionist policies will definitely happen in this part of the world. With Brexit, there will likely be tariffs, there will be trade restrictions and the whole free movement of goods across Europe will change dramatically.

Reputation n Reputation and brand risk is now viewed as one of the top three risks, despite not even appearing the in the top 10 risks last year.

RK In our business reputation and credibility is everything. Some sectors have seen that with the advent of social media it’s so much easier for your reputation to be damaged quickly. All large corporates now protect their brand fiercely in terms of how it can be used, who can comment or speak about the brand.

Strategic balance n More than half of CEOs are concentrating on growing established

markets with new product and service innovation coming second in importance.

RK It’s becoming a more widely held view that it’s easier to do something you currently do better than to try and do something completely new. Trying to improve what you offer to existing clients will ultimately bear greater fruit than doing something new and untested.

Innovation success stories are still probably one in a 1000 opportunities although the returns can be 1000 to one as well.

Evolution of the CEO n 70 per cent of CEOs say they are now more open to new influences and 68 per cent say they are evolving their skills to become better business leaders.

RK What we have seen is that CEOs are increasingly becoming younger and do not see CEO positions as the last role in their career. While not millennials, the new generation of CEOs are closer to that than the traditional baby-boomer generation. As technology evolves you look across companies in the UK and the CEO age is shifting generationally. People are moving around a lot more and taking their skills with them.

Cognitive revolution and headcount n CEOs are feeling more confident in their understanding of new technology, but competition for expert talent is fierce.

RK On a global level, it is still very difficult to get the right talent and that’s because some elements of jobs are becoming more and more specialist all the time. If you translate that into a smaller pool like we have here on the Island, the situation is further heightened and you do ON THE AGENDA...

see battles for talent.

One upside of this competition is that it is making people try and work harder to retain talent when they have it. Recruitment is not all about financial reward anymore. When we’re interviewing it’s not about how much am I going to be paid, it’s about what are my future prospects, who will I be working with, how much responsibility will I have? It’s all about personal growth and development - and people are much more willing to move and take that next step up the ladder, which could be in a completely different industry. Whether Brexit will reduce that mobility, I don’t know.

Headcount n Last year 73 per cent of CEOs expected growth of more than 6 per cent in their number of employees. This year only 47 per cent believe this is true.

RK We’re certainly seeing increased headcount here on the Island. We are actively trying to recruit, partly due to growth and partly due to people leaving to go into industry, which in itself is an indicator that the market is generally recruiting.

Intuition and analytics n Although most CEOs say they are good at sensing market signals, nearly half said their customer insight is hindered by a lack of quality data.

RK People have got more and more data but it needs to used effectively. You have to know what the data is telling you, and be able to access and use it quickly.

There is no point in having a quarterly report anymore, you need to have data in real time and it’s got to be focussed. The companies that are doing well are the companies that are doing that effectively, typically the technology-enabled businesses.

Cyber resilience n While concerns about cyber security have dropped from being the number one risk to number five, only four in ten CEOs believe they are fully prepared for a cyber event.

RK I think this is probably still as important as it was last year. Certainly when we talk to boards and audit committees, it’s considered their number one risk because so much more of their business now is online and able to be accessed by somebody. It’s not just the risk of hackers stealing data anymore, it’s

the disabling of the business and making sure you have the fail-safes to allow the business to continue. We see that more and more particularly with the gaming companies here. The amount of resilience they have and the amount of capacity they have to absorb for example a DDOS attack is absolutely amazing. They can withstand and continue operating with minimal speed loss in the face of a fairly concentrated level of DDOS attack. It demonstrates how strong the key data centres are here.

Trust in time of disruption n 74 per cent of CEOs say their organisation is placing greater emphasis on trust, values and culture in order to sustain its long-term future.

RK This comes back to brand and reputation, but trust is something you have to have running through the business.

You have to trust the people working for you, what they are doing, what you’re asking them to do and that they are doing it to the best of their abilities. You can’t delegate if you don’t trust someone. People get demotivated if they are not given responsibility and they won’t develop.

Trust helps people to develop in a positive way and hopefully allows you to get more operational efficiency by having people working slightly more autonomously.

n Overall the 2017 Global CEO Report indicated that while CEOs are still broadly confident about the future, it’s at a lower level than last year. Do you think this is the same in the Isle of Man?

RK Yes, I think it is quite reflective of what we are seeing on the Isle of Man. People are seeing more and more disruption to their businesses and are having to move, in some cases quite quickly, to take advantage of them. It’s much more to do with different products, better customer service and doing things in a more customer-friendly way – and that’s the same for all businesses. They all need to focus on making sure they know what their customer wants and responding to it very quickly.

I think generally people are still optimistic at the moment. Brexit is the cloud on the horizon - how it will impact is still a big question but generally speaking we are seeing good levels of new business.

An indicator for us at KPMG is our Deal Advisory practice which is very busy.

This means people have good levels of confidence and are ready to invest.

For more information on the KPMG CEO Global Report go to kpmg.com/CEOoutlook.

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OPINION Appleby - Beneficial Ownership Act 2017

By Alexandra Watterson, Associate - Appleby

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he G8 Summit in 2013 placed enormous pressure on countries to improve transparency and ensure that true owners of a corporate body can be traced to help reduce money laundering and corruption. To comply, the Isle of Man Beneficial Ownership Act 2017 came into effect on 21 June 2017. Alexandra Watterson, Associate at Appleby’s Isle of Man office, explains the impact of the regulation.

She said: “The Isle of Man made commitments to the UK in 2016 in this regard, reinforcing the fact that it is a reputable international financial center.

This has led to the introduction of the Beneficial Ownership Act 2017 (the Act) which came into effect on 21 June 2017, repealing the previous 2012 legislation.

Subsequently, the new central database for the storage of the data to be collected under the Act (the Isle of Man Database of Beneficial Ownership) went live on 1 July 2017.

The intention of the Act is to allow local and international law enforcement to be able to identify beneficial ownership - it is not intended as a source for public consumption. Similar legislation has been introduced in Guernsey, the BVI and the Cayman Islands. Meanwhile some European countries, such as Malta and Luxembourg, are being pushed for public registers, something the Isle of Man Government appears to be hoping to avoid for the time being.

The Act applies to all legal entities incorporated, registered or established in the Isle of Man (this does not include companies only registered in the Isle of Man as a foreign company) (an IOM Body) and the aim is to ensure that the beneficial ownership of all IOM Bodies can be traced back to the ultimate beneficial owners. For the purpose of the Act, a beneficial owner is given a very

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Time for transparency

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wide definition and means a natural person who ultimately owns or controls an IOM Body, in whole or in part, through direct or indirect ownership, control of shares, voting rights or other ownership interest, or who exercises control via other means. In the case where a discretionary trust has an interest in an IOM Body, the beneficiaries do not have a clear identifiable or absolute interest in the trust assets, given that their interest is discretionary. Therefore these beneficiaries do not fall under the definition of a beneficial owner.

