Pierre Hardy

Capital & Regional Plc is a co-investigating Property and Asset manager. It has £6bn of real estate asset under management and a market capitalisation of £1.1bn.

X-Leisure is the leisure division of Capital & Regional Plc. It manages £1.1bn worth of assets. These are Leisure Parks spread across the UK as well as the leading in-door ski slope operator Sno!zone. The assets are held through several tax efficient legal structures including investment fund, Jersey Property Unit Trusts and Limited Partnerships. One of the key asset is Xscape (3 centres) which we think is the future of leisure.

Member of the executive team, I have an active role in the definition of the strategy and business development. My role also covers:
* Loan negotiation, refinancing and management of the relationship with the banks
* Management of the relationship with the institutional investors
* Financial management of the developments/contruction
* Validation of acquisitions/developments
* Validation and modelling of 5 year forecast
* Legal negotiations
* Management of Offshore legal structures
* Management of the accounting and reporting functions
* Definition of the IT strategy/Development of a proprietary booking system
* Risk management, Insurance, CSR
* Various project management

Achievements over the past 5 years:
* The asset base grew from £75m to £1.1bn
* Over £600m worth of financing negotiated and securitisation is now envisaged
* Two developments successfully finalised
* Returned the ski slope operator to profit (20% of t/o) and opened two additional slopes
* Circa 25% average return to investors (Over the last 3 years)
* Finance team growth from 2 to 16 employees and division from 100 to 350 employees.

NMEC was the company managing the Millenium Dome in London, a world class visitor attraction created for the Y2K.

My role of Special Project Director covered a large number of area in the running of the Dome. Most of it was down to corporate rescue. It could be split into four phases:

Phase one
* Strategic review
* Assesment of the financial position/ cost freezing plan
* Financing negotiations
* Implementation of a yield management system
* Review of marketing mix

Phase two
* Cost saving strategy
* Review of all operational functions

Phase three
* Management of the main contractor
* Management of a massive maintenance department of over 450 employees (Sound, Lighting, Audio Visual, Building, Attractions, Logistics)

Phase four
* Review of 4 business plans from bidders for the sale of the Dome (Including Nomura)
* Development of a business plan to bid for the Dome as no bidder was successful
* Management of the de-commissioning of the attractions (A main contractor and 400 people scaling down, a budget of £7m over an 12 weeks period)

Achievements:
* All of the above
* 6.5 million visitors (More than half of Disneyland Paris)
* £23 million savings over a period of 10 months.

CERIC is the world leader in the engineering and construction of factories for the ceramic industry. It has Euro150 millon turnover.

During 5 years I have been travelling Europe and the US to project manage the end of the construction and the commissioning of over 15 factories. My role covered:
* Technical supervision of the ceramic, mechanic, electric, aerolic, thermic, robotic... aspects
* Proposal of technical modifications
* Management of the relationship with the client
* Management of cost and program
* Managment of a team of up to 20 people in a foreign environment
* Reporting to head office in Paris