Stepping into the breach at Laird Group

Following the acquisition of Warth International Limited in December 2003, EMC director Michael Pay was retained to see through the integration of the business into The Laird Group plc’s operating business, Laird Technologies. What was initially a short, sharp project ended up with Mike on secondment to a FTSE 250 company as European finance director…

Laird Technologies is a global market leader in the design and supply of electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding solutions for the electronics industry. The acquisition of Warth, an EMI and thermal interface business, was part of its strategy to expand into related products and technologies.

My job of helping to integrate Warth into Laird focussed initially on reporting, communications, procedures and strategy. It started with reporting and communication. Laird’s year-end is December which gave us just 21 days to get the new accounting and key performance data in place, as well as completing the year-end numbers.

Communication with customers and suppliers was also important. As a highly-geared, independent business, suppliers were not always prepared to give us the best terms, but as part of a £500m market capitalised listed group, the boot was on the other foot.

Strategy came next. The focus of an independent is very different to that of a multi-national. On the big stuff, the world was no longer our playground, but the micro-level key performance indicators were really worked on.

I must have got something right, because I was asked to become interim European finance director. At that time the European business had sales of $25m and locations in Scotland, England, France, Germany and a new 10,000 sq. m facility in the Czech Republic.

A quick tour around Europe to introduce myself to the finance teams focussed again on communications – this time internally. A finance meeting held in August 2004 in the Czech Republic helped bond the team, bringing together all the European heads, many of whom had not previously met. It demonstrated that they had shared concerns, problems and issues and resulted in real leaps forward in terms of reporting timetables, accuracies and business information. The result was not just a more motivated team, but also real bottom line improvements.

Two months later Laird acquired Centurion, the world’s largest mobile communications antenna designer and manufacturer. This resulted in nearly $100m of sales being generated in the European Division alone as well as a commitment to the shareholders to deliver $10m of savings. Europe was expected to account for a substantial part of this.

In November the various parties met to agree the European manufacturing strategy and identify savings. With the rest of the team I committed to nearly $3m of savings through the transfer of production from Sweden to Eastern Europe. The plan called for aggressive timeframes due to the peaks of production and new product lines coming on stream. Once Hungary had finally been chosen as the location, it took just ten weeks to go into full production and by May 2005 the team had delivered the targeted savings.

I had already identified the need for the European business to have a permanent finance director. It employed more than 350 people across seven European locations so it certainly merited one. I had by then done my bit and didn’t want a full-time role. Eventually an internal candidate was appointed from the group’s head office in London and I handed over the reins.