All beneficial owners must be made known to a nominated officer, which is discussed in detail below. However, only beneficial owners who control 25% or more of the IOM Body must be registered with the Isle of Man Companies Registry (Registrable Beneficial Owners). These names are registered on the database but importantly, they are not made publicly available.

The IOM Body will need to appoint a nominated officer by 1 August 2017 who is either a natural person resident in the Isle of Man or a local and licensed corporate service provider. This is a very tight timescale but hopefully not an onerous burden in most cases. The IOM Body must submit the nominated officer’s name, address and written confirmation of consent to act to the Companies Registry. Any nominated officer already appointed under the previous legislation may continue but must actively consent to such continuation of their appointment.

Should the details of the nominated officer ever change, such amendments must be submitted to the Companies Registry within one month of the change.

This nominated officer will be the person who knows who all of the beneficial owners are of the IOM Body, including the Registrable Beneficial Owners. They must submit the details of the Registrable Beneficial Owners to the Companies Registry as soon as reasonably practicable after the information has been obtained or in any event by either the annual return date for the IOM Body, or the 30 June 2018, whichever is the earlier.

The nominated officer will need to know certain details of the beneficial owners and ensure those details are maintained in the Isle of Man so as to be capable of disclosing the information at any time, for a minimum of 5 years from the end of period to which the information relates (subject to longer periods where the nominated officer is aware of an investigation). This time period applies even if the IOM Body has been wound up/ removed from the Isle of Man register.

Only certain bodies are entitled to the information available to the nominated officer, and such bodies are the Financial Intelligence Unit, the Attorney General, the Assessor of Income Tax, the Financial CONNECTING BUSINESSES

Services Authority, the Chief Constable and the Collection of Customs and Excise (a Competent Authority). The Competent Authority must submit a notice to the nominated officer requesting the information and confirming that the request is for a Permitted Purpose (as defined in the Act). The information is to be given within 7 days of the notice if it relates to the Registrable Beneficial Owner, or within one month if it relates to another beneficial owner.

It is the IOM Body’s responsibility to appoint a nominated officer, ascertain the beneficial ownership and provide the details to the nominated officer within one month of the request of the nominated officer (along with providing details of any changes going forward within one month of learning of such change or first having reasonable cause to believe such change has occurred). It is important to note that the details must be verified by information from a reliable and independent source.

Failure to obtain this information is an offence for which the legal owner can be liable. If the legal owner, without reasonable excuse, knowingly or recklessly makes a false, deceptive or misleading material statement to the nominated officer then the punishment could include custody of up to two years.

If the beneficial owners do not make their details known to the nominated officer or they fail to notify them of any changes then the IOM Body can take action by placing restrictions on the rights attaching to the legal owner’s interest including on voting rights, rights to further shares, rights to payments due (capital or otherwise), rights to transfer or assign its interest and ultimately it can cancel the legal owner’s interest in the IOM Body. Further to these consequences, the beneficial owner, and an officer of the IOM Body if it failed to take reasonable steps to prevent the commission of the offence, could be subject to penalty.

The nominated officer should also take note that there are offences in place specifically for them as well, including the offence of failing to maintain and preserve the required information. In the event the nominated officer knowingly or recklessly makes a false, deceptive or misleading material statement in response to a notice from a Competent Authority, the punishment could include up to two years in custody.

As you can see, the onus has been placed on all parties from the nominated officer down to the beneficial owner. This attempt to make everybody responsible in the chain is crucial to the effectiveness of the Act and crucial if the Isle of Man Government wishes to evidence its commitment to the enforcement of the Act and the message it wishes to send to the world.”

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technology sure’s fiber network ring

Commitment is best symbolised with a “ring”

A

s a full service telecoms specialist operating across the Isle of Man for ten years, Sure remains dedicated to supporting the island’s business community. A recent symbol of this commitment to the Manx economy is the construction of a new multi-million pound business-to-business fibre network ring that will, for the first time, give businesses an alternative; not only of provider but also a range of new, innovative services and solutions and customer focus. Mike Phillips, Chief Executive of Sure Isle of Man, explains.

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Turning weakness into strength Until this year, arguably the Isle of Man’s greatest infrastructure weakness was its reliance on just one telecommunications network to carry all business-critical communications both locally and onward internationally. While there’s no doubting the island’s existing network’s capabilities and, to some extent, its reliability, the lack of an alternative network, and more importantly stagnant innovation in services and solutions, has created a significant shortfall that the local business community rightly wanted resolving.

Sure’s fibre ring is the Isle of Man’s new, industry and market leading fibre telecommunications network. The network will link directly with Sure’s local and global infrastructure offering businesses ON THE AGENDA...

in the Isle of Man world-class local and worldwide connectivity, enabling them to use a range of new innovative services and solutions. It will be within reach of many Douglas and Isle of Man Business Park businesses, with plans to extend to other business hubs around the island.

Benefitting everyone The project and network delivery is well underway in Douglas Business Park and in key locations for local businesses in Douglas. The initial network deployment is nearing completion and further expansion

will continue as a rolling programme.

The new network is already available to businesses and a growing number of customers are now benefiting from the new network deployment consuming a number of new services and solutions.

Not only will companies enjoy the better value and the greater scale of innovation that Sure can deliver on its own network in an open and competitive environment, they will also be able to enhance and build additional resiliency into their businesses and operations.

The scale of Sure’s investment in the fibre ring is certainly significant and complements the tens of millions of pounds we have already invested in our mobile network. Both networks directly benefit the island and everyone living and doing business here – and the advantages will be far-reaching irrespective of whether you are a Sure customer yet or not.

Islands are our business Islands that want to build and maintain a thriving economy need to look beyond their own shores. In a connected world they do so by ensuring they have robust, reliable and resilient communications networks that overcome the forces of geography and put island communities on the doorstep of every nation in the world.

Such networks are of the highest importance to smaller, more remote jurisdictions which have used the power

of communications to defy the limitations of their size. In the case of the Isle of Man, that has meant becoming one of the world’s leading international finance centres and eGaming hubs. On top of this, the island is developing as a digital centre of excellence, which serves to highlight the Isle of Man’s reliance on world-class connectivity, innovation and customer choice.

As both a local business and part of a wider island-focused group, Sure learns from every experience and everything we learn is put to use to ensure we’re constantly delivering the very best levels of service. One of Sure’s greatest strengths is the depth of our expertise; not only are our network designers and engineers highly qualified and experienced professionals but they are specialists in delivering island networks. We know that all islands are unique in every way – culturally, economically, geographically, climatically – and we use this experience to inform our work so we can be certain we’re delivering the best possible solutions for our clients.

Local businesses have welcomed our plans for further investment and the benefits it brings, not only to them but the economy in which they operate. Our new fibre network is a clear symbol of Sure’s commitment to the Isle of Man.

For more information, please call us on 692222 to speak to one of our account directors who will be happy to discuss how our new fibre ring can benefit your business.

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technology feature

“We shape our tools and thereafter, our tools shape us.”

