论文部分内容阅读
When Enda Kenny, Prime Minister of Ireland, came to Shanghai for an official state visit to China, he paid a special visit to the Irish recruitment company Morgan McKinley’s Shanghai office on March 26.
During his visit, Enda Kenny said: “Morgan McKinley is exemplary of the potential of Irish service companies to become multinational companies, creating jobs and wealth not only for Ireland but also, as we see so successfully, in China and other countries throughout the globe. The global expansion of Morgan McKinley shines a light for other Irish firms targeting international growth and I wish them success.”
What makes a state Prime Minister think so highly of a private company that might not be so famous for ordinary people? In order to find the answer, journalists from China Business Focus (CBF) made an interview with Mr. Pat Fitzgerald, CEO of Morgan McKinley and founder of Morgan McKinley’s parent company, Premier Group.
The Hardship of Starting a Business
As the leader of a well-established global recruitment service provider, Mr. Fitzgerald is glad to share with us about his previous working experience and the way he founded Premier Group.
According to Mr. Fitzgerald, after graduating from University College Cork, he once worked as an analyst in a firm of commodity brokers, based in London with the primary responsibility of calculating the value of trades on one of the metals desks. “It was my first introduction to the discipline and structures of a large professional workplace environment which proved very valuable,” he recalled what he had learnt from his working experiences.
Seeking employment in London was the first introduction of Mr. Fitzgerald to the recruitment sector. Promoted by this experience coupled with that of his friends and colleagues, Mr. Fitzgerald decided to go back to Ireland to start his own business.
In 1988, Mr. Fitzgerald founded Premier Group as the recruitment sector was undeveloped in Ireland at that time. However, difficulties always haunt the way of starting a business. “It was a time of deep recession in Ireland which brought significant challenges,” Mr. Fitzgerald told us. “In fact, Premier Group concentrated initially on placing Irish professionals with clients in London as there was little op- portunity for us as a start up business during a recession in Ireland.”
When recalling the difficulties for the initial period of Premier Group, Mr. Fitzgerald said that “funding and availability of cash was very light and had to be managed very well”. Fortunately, Premier Group had the marketing skills which he thought was “well ahead of the competitors”. In addition, Premier Group created the image and “brand promise”that gave them edge and advantage in winning business. The most important thing Mr. Fitzgerald and his team learnt from the initial development phase of Premier Group is with respect to customers. “As our initial market was very small, we had to understand how to satisfy and maintain every customer as we believed that there would not be another customer to replace one lost. This is a lesson we have never forgotten,” he told CBF journalists.
The Way of Expansion
After acquiring a number of smaller businesses in Ireland as part of its growth in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Premier Group gained a stable foothold in Ireland. Then it began to seek a way into the international market. The UK, a neighboring country next to Ireland, was undoubtedly an ideal destination. Premier Group made its first entry into the British market by acquiring the UK-based Nigel Lynn in 2005. As Mr. Fitzgerald recalled, Nigel Lynn was then owned by a VC fund and had experienced some difficulties in the previous years. And as it was in the same “recruitment sector” as Premier Group in Ireland, Mr. Fitzgerald believed that Premier Group could leverage its experience and significantly improve its performance.
Premier Group did succeed in improving its performance and the quality of its service. However, Mr. Fitzgerald and his team somewhat underestimated the challenges of operating outside Ireland for the first time. “The UK market was far more developed than the Irish market and the key challenge we faced was that we did not have a market leading brand in the UK as we did in Ireland,” he said.
Nevertheless, the acquisition of Nigel Lynn gave Premier Group a foothold in the UK market which would prove invaluable in later years especially following the acquisition of Imprint Plc.
The acquisition of Imprint Plc. contains great stories to tell. As Mr. Fitzgerald told us, “the acquisition of Imprint was a significant challenge for Premier Group”.
“For a start, Imprint was of similar scale and size to our existing business at that time,” he said. But Imprint had two main attractions for Premier Group to acquire it.