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How communication tools

change the way we work together New software shapes our thinking and how we collaborate

By Richard Waters (FT)

CONNECTING BUSINESSES

O

ne of the best descriptions of the impact of modern technology on its users dates from 50 years ago.

It was coined by John Culkin, a friend of media theorist Marshall McLuhan. Writing about the great man’s ideas, Culkin came up with this suitably McLuhan-sounding aphorism: “We shape our tools and thereafter, our tools shape us.”

His point was that humans develop new tools to meet the needs of the moment, but then the ways of working embodied by these artefacts become ingrained. The tools end up defining how their users think about the problems they face — at least, until either mounting frustrations with the inadequacy of the tools, or a different set of problems, causes a whole new set of tools to be invented and the process begins again.

By coincidence, next year will also mark the 50th anniversary of the moment the world got its first glimpse of the tools that would completely change working life. At a public demonstration in San Francisco, Doug Engelbart, an inventor and technology visionary working for the Stanford Research Institute, showed off a computer embodying ideas that were years ahead of their time. These included a mouse, a graphical user interface and hypertext.

Engelbart’s presentation is known in the tech world as the Mother of All Demos. It was a glimpse into a future where computers would become flexible platforms on which people would be able to elaborate and communicate their thoughts, rather than just a blinking command line interface.

But the ways of working represented by the software tools that became familiar on the PC have their own limitations.

Stewart Butterfield, chief executive of group messaging service Slack, says that computing horsepower increased exponentially to make the software more useful, but the methods of work this enabled were still limited.

“Someone in the finance team today using Excel is super-powered compared to this demo in 1968,” he says. But that person is still tied to a way of working — and thinking — that is baked into the architecture of the technology. The PC applications create a degree of isolation; only after the fact is the product of their work sent to others — often as an email attachment.

By contrast, “most real work gets done in groups,” says Butterfield. “The challenges around communication, coordination, alignment are no more solved than they were 50 years ago.”

Anyone entering working life today will find the tools of the job in a state of extreme flux. Spreadsheets, documents, PowerPoint presentations have all been changed by the cloud — sharing and group

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technology feature editing are the norm.

Meanwhile, new collaboration tools are spreading virally, as workers take up new internet services that make their own lives easier. These include the stream of group consciousness represented by a Slack messaging channel, the open-ended discussion around a project supported

by Dropbox’s Paper, or the list-centric collaboration tool developed by Quip, which was recently acquired by Salesforce.

If these and similar services have been shaped to make work more effective, then it is fair to ask how they, in turn, will shape their users — and what effect will they have on the organisations where they are being adopted.

At their worst — as anyone who uses them can attest — apps like Slack make big demands. They create an expectation that users maintain an almost constant “presence” and respond in real time.

The sheer volume of communication they support can be all-consuming.

Future workers could end up looking like today’s most addicted smartphone users: constantly distracted, unable to think deeply about any particular task, restless for new stimulation.

But it need not turn out that way.

The techniques for managing real-time collaboration tools — and the social mores around how they are used — are still evolving. Also, they exist alongside other tools that also demand attention: that creates tension for workers, who may find themselves pulled between email apps, message streams and other communication networks. Over time, as work flows to the most suitable channel, that could change.

The rapid viral adoption of tools like Slack (it was teams of workers who took up the service, after all, not their corporate IT departments) certainly shows they fill a gap. Microsoft has also seen the writing on the wall and has come up with an alternative service, called Teams.

The kind of work that tools like these are designed to enable is group-based, more fluid and geared to specific projects.

They make it easier for people to move between ad hoc groups, which can form and disband as needed. They are suited to short, intensive bursts of communication among small groups that need to deal with problems in real time, not save them up for some future meeting.

If the optimists are right, this will liberate workers. They will become better communicators, more willing collaborators. For many, it will sound like a more fulfilling working life than the more static, hierarchical processes that have often determined how companies operate.

Of course, today’s new tools will not change office culture overnight or

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Next year is the 50th anniversary of the moment the world got its first glimpse of the tools that would completely change working life

Doug Engelbart

end the compliance straitjacket that determines how many aspects of work are conducted. Just because the internet — and, now, cloud computing — have handed entrepreneurs like Slack’s Butterfield the power to invent new tools for work, it does not mean the software they come up with will represent the final answer. It will shape its users just as surely as the software that came before did, instilling certain ways of working and thinking — with all the drawbacks that entails.

At the Mother of All Demos nearly half a century ago, Doug Engelbart showed what life in a more connected workplace might look like. His presentation included videoconferencing, as well as a way for workers in different places to jointly edit the same document at the same time.

More fluid forms of communication and collaboration are finally here. Work — and workers — may never be the same again.

Open relationships British anthropologist Robin Dunbar proposed that the most relationships a single person could maintain was around 150. But the teams inside large companies can be far larger than that, straining workers whose lives are increasingly spent on mass open communication channels.

Among other questions this prompts are what the optimal size for a team is in the new era of work — and how these separate groups of workers can best interact.

“You can have hundreds of people on the same team, but when it gets into the thousands it starts to get ambiguous, and when it’s in the tens of thousands it’s definitely not the same team,” says Stewart Butterfield at Slack.

Tools like Slack usually take hold in a bottom-up way: they are adopted by individuals or groups of workers for their own purpose, rather than being offered by a central IT department. Only later do IT administrators get to grips with how the use of technology inside their companies has evolved, bringing more standardisation and control to the way such tools are used.

Hundreds of different Slack groups can grow up inside large companies. “The downside is, it’s happening in silos,” says April Underwood, the company’s vicepresident of product: small teams operate better but company-wide collaboration suffers.

Slack’s answer has been to create a common directory this year for all users inside a company so that they can plug into different work groups that are relevant to them. Other companies whose services have crept in through the back door, like Dropbox, are also racing to make themselves more corporate.

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technology feature

The future is quantum Solution to the world’s critical problems 48

ON THE AGENDA...

By: Jeremy O’Brien (FT)

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othing has changed the world more than our ability to compute. A large fraction of the global population now carries up to a billion transistors in their pockets, and universal internet access is rapidly following. Every business is soon to be an information business, as I’m reminded while running in the countryside, where even farming is being transformed. Livestock are being equipped with sensors to monitor their health remotely, and a farmer’s decisions on what crop to plant when, as well as how much to irrigate and fertilise, are increasingly based not just on weather forecasts but also on complex computational models making market and economic predictions.

We are learning that computers can help us with almost everything, even in places we might not expect. Perhaps even the creation of fertiliser itself could be improved by computing. A significant percentage of the world’s energy is used to make these nitrogen-based products, yet we know a better solution is possible since microbes in the soil do the same job effortlessly.

More energy-efficient production of fertiliser is just one of a multitude of critical problems that could be solved if we could create an accurate simulation of how molecules behave. Similar problems exist across climate change, healthcare and energy, where computing could change our lives profoundly. An example that touches all these areas is designing an economically viable process to capture carbon from the atmosphere, which could have the side benefit of generating fuel for cars, heating and electricity in the form of methanol.

The fact that we can even begin to tackle these problems with computing is thanks to our science-fiction like ability to make silicon computer chips. We make billions of these every year, each one containing up to several billion transistors — the building blocks of a computer.

We’ve managed to shrink these transistors over a period of decades to such an extent that we can now measure their size in terms of individual silicon atoms. The latest transistors are just tens of atoms across; thousands of them could fit across the width of a human hair.

The problem with conventional computers Many of the problems that seem so suited to computing are still incredibly hard, and our conventional computers are not only currently inadequate but will forever remain so. In the past, we could rely on regular increases in computing power. The number of transistors within CONNECTING BUSINESSES

computer chips has impressively doubled every two years, a trend known as Moore’s Law. But just when we’d like to rely on it most, Moore’s Law has come to an end. In 2015, Tom Conte, president of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ Computer Society, stated prophetically that “Moore’s Law is reaching its limits: the doubling of transistors per unit area is slowing down . . . and is projected to end at seven nanometres circa 2020.”

These big problems that we’d really like computing to solve are so difficult that, even if Moore’s Law did continue, conventional computers could never solve them. When these problems increase in complexity, the time required to solve them doubles or even worse. Simulating a molecule is an example of such a problem: while it is possible to simulate small molecules in seconds on a laptop, the time needed to run the simulation explodes for larger, more complex molecules. Using conventional computers, exact simulation of molecules with just a few hundred atoms could take longer than the age of the universe.

A quantum solution The good news is that a solution is at hand — a drastically different approach to computing that is profound both in terms of the fundamental laws of physics it exploits, and the transformations it will bring about in our lives, society and economy.

At their most basic level, conventional computers represent each “bit” of information — the logical zero or one — in the on-off state of a transistor.

But by exercising careful control over some of the smallest constituents of our universe, quantum computers instead work with “qubits”. A standard bit can only exist in the zero or the one state, whereas a qubit can adopt a uniquely quantum superposition of the two logical states.

Any carefully controlled system obeying the laws of quantum mechanics can be used to form a qubit; popular choices are trapped ions, superconducting circuits and single particles of light, known as photons. However you choose to do it, changing how you compute at this fundamental level opens up new approaches to problems.

I first saw the revolutionary potential of quantum computing as a student, when I came across a science magazine article on the subject. By good fortune, I was engrossed in an undergraduate quantum mechanics course at the time. Quantum mechanics is the theory of physics that describes nature at its most fundamental level. My classmates and I were learning that a single particle could be in a strange “superposition” of more than one place at the same time, and that two particles could be inextricably and powerfully

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technology feature linked, or “entangled”.

Energised with purpose, I ended up describing this incredible idea and lending the magazine to almost everyone in my quantum mechanics class. I never got it back but I finished my degree, went on to take a PhD in quantum computing and have been working towards the goal of building a quantum computer ever since. Today, I lead a research centre of more than 100 people, focused on creating this technology.

The quantum advantage Many problems evading conventional computers are well suited to a quantum computer — molecular simulation being a prime example. A large fraction of today’s supercomputing power is used to perform molecular and materials simulations. But these simulations are limited to small systems and imperfect approximations. Although precisely simulating the quantum mechanical behaviour of molecules is insurmountable for a conventional computer, a quantum computer is perfectly suited to represent these kinds of intrinsically “quantum” problems.

A quantum computer with several hundred logical qubits would be able to tackle the problems of modelling nitrogen fixation and designing catalysts for extracting carbon from the air. A quantum computer with about 1,000 logical qubits may help us design a room-temperature superconductor, capable of transmitting electrical power with negligible loss (we currently lose about 10 per cent of electrical power just in the transmission from power plant to consumer).

We may ultimately use this simulation power to design new pharmaceuticals, clean energy devices and polymer membranes for fuel cells. In fact, we could apply quantum computing to the design of any material for any purpose — from transport and construction to sensors and prosthetics — since those materials are ultimately made of molecules and atoms, and understanding their properties and interactions is a quantum mechanical problem. This is one of the most compelling features of quantum computing: it’s a technology that expands the way we can think, and the extent of the possible solutions we can investigate.

But the benefit of quantum computers is not limited to molecular applications.

So-called quantum algorithms allow us to come up with powerful approaches to seemingly “unquantum” problems.

For example, quantum algorithms can search databases faster, perform pattern matching (important in genomics and genetic engineering, for example), and even perform computer graphics operations more efficiently.

These algorithms are hard to come up with, because they require us to

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The technology on your desk may be just the thing we need to build a quantum computer

think in a quantum way, but as quantum technologies become more ubiquitous and we become more proficient at thinking like this, we can expect more and more to emerge. There are even quantum algorithms that can perform key elements of machine-learning tasks, which are vital for big data business analytics, and in growing areas of artificial intelligence such as self-driving cars.

When will we have one?

Given the promise of quantum computing, when will this worldchanging technology emerge? Prototype systems with up to a dozen qubits have already been developed in industrial and university research labs around the world. Many people are excited by this, because when we reach around several dozen qubits, these machines should start producing results that simply cannot be replicated by a conventional supercomputer. It would be an indisputable demonstration of the otherwise unachievable power of a quantum system, dubbed “quantum supremacy” by Professor John Preskill at CalTech.

That’s a thrilling prospect and I believe we will get there within the next few years.

Unfortunately, we don’t yet know how to use such a relatively simple quantum computer to calculate anything useful. To tackle useful problems, we will need many more qubits.

The catch is the need to correct the inevitable errors experienced by qubits.

Because quantum computers are prone to errors in ways that conventional computers are not, it is currently understood that to create a quantum computer with 100 logical qubits, we would need a system with about a million actual qubits. By adding this redundancy, we are able to distil a perfect “logical” qubit from many imperfect ones.

That is a big price to pay, and I believe that the only way we will make quantum computers at this scale any time soon is if we exploit the incredible silicon manufacturing capabilities currently used to make computer chips. As remarkable as it may sound, the technology on your desk may be just the thing we need to build a quantum computer.

The path forward So here is my call to action: let’s not fret over the end of Moore’s Law. Far from leaving us in the lurch, it may be the stepping stone to an even bigger computing revolution. Let’s take the crowning achievement of our last computing revolution — the silicon chip manufacturing capability we have today — and redirect it to build a quantum computer. Given the potential impact on climate change, energy generation and healthcare, our future might just depend on our ability to quantum compute. If nothing else, it might finally mean that I can take a run through the countryside in peace.

Jeremy O’Brien is director of the University of Bristol’s Centre for Quantum Photonics ON THE AGENDA...

Quantum computers will solve problems that conventional computers never could CONNECTING BUSINESSES

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entrepreneur neil dunwell

Bringing Bond Street

to the Isle of Man

Neil Dunwell talks to Agenda about the opening of his luxury jewellery store in Douglas By: Wendy Shimmin Photos: Matt Mosur

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ON THE AGENDA...