1. They owned the market leading and highly respected UK recruiter, Morgan McKinley.
2. They had a foothold in Asia through fledgling offices in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore and Sydney.
Because of it, Mr. Fitzgerald believed that Imprint was an ideal partner for Premier Group. But the acquisition was not uneventful. “We had made earlier approaches to Imprint but were rejected. When Imprint came ‘into play’ there were two rival bidders and both were public companies quoted on the AIM exchange in London,” Mr. Fitzgerald told us. “We had an advantage over these businesses as each move they made was a matter of public record whereas our involvement was private and they were unaware of our identity or interest. They also initially had the advantage of being able to offer the shareholders in Imprint their share as part of the consideration/offer. This seemed attractive at the time and left us at a disadvantage as we could not offer shares in a private company. As time passed, this however turned to their advantage as ‘paper’ became less attractive and our cash offer more attractive.” In May 2008, Mr. Fitzgerald finally got the green light to proceed with the ￡45.2 million takeover of UK-listed recruitment company Imprint, which virtually doubled the size of his business.
“We were fortunate that we had an excellent team of corporate advisors who ‘tactically’ played a ‘great game’ and by following their advice, we were the successful party,” he told CBF journalists.
How Is the Re-branding Going?
The acquisition of Imprint gave Premier Group nine trading brands. Without any delay, Mr. Fitzgerald and his team decided immediately to reduce that significantly. Morgan McKinley was established as the key trading brand globally for Premier Group. This involved significant rebranding in the UK, Middle East and Ireland. Among them, Ireland was the biggest re-brand challenge as it was changing the trading names Premier, Brunel and Verkom, each of which were leaders in their specialist sectors. Now that the re-branding exercise is complete, Premier Group continues to invest significantly in the global brand Morgan McKinley.
Mr. Fitzgerald once called himself a “generalist” as his company was engaged in so many different sectors, but he would rather describe Morgan McKinley, the largest brand under Premier Group, as a “specialist recruiter”, which developed specialist trading brands and companies for different sectors of the recruitment market like Finance & Accounting, IT, Engineering and Technical.”
The Development in China
Enda Kenny’s visit in Morgan McKinley’s office was partially to celebrate the Morgan McKinley’s engagement into China for over one year. The Shanghai office of Morgan McKinley was opened in February 2011. However, Mr. Fitzgerald did not think that Morgan McKinley was in China for only one year.
“We have been covering the Chinese market for the past nine years through our Hong Kong office. Many of our HK-based clients had operations on the Chinese mainland and asked for our assistance to provide them with a similar quality of service in their PRC offices. Determined to preserve our business model and processes, we waited to enter Shanghai on a wholly-owned foreign enterprise (WOFE) status,” he said.
When asked about how he thought of Morgan McKinley’s performance in China, he answered: “Entering into such a competitive market as Shanghai, our WOFE status highly differentiates us from our competitors as all our headhunting processes were imported from the UK and Ireland where professional recruitment has greater maturity and depth of process. This ensures that we approach candidates from a career consulting perspective and highly differentiates us to these active job seekers. Our stringent processes, such as conducting one hour face-to-face competency-based interviews, before assessing candidates’ suitability for the role, means that clients receive highly compatible CVs for their vacancies. This helps to reduce time and cost for our clients. All these have contributed to our strong performance last year. Achieving our revenue, business development and growth targets have helped to reinforce our decision to enter the market when we did and bode well for the future.” “Our clients are mainly multinational companies with operations in China. They range across industries such as banking and financial services, manufacturing, hospitality, retail, FMCG, healthcare, automobile, chemical and many more. We also have clients who are large Chinese companies or smaller foreign companies looking to open an office in China. Morgan McKinley offers a unique ‘contingent-search’ model with native Mandarin-speaking staff as well as an International Candidate Management program to successfully supply quality talent to employers in China,” he added.