“We want to make visiting Dunwells a different sort of experience so people can come in, relax on the sofas and have a cup of coffee without any pressure to buy”

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here have been few moments of greater pride for Neil Dunwell than when the sign was finally put in place over Dunwell Jewellers in Strand Street last month.

Having been in the retail jewellery trade since leaving college, including 18 years spent managing a well-known local store, the opening of the stunning new showroom is the culmination of a long held ambition of Neil to run his own business and “bring a little bit of Bond Street to Douglas”.

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With its handpicked selection of some of the best jewellery and timepieces money can buy, Dunwell Jewellers marks a new chapter not just for Neil. Customers in the Isle of Man now have access to some of the most prestigious global brands including Messika diamonds, Brown and Newirth bridal wear, Yoko pearls, and timepieces from Bremont, Oris, Rado, Hamilton, Tissot and Raymond Weil.

Also available is a sophisticated, elegant range of Georg Jensen silverware, a number of magnificent hand-crafted Sinclair Harding clocks and a large selection of world-famous Waldmann pens.

The glittering display cases are matched by Neil’s own characteristic sparkle and his clear delight in sourcing exquisite and exclusive pieces for the store.

“Customers are always looking for quality,” he says, “Having built good relationships with some of the world’s best jewellery suppliers over the years, I am extremely happy with the quality of all the items we have whether that’s diamonds, watches, clocks or homeware.”

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entrepreneur neil dunwell Each piece in the store has been carefully selected by Neil, who seeks out aesthetically pleasing designs as well as the best materials and jewels. “I’m quite daring in the buying decisions I make.

I am always looking for the pieces that people will really love to possess, that they will enjoy putting on or giving as a special gift.

“For many people, wearing a special piece of jewellery or a watch is like putting on a good suit – it has a feel-good factor that gives them a lot of confidence and pleasure.”

Buying jewellery is often a highly emotional purchase and Neil says it is a privilege to help his customers select the right piece for an engagement, special birthday or anniversary gift. “It’s the best part of the job to be able to help people make that special purchase, knowing how proud an 18-year-old boy would be to receive a high quality watch or the joy that a carefully chosen piece of jewellery will bring.”

Neil particularly enjoys hunting out individual pieces for his regular customers.

“Over time, you get a feel for what people like so I will often buy something with a certain person in mind. In these cases I will only ever buy one so that customer knows there will be no-one else on the Isle of Man wearing the same item.”

“For many people, wearing a special piece of jewellery or a watch is like putting on a good suit – it has a feel-good factor that gives them a lot of confidence and pleasure”

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ON THE AGENDA...

The same principle applies to some of the larger items in the Dunwell Jewellers’ collection. The store currently has on display a 200-year-old Charles Shepherd grandfather clock that will be replaced by another antique item when it is sold.

“The Isle of Man is an amazing and historic place for timepieces,” says Neil.

“The automatic movement was developed here and we’ve had world-renowned clock and watchmakers like Roger Smith and George Daniels. I wanted to acknowledge the heritage here by providing precision modern pieces too.”

At an age when some people are starting to think about early retirement, it’s clear Neil still has a strong and abiding passion for his work. “ I love to work,” he says, “and I plan to work well into my 70s.

I’ve had 10 months off while I’ve been bringing together the store and that’s long enough! I’m raring to go again, I love to meet and talk to people.”

Born in Yorkshire, Neil grew up in Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire. Married at 19 to Shirley (they have recently celebrated their 42nd anniversary), he flitted around the UK until the opportunity arose in 1999 to move to the Isle of Man. He didn’t hesitate, he says, even with three daughters in tow.

“The Isle of Man felt right the moment we stepped foot on it,” he said. “We really got involved with life here and got to know people quickly. I think it is an amazing place and if you are honest and trustworthy you can build up a good reputation very fast.”

Neil is assisted in Dunwell Jewellers by wife Shirley, plus another Shirley, along with Karen and Max. “We have 80 years in the jewellery trade between us and we are all really excited about welcoming new customers to the store,” says Neil. “We want to make visiting Dunwells a different sort of experience so people can come in, relax on the sofas and have a cup of coffee without any pressure to buy.”

Pushed to name his own favourite jewellery item, Neil struggles to choose from the dazzling display in the showroom but he does confess a fondness for Bremont watches. “They are British built,” he says, “and Bremont are passionate about how they make them. They have built special watches using parts from HMS Victory and the Wright brothers’ first powered aeroplane. They think outside the box to produce something wonderful - and that’s exactly the same way I think about Dunwell Jewellers.”

Dunwells Jewellers is at 76 Strand Street and is open Monday to Saturday 9am to 5pm. www.dunwell.im

CONNECTING BUSINESSES

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entrepreneur Gail Corrin

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ON THE AGENDA...

Academic Gail Corrin Seeks to ‘Bring the World to the Island’

In Her Vision For University College “The Island would be a great place to live and study and distance learning technology can give us even greater reach.

CONNECTING BUSINESSES

“I

By Les Able Photo: Matt Mosur

hate a day when I’m not being surprised by something,” confesses Gail Corrin, the engaging and charismatic manager of higher education, research and innovation at University College, Isle of Man. “When I go into classrooms I deliberately ‘disturb’ students with my questions and ideas to encourage them to think differently, a good education is not just about star grades,” says Gail.

“For example, take the willingness to be surprised, shocked or doubtful; they are emotions of curiosity, creativity and open mindedness and that is when you come up with good ideas. Encouraging students to seek the surprise and a desire to do things better gives them the confidence to put the knowledge gained in their degree to good use; to innovate.”

Gail adds: “Einstein alerted us many years ago that we cannot solve the problems of today with the same thinking that created them and education has to be about more than just existing bodies of knowledge – it’s an attitude.”

Surprise students she certainly does!

When discussing what inventions have made an important difference to their lives Gail, tongue in cheek, reveals that for her it’s fitted bed sheets and wheels on suitcases!

A fusty academic Gail Corrin is most certainly not. Born in the island, her family stretching back several generations, she left it at 18 to become a student at Loughborough University. She took a BSc honours degree in sports science combined with geography and then stayed on for another year to do a post graduate teaching qualification.

“I still had no idea what I wanted to do so three of us travelled the world for the next two years, finishing up in Australia with the aim of saving money to travel home via South America,” recalls 54-yearold Gail.

Australia was to become her home for the next 20 years. “I found myself on a path that was opportunistic, working for the Australian Sports Institute along with the National Swimming Squad and then managing the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award scheme there.

“One of the most challenging and interesting jobs I did was establishing an alternative detention programme for juveniles; electronic bracelets, adventure therapy etc. It was a terrific job, pioneering a whole new approach and as a result reducing recidivism, saving money and bringing about a change in the legislation.”

Gail goes on: “It was around that time something akin to intuition kicked in, a sense of it being time to be ‘home’. Yes, making plans in life is important.

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entrepreneur Gail Corrin I suspect that the reality is to have a plan and importantly principles, your faith if you like but not ignoring opportunities.

Organisations have annual reports, why not humans? It’s important to re-assess your life regularly. I’m often asked, ‘Are you here for good now?’ – who knows!

“Professionally, I came back here on something of a speculative basis. Started part-time with what was then Isle of Man College in 2009 and in 2014 took up the task of developing what is now University College, Isle of Man (UCM) higher education offer. That role has now been expanded to look at increasing our research and innovative educational and business development capacity”.

Looking back she says: “In my student days to study for a degree then the only option was to leave the island to go to university – in fact leaving and studying were synonymous. We are currently doing some research on how many return to the island and why (or why not). Offering higher degree courses here in the Isle of Man is not about holding people back –it’s about providing a different opportunity and a good one at that.

“Forty years ago barely more than 5 per cent of school leavers took a degree, now that figure is close to 50 per cent. The academic standards and courses at UCM are high, coupled with the opportunities to have contact with industry and businesses on the island. We are creating a powerful product here which involves developing confidence and enterprise alongside high academic standards.

“The UCM graduates of 2017 again exceeded the UK average with 83 per cent gaining a top grade and there are now almost 300 full and part-time degree and postgraduate students at UCM. This is increasing each year, not only school leavers but as more people look to study for a degree later in life.

“Students also have the option to start their degree at UCM and complete it at the University of Chester – or vice versa. Is it important to engage with the world away from the rock? Absolutely! Not to do so limits aspiration. Understanding the world is best done by engaging with it. We offer the opportunity to go off island for periods as part of a student’s degree.

“Young people now travel more before the age of 18 than I and many of my contemporaries did. When I went to university I had never been off the island without my parents, it was a huge culture shock. I cried myself to sleep every night in my first term, I was homesick.

It was only stubbornness that made me stay; I didn’t want people to know I was struggling. I just stuck it out and it all ended brilliantly.”

She continues: “When some students say that studying at a university off island is more of an adventure my reaction is to say, ‘I agree’, but consider that you

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can study here and can afford to have off island adventures in in your academic breaks’. The IOM government remains very generous in its support of students but most going to university off island face making a tuition contribution of around £2,500 per year. That contribution is not required to study at UCM and there are further savings on the associated UK living and travel expenses.”

Degrees offered at UCM focus on the economy, IT, business, finance, management, marketing, public health, the creative industries, sport and history.

There is also a manufacturing engineering degree and the aim is to offer more degrees and post-graduate programmes following on from the launch this year of a cyber security degree and an MSc advanced computer science.

“UCM can offer better value for money and has a whole island as its campus,” enthuses Gail. “Students who are looking to start a career here are particularly advantaged by the time they graduate – they’ve had three years to build their professional reputation and network. In the future we will consider enrolling students from off the island and bring the world to the island, not just from the UK but also Europe and beyond.

“The Island would be a great place to live and study and distance learning technology can give us even greater reach. Imagine what we can do with all the learning and research that is going on as students study? More evidence based policy and informed decision making; conferences and events; innovation and enterprise. Imagine a ‘learning island’?

“These are challenging, yet opportune times if we collaborate across government, business and the community. Despite no one being more than 30 minutes from each other I still think we struggle to join up our thinking and action – we need a cappella approach; find the tune that can only be heard when everyone sings together.”

Her final thought:

“The potential of higher education provision here on island is on the cusp of being realised, not just as an end itself but in its role at the heart of the island’s prosperity. It is an exciting time and I love the stimulus of being part of it.”

ON THE AGENDA...

If it can survive being ejected from a plane, it can survive near enough anything.

Should you treat your Bremont MB watch with respect?

Not really. We don’t.

We freeze it, we bake it, and we shake it.

For hours on end.

Then we shoot it out of a plane. Just to make sure it’s as tough as we claim it is.

What’s more, it has been assembled and tested at our headquarters in Henley-on-Thames.

So don’t worry about looking after a Bremont MB. It can look after itself.

MBII

British Engineering.

Tested Beyond Endurance.

DUNWELL JEWELLERS 76 Strand Street, Douglas Isle of Man, IM1 2EW T: 01624 665566

entrepreneur Thomas Riley

ABY MAN I N SPI R ED THE WORK ETHIC OF HIS DAD AND GRANDPA

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s a four-year-old he had his own overalls and could be regularly found in the workshop tucking into a packet of crisps and chatting to the mechanics.

That little boy is now aged 31 and has recently taken over from his father, Martyn, as managing director of Riley’s Garden Centre and now represents the fifth generation behind the success story of an island business which has been going for 135 years.

“My Grandpa was definitely an inspiration to me from an early age and

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my Dad, who is now chairman of the business still is, he is one of the hardest workers I’ve known,” says Thomas. “When you see people like Dad and Grandpa who worked so hard, no matter how menial the task or challenges and achieved so much, you want to build on their successes.”

Thomas, who has a degree in marketing and business, was previously marketing director of the company, a hat which he will continue to wear. He exudes a natural modesty, is intense and something of a ‘thinker’. “It was never a foregone conclusion that I would take

over as MD, but it was always in my mind I would be involved somehow when I came into the business 10 years ago,” he says.

“My role in the business has built up over the years, at the same time it’s important to realise you can’t do everything; watching and guiding is important. The main thing is to have the right team around you and that is something we have got, many of the staff have been here for a number of years and the experience they have is second to none.

At the same time we have newer staff who have adapted well, so there is also a good ON THE AGENDA...

The work ethic of his dad and paternal grandfather when each was running the family business was an inspiration to Thomas Riley from an early age.

By Les Able Photos: Matt Mosur

balance of personalities and ages.

“A new role in any business always presents major challenges and Riley’s is no exception to that. One has only to take a look at the Business Park to become aware of major changes here in the island.

Riley’s has to adapt to changes but it’s important when doing so to make them work for you and to the benefit of your business as a whole.

“We have a staff of 32, which to some might seem a small enterprise, but in many ways it’s quite a big business. The hardest thing is adapting to a marketplace CONNECTING BUSINESSES

“A new role in any business always presents major challenges and Riley’s is no exception to that.”

which is constantly changing, it’s almost a guessing game as to what people might want, it may be that one year a product sells well but then not the next. There are so many companies which set up but aren’t necessarily long-term, the names change and some become bankrupt. No longer is there that stability and consistency of previous years.

“We try to get as many suppliers as we can from here in the island which embraces some of the lines we sell in clothes, food, items for the garden, gift ideas, homewares etc. I think the more you can support the island the better, I subscribe to the philosophy that if you support the Isle of Man the Isle of Man supports you.”

Interacting with customers is, he believes, of paramount importance but is always aware there is a thin line between being seen to be pushy and offering advice and assistance. “We like to think we offer a friendly approach and our staff are friendly and helpful when people need it. We don’t pounce on customers, each customer is different but we have many regular customers so there is something of a personal rapport with some but without being nosey.