In spite of the wonderful achievements of Morgan McKinley in China, Mr. Fitzgerald admitted that there were quite a number of differences between the headhunting markets in China and Europe. “Europe’s headhunting market is more mature and this industry in China is relatively younger. This means that processes and services available here have not caught up yet with Europe. Additionally there are different cultural issues and challenges for recruiting in China compared to Europe. In entering this market, we committed ourselves to understanding local market conditions, combined with a global approach and best practice within the industry.”
The understanding of Chinese market and the role as a WOFE work hugely to Morgan McKinley’s advantage as it has sophisticated processes directly imported from Europe, which enables this global company to provide a higher quality and higher value service to employers and professional job seekers.
Ambition to Be the Best
Even though the European debt crisis is torturing Ireland, causing a reduction in economic growth and affecting the entire recruitment sector, Mr. Fitzgerald did not think the debt crisis as a big problem for his company specifically. The plans will not be changed. Premier Group is still on the way of increasing its presence in Europe as its first office in Paris was recently opened. In addition, Premier Group has already formed key growth plans in both Europe and Asia with China forming a large part of its Asia plans.
As for the details of development plan in China, Mr. Fitzgerald told us that Morgan McKinley expected China to be the key growth location for the company in Asia over the next five years. “We are going to increase our employee numbers in China from 70 currently to 200 within three years to meet increasing employer demand for our services. This increase will also involve new offices and new service lines in specialist markets that we do not yet cover in China.”
Looking beyond China, Premier Group holds the ambition of being the best in the world. In Mr. Fitzgerald’s opinion, being the best in a professional services company can only be determined by the companies who use its services, the professionals who engage with the company about their careers and the people who work as part of the company.
“In 2010 we commenced a five-year transformation project which is examining and transforming every aspect of how we engage and work with our clients, candidates and employees. We do not expect to become the biggest but we absolutely expect that we will be the best professional services recruiter in each market we operate in,” Mr. Fitzgerald explained his ambition.
Where does his confidence come from? The great advantage of being a private company with a fantastic brand on a global platform is the best answer.
During his visit, Enda Kenny said: “Morgan McKinley is exemplary of the potential of Irish service companies to become multinational companies, creating jobs and wealth not only for Ireland but also, as we see so successfully, in China and other countries throughout the globe. The global expansion of Morgan McKinley shines a light for other Irish firms targeting international growth and I wish them success.”
What makes a state Prime Minister think so highly of a private company that might not be so famous for ordinary people? In order to find the answer, journalists from China Business Focus (CBF) made an interview with Mr. Pat Fitzgerald, CEO of Morgan McKinley and founder of Morgan McKinley’s parent company, Premier Group.
The Hardship of Starting a Business
As the leader of a well-established global recruitment service provider, Mr. Fitzgerald is glad to share with us about his previous working experience and the way he founded Premier Group.
According to Mr. Fitzgerald, after graduating from University College Cork, he once worked as an analyst in a firm of commodity brokers, based in London with the primary responsibility of calculating the value of trades on one of the metals desks. “It was my first introduction to the discipline and structures of a large professional workplace environment which proved very valuable,” he recalled what he had learnt from his working experiences.
Seeking employment in London was the first introduction of Mr. Fitzgerald to the recruitment sector. Promoted by this experience coupled with that of his friends and colleagues, Mr. Fitzgerald decided to go back to Ireland to start his own business.
In 1988, Mr. Fitzgerald founded Premier Group as the recruitment sector was undeveloped in Ireland at that time. However, difficulties always haunt the way of starting a business. “It was a time of deep recession in Ireland which brought significant challenges,” Mr. Fitzgerald told us. “In fact, Premier Group concentrated initially on placing Irish professionals with clients in London as there was little op- portunity for us as a start up business during a recession in Ireland.”