“The majority of those customers who come in for plants are pretty knowledgeable themselves, it’s amazing how well versed they now are, including the soil in which certain plants might grow. Much of that is down to the fact plants and gardens are increasingly fashionable, TV programmes have brought much of that about. Garden centres are now enjoyable places to visit and Riley’s offers an experience which makes for an enjoyable family day out for both adults and children.”

When it comes to relaxation, Thomas has his own garden at his home in Douglas where he grows both vegetables and herbs.

He confesses with a laugh that Emma, his partner of 14 years, does more of the garden work.

While he is still very much into athletics and power lifting Thomas is now semi-retired from sprinting which has seen him win a clutch of awards over the years.

Yes, the image that Thomas Riley gives is one of being laid back, perhaps a tad enigmatic, but who readily admits that he is “ok at delegating” and when it comes to adapting he’s “quite good at it”. It is this style of management which will see the business flourish and diversify to meet the challenges of the 21st century. “You never solve any situation with emotion. When it comes to staff or customers, you have to have empathy or understanding when dealing with a variety of situations.”

He adds: “Be it buying plants or a tractor the expertise of our guys is second to none. People come to us because they want a quality product that is going to last that bit longer.”

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entrepreneur Rom Kesa

From Tallinn to The Mannin

Rom Kesa reflects on his journey to become General Manager of the luxury Mannin Hotel, the future of tourism in the Isle of Man and why more young people should consider hospitality as a career.

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By: Wendy Shimmin Photo: Matt Mosur

ON THE AGENDA...

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areers often take strange twists and turns but Rom Kesa’s probably began a little more unusually than most. A four times national swimming champion in his home country of Estonia, he briefly considered professional competitive sports before undertaking a compulsory year’s National Service in the Estonian Army.

Elevated to the rank of Corporal, he then trained at the Estonian Maritime Academy to become a navigator, destined to work his way up to the position of captain. It was whilst studying for a sea-going life that he took a part-time job as a day/ night porter in the Domina Inn, one of Tallinn’s top hotels, to support himself and decided to jump ship to the hospitality industry.

After three years at the Domina Inn and the opening of the Estonian border, Rom began to look further afield for his next post, ending up waiting on for the Christmas season at The Claremont. This was followed by steady progression through a number of roles at some of the Island’s best hotels and venues.

A brief period outside the industry as Business Development Executive for the Isle of Man Government in the Tourism division was quickly curtailed when he was introduced to developer Keith Lord who was looking for a General Manager for the rebuilt and refurbished Mannin Hotel, then nearing completion.

“It was a dream job,” says Rom. “I had always wanted to run my own hotel. While I never thought I would be able to open one myself, being General Manager had been a long term goal. Keith had certain ideas about styling, but other than that it was really a blank sheet of paper and the chance to create a 4-star hotel from scratch. It was a fantastic opportunity.”

Rom was appointed in January 2016, with a target opening date of mid-April the same year. “I didn’t think we could do it,” he says. “When I started it was a building site, the rooms were built and the doors were on but that was it!”

With no office, Rom based himself at a local coffee shop and methodically worked his way through a long to-do list. “I had to think about everything – the furnishings, the restaurant, the operating system, the staff. It was more difficult because we were keen to create something

CONNECTING BUSINESSES

“When I started it was a building site, the rooms were built and the doors were on but that was it!”

individual and custom-made rather than off-the-shelf. I remember cutting furniture patterns out of cardboard to make sure everything would fit in the rooms before sending the designs to the joiner to make them up.”

Despite the tight timescale the hotel opened in April 2016 as planned and the first guests through the doors were rock stars 10cc who had been booked to play at the Villa Marina across the road.

Since then the hotel has welcomed a steady stream of corporate and leisure guests as well as further celebrities including Matt LeBlanc and his Top Gear team, and the Honda team during TT fortnight.

“That’s another one of the perks of being in the hospitality business,” says Rom. “You never know who you will meet.”

Rom’s time at DED gave him a wider insight into the tourism sector on the Isle of Man and while he says there is still much that can be done to promote the Island as a destination, he respects what the Tourism division is trying to do.

“DED are working hard to bring non-weather dependent events to the Island,” he says. “But there some obstacles to overcome like the cost of getting here compared to other places. Hoteliers and other people in the hospitality businesses also need to up their game - the Isle of Man has a number of good quality smaller operators but fewer at the larger end of the scale. I think with the opening of The Mannin, and the refurbishment of some of the other hotels, that this is now starting to change. People expect a lot more from destinations these day.”

An ongoing frustration for Rom, and others in the hotel trade, is the recruitment of skilled and enthusiastic staff.

“We had a school group call in recently for a look around. At the end the teacher asked who wanted to work in hospitality and nobody put their hands up. I’m Chair of the Chamber of Commerce Visitor Economy Committee, and one of the things we really want to do is raise the profile of hospitality work and get a positive message out to young people.

“I think sometimes it’s hard to see the benefits of certain jobs when you are younger,” he adds. “But hospitality offers so much flexibility and opportunity compared to many other careers. You can work around other commitments such as study or childcare and you can use your skills anywhere in the world.

“Overall there are some 5,000 jobs in hospitality on the Island contributing around £100m to GDP. We should be proud to work in the industry and not regard it as something just for ‘foreigners’.”

In terms of his own future, Rom is full of plans for The Mannin. He has recently been organising the translation of The Mannin’s website into 104 different languages and has also arranged for guest information to be set up on USB sticks that work with the in-room Smart TVs. “I’m really enjoying being able to implement plans here,” he says. “So often ideas get stuck at management level but now I have the freedom to get things done and directly improve our guest experience.”

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entrepreneur - relative values - Martin & Jayne Sanderson

AEROTECH INTERNATIONAL

By: Les Able Photography: Matt Mosur

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Martin & Jayne Sanderson A business conceived 12 years ago by husband and wife Martin and Jayne Sanderson in the wardrobe of a spare bedroom in their Peel home is now recognised internationally as one of the top aviation consultancies in Europe and Asia.

“Initially, when we set up the business it was all done on a computer which was housed on a sliding desk in the wardrobe,” explains Jayne, co-founder and operations director of Aerotech International, which now has its head office in Victoria Street, Douglas.

Registered in the Isle of Man, the company has some 80 independent consultants acting on its behalf in far flung locations such as China, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Indonesia, New Zealand, Australia and a number of European capitals. It offers a wide range of consultancy services to airlines, lease companies, banks, corporate service providers and law firms.

“We have a proven track record of delivering excellence in aviation technical consultancy services and the record is an ever expanding client base,” says Martin, 53, who has been in aviation since he was 18 when he joined the RAF and then

“We decided the only way to get our lives back was by employing people in the island to take over the actual day-to-day running of the business.”

moved to British Airways, initially as a licensed aircraft engineer.