When recalling the difficulties for the initial period of Premier Group, Mr. Fitzgerald said that “funding and availability of cash was very light and had to be managed very well”. Fortunately, Premier Group had the marketing skills which he thought was “well ahead of the competitors”. In addition, Premier Group created the image and “brand promise”that gave them edge and advantage in winning business. The most important thing Mr. Fitzgerald and his team learnt from the initial development phase of Premier Group is with respect to customers. “As our initial market was very small, we had to understand how to satisfy and maintain every customer as we believed that there would not be another customer to replace one lost. This is a lesson we have never forgotten,” he told CBF journalists.
The Way of Expansion
After acquiring a number of smaller businesses in Ireland as part of its growth in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Premier Group gained a stable foothold in Ireland. Then it began to seek a way into the international market. The UK, a neighboring country next to Ireland, was undoubtedly an ideal destination. Premier Group made its first entry into the British market by acquiring the UK-based Nigel Lynn in 2005. As Mr. Fitzgerald recalled, Nigel Lynn was then owned by a VC fund and had experienced some difficulties in the previous years. And as it was in the same “recruitment sector” as Premier Group in Ireland, Mr. Fitzgerald believed that Premier Group could leverage its experience and significantly improve its performance.
Premier Group did succeed in improving its performance and the quality of its service. However, Mr. Fitzgerald and his team somewhat underestimated the challenges of operating outside Ireland for the first time. “The UK market was far more developed than the Irish market and the key challenge we faced was that we did not have a market leading brand in the UK as we did in Ireland,” he said.
Nevertheless, the acquisition of Nigel Lynn gave Premier Group a foothold in the UK market which would prove invaluable in later years especially following the acquisition of Imprint Plc.
The acquisition of Imprint Plc. contains great stories to tell. As Mr. Fitzgerald told us, “the acquisition of Imprint was a significant challenge for Premier Group”.
“For a start, Imprint was of similar scale and size to our existing business at that time,” he said. But Imprint had two main attractions for Premier Group to acquire it.
1. They owned the market leading and highly respected UK recruiter, Morgan McKinley.
2. They had a foothold in Asia through fledgling offices in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore and Sydney.
Because of it, Mr. Fitzgerald believed that Imprint was an ideal partner for Premier Group. But the acquisition was not uneventful. “We had made earlier approaches to Imprint but were rejected. When Imprint came ‘into play’ there were two rival bidders and both were public companies quoted on the AIM exchange in London,” Mr. Fitzgerald told us. “We had an advantage over these businesses as each move they made was a matter of public record whereas our involvement was private and they were unaware of our identity or interest. They also initially had the advantage of being able to offer the shareholders in Imprint their share as part of the consideration/offer. This seemed attractive at the time and left us at a disadvantage as we could not offer shares in a private company. As time passed, this however turned to their advantage as ‘paper’ became less attractive and our cash offer more attractive.” In May 2008, Mr. Fitzgerald finally got the green light to proceed with the ￡45.2 million takeover of UK-listed recruitment company Imprint, which virtually doubled the size of his business.
“We were fortunate that we had an excellent team of corporate advisors who ‘tactically’ played a ‘great game’ and by following their advice, we were the successful party,” he told CBF journalists.
How Is the Re-branding Going?
The acquisition of Imprint gave Premier Group nine trading brands. Without any delay, Mr. Fitzgerald and his team decided immediately to reduce that significantly. Morgan McKinley was established as the key trading brand globally for Premier Group. This involved significant rebranding in the UK, Middle East and Ireland. Among them, Ireland was the biggest re-brand challenge as it was changing the trading names Premier, Brunel and Verkom, each of which were leaders in their specialist sectors. Now that the re-branding exercise is complete, Premier Group continues to invest significantly in the global brand Morgan McKinley.
Mr. Fitzgerald once called himself a “generalist” as his company was engaged in so many different sectors, but he would rather describe Morgan McKinley, the largest brand under Premier Group, as a “specialist recruiter”, which developed specialist trading brands and companies for different sectors of the recruitment market like Finance & Accounting, IT, Engineering and Technical.”