“The good old days of aviation were in the 1980’s,” he recalls. “British Airways had put me through university and I was maintaining 747’s, DC10’s and TriStars at London Gatwick before transferring to ON THE AGENDA...

a project team to build a state of the art Aircraft maintenance facility in Cardiff; this was in the days before there was even a hangar there. After some 13 years I’d had enough of BA and joined the small friendly airline, Manx Airlines, all was great until it was bought by BA. “Not always too successful at running regional airlines, BA decided to hand back the aircraft to the lessors and the banks, with me managing the process of returning the aircraft to those leasing companies. I saw the writing on the wall and knew that once all that was completed there wouldn’t be a job for me and I would be made redundant.

“By then I realised there was money to be made in providing consultancy services for those same companies in the industry. I had already made some good contacts so once I had banked six months redundancy money that was when the computer on its sliding desk came into play in the wardrobe and Aerotech International was well and truly born.”

It wasn’t long before Martin found there was a very healthy demand for his services at a time when Jayne, who was then employed by HSBC for over 20 years and held a senior role with the bank, was seconded to Jersey. Life was becoming arduous and complicated for the couple.

“Aerotech was getting busier and busier and I was doing all the admin for it when I came home from work. We were then splitting our time between the Isle of Man, Jersey and the house we had in France,” recalls Jayne. “The admin work was just taking over, at the same time I was missing Martin who would be on the road somewhere for Aerotech and when he did come home I was at work. There was only one thing for it and in 2009 I left the bank after 29½ years to work alongside Martin and go on the road with him.”

But going “on the road” for Martin and Jayne meant going where the aircraft were and life for the next few years meant, as the business became bigger and ever demanding. They saw little of their home in Laxey, with married life increasingly spent in hotels and hangar offices around the world.

Aerotech was a business which continued to grow at a fast pace, with the majority of new business coming by direct recommendation from the existing client base. The company’s impressive portfolio not only includes airlines and banks but also high net worth individuals and corporate service providers. The team covers all aviation disciplines, including aircraft inspections and handbacks, repossessions and cabin and systems reconfigurations.

“We have a very close working relationship with the Isle of Man Aircraft Registry,” says Martin, who has a grown up son and daughter, from his first marriage.

“We were the first company to put a CONNECTING BUSINESSES

large commercial airliner on the Isle of Man Aircraft Register, for the purpose of transitioning it from one operator to the next. When it comes to aircraft repossessions we are able to support the recovery of the client’s aircraft and assets. We can help move the aircraft to a ‘safe’ location when it can be inspected and repaired as necessary ready for remarketing.”

He goes on: “Our allegiance is always to the aircraft owner and our clients are certainly keeping us very busy. With consultants now acting for Aerotech International in so many locations I’ve been able to step back and focus on being the managing director of what has become a major company in both commercial and executive aircraft services.”

Jayne, 55, says: “We were spending months and months away, the company had a base of loyal clients and consultants in all the right locations, it was then I said to Martin ‘we don’t need to go on the road anymore’. We spoke to our clients and they were supportive as long as Martin was in the background. We haven’t had a holiday for 10 years, in fact the last thing you want to do is get on an airplane and then stay in an hotel, for us it feels like work. For our 10th wedding anniversary in 2013 we had four days away on a narrow boat. Bliss!

“We decided the only way to get our lives back was by employing people in the island to take over the actual day-today running of the business. We are in the throes of handing over the day-to-day running to Neil Ferns, who joined us from the IOM Aircraft Registry, and Annie Kneale, who was working off island for one of our competitors while Lisa Crellin is part-time dealing with the invoices.

What is still so encouraging is that Aerotech International is busier than its competitors.”

Martin adds:: “Our consultants are in what might be called the ‘Aerotech consultant club’. We are not interested in the names of people we don’t know. It’s a select group of people and not everyone that asks to join is accepted. Aerotech International is now very successful, it is mine and Jayne’s company and its reputation is important to us. You can see our people at airports all over the world wearing Aerotech International tops.”

Despite their decision to step back, Martin and Jayne still wake up to umpteen emails from clients which have arrived overnight. Before Martin tackles anything it’s two cups of coffee while for Jayne it’s hopefully a cup of tea in bed. Luxuries they once had no time for.

The couple clearly enjoy working together and their respective roles are summed up by a laughing Jayne. “Martin has the technical engineering brain while mine is in the planning of the logistics of a project – who, what, where and when.”

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Wellbeing feature

Wellbeing moves into the workplace More companies are trying to help improve staff health

A

By: Darren Dodd

s ageing populations, cost inflation and tight budgets constrain national health spending, more governments are looking to companies to fill gaps in provision that are opening up.

Corporate wellness schemes are firmly established in the US, where companies are the main funders of medical care for staff and so eager to promote better health to keep insurance premiums low.

Businesses beyond the US are also keen to develop welfare strategies to reduce absenteeism and improve productivity.

Such workplace schemes are typically designed to offer support and incentives to staff aimed at reducing health risks such as smoking, stress, inactivity and obesity before illness occurs.

The Global Wellness Institute, a nonprofit group, says the world market for workplace schemes is worth $43bn and that the majority of these are based in the US and Europe.

Patrick Watt, corporate director for Bupa — a leading UK wellness provider — is confident that the business case for corporate wellness services has been won. “The question is not now whether to invest but where to invest and what to invest in,” he says.

Critics say workplace wellness schemes are mainly taken up by those who are already healthy and add that they could make some workers more stressed as they try to keep up with highly motivated colleagues. Others say there is no proof that companies receive any return from such programmes.

However, a UK government policy consultation last year on work, health and disability illustrates the increased role it sees for business in preventing illness. The green paper called for “jobs that actively support and nurture health and wellbeing, provided by inclusive employers who understand the link

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between work, health and disability”.

Among initiatives praised in the report were Barclays UK’ “This is Me” campaign to build awareness of mental health problems, which has now spread to more than 70 organisations across London.

“Businesses drive our economy and are rightly focused on growth, productivity and delivering a return on their investments. Investing in workplace inclusivity, health and wellbeing is critical to these goals,” the government said.

Given talk of mental health in the workplace used to be almost taboo, “to think that businesses are now prepared

to have an on-site psychologist is quite incredible”, Bupa’s Mr Watt says.

Many companies are using schemes such as Mental Health First Aid, which was developed in Australia but is now available around the world, to train staff to spot and help colleagues who may be suffering mental health problems. The UK arm of Lend Lease became a founder member of London’s City Mental Health Alliance in 2013 and says every project and office now has a mental health first aider working in it.

Wellness schemes also promote better physical health. For example, more than 1,200 workers in 30 countries have signed up to ING’s “wellbeing quotient” project.

The Dutch bank provides education, monitoring and coaching in six-month blocks focusing on nutrition, physical activity, sleep and relaxation.

Participants receive a fitness tracker that measures steps, heartbeat, calories burnt, activity and body fat. They have access to expert trainers that include former Olympic athletes who assist staff on their wellness “journey”.

Paul Litchfield, chair of What Works Centre for Wellbeing, a campaign body backed by the UK government, says workplace health support has become important to younger people who are likely to work into their 70s.

“If we want to get the best people then we’ve got to appeal to what they’re interested in and they’re interested in wellbeing,” he says.

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