The Development in China
Enda Kenny’s visit in Morgan McKinley’s office was partially to celebrate the Morgan McKinley’s engagement into China for over one year. The Shanghai office of Morgan McKinley was opened in February 2011. However, Mr. Fitzgerald did not think that Morgan McKinley was in China for only one year.
“We have been covering the Chinese market for the past nine years through our Hong Kong office. Many of our HK-based clients had operations on the Chinese mainland and asked for our assistance to provide them with a similar quality of service in their PRC offices. Determined to preserve our business model and processes, we waited to enter Shanghai on a wholly-owned foreign enterprise (WOFE) status,” he said.
When asked about how he thought of Morgan McKinley’s performance in China, he answered: “Entering into such a competitive market as Shanghai, our WOFE status highly differentiates us from our competitors as all our headhunting processes were imported from the UK and Ireland where professional recruitment has greater maturity and depth of process. This ensures that we approach candidates from a career consulting perspective and highly differentiates us to these active job seekers. Our stringent processes, such as conducting one hour face-to-face competency-based interviews, before assessing candidates’ suitability for the role, means that clients receive highly compatible CVs for their vacancies. This helps to reduce time and cost for our clients. All these have contributed to our strong performance last year. Achieving our revenue, business development and growth targets have helped to reinforce our decision to enter the market when we did and bode well for the future.” “Our clients are mainly multinational companies with operations in China. They range across industries such as banking and financial services, manufacturing, hospitality, retail, FMCG, healthcare, automobile, chemical and many more. We also have clients who are large Chinese companies or smaller foreign companies looking to open an office in China. Morgan McKinley offers a unique ‘contingent-search’ model with native Mandarin-speaking staff as well as an International Candidate Management program to successfully supply quality talent to employers in China,” he added.
In spite of the wonderful achievements of Morgan McKinley in China, Mr. Fitzgerald admitted that there were quite a number of differences between the headhunting markets in China and Europe. “Europe’s headhunting market is more mature and this industry in China is relatively younger. This means that processes and services available here have not caught up yet with Europe. Additionally there are different cultural issues and challenges for recruiting in China compared to Europe. In entering this market, we committed ourselves to understanding local market conditions, combined with a global approach and best practice within the industry.”
The understanding of Chinese market and the role as a WOFE work hugely to Morgan McKinley’s advantage as it has sophisticated processes directly imported from Europe, which enables this global company to provide a higher quality and higher value service to employers and professional job seekers.
Ambition to Be the Best
Even though the European debt crisis is torturing Ireland, causing a reduction in economic growth and affecting the entire recruitment sector, Mr. Fitzgerald did not think the debt crisis as a big problem for his company specifically. The plans will not be changed. Premier Group is still on the way of increasing its presence in Europe as its first office in Paris was recently opened. In addition, Premier Group has already formed key growth plans in both Europe and Asia with China forming a large part of its Asia plans.
As for the details of development plan in China, Mr. Fitzgerald told us that Morgan McKinley expected China to be the key growth location for the company in Asia over the next five years. “We are going to increase our employee numbers in China from 70 currently to 200 within three years to meet increasing employer demand for our services. This increase will also involve new offices and new service lines in specialist markets that we do not yet cover in China.”
Looking beyond China, Premier Group holds the ambition of being the best in the world. In Mr. Fitzgerald’s opinion, being the best in a professional services company can only be determined by the companies who use its services, the professionals who engage with the company about their careers and the people who work as part of the company.
“In 2010 we commenced a five-year transformation project which is examining and transforming every aspect of how we engage and work with our clients, candidates and employees. We do not expect to become the biggest but we absolutely expect that we will be the best professional services recruiter in each market we operate in,” Mr. Fitzgerald explained his ambition.
Where does his confidence come from? The great advantage of being a private company with a fantastic brand on a global platform is the best answer.