Michael Mainelli has won a highly prestigious assignment with DERA (formerly the Defence Research Agency) through Morgan Grenfell & Co. effectively adding both of those esteemed names to our client list in one fell swoop.
Michael will spend 70% of his working time as ex-officio Group Corporate Development Director for this £1B annual turnover, 10,000 employee research agency one of the largest scientific research bodies in the world (if not, the largest).
Michael will report directly to the Chief Executive John Chisholm(ex Sema Group) and will be responsible for (amongst other things) including hi-tec. joint ventures and outsourcing parts of the research agency.
The assignment will run for an initial period of six months with an option to revise and/or extend the assignment after that.
A spokesperson for Z/Yen, Ian Harris, elucidated "we’ve brought in the big guns and it has given us the shot in the arm we needed to launch Z/Yen into the front line." Harris’ use of pertinent metaphor then became so infuriating that we abruptly ended the interview.
Mainelli hopes to get a chance to play with some of the fancy flying toys which he has seen emblazoned on the walls of the agency.
He is already making some Z/Yen folk green with his fast talk. When he comes back down to earth, he’ll be working flat out on a strategic corporate development document which will for the main thrust of DERA’s Corporate Plan for 1996.
It’s all change at our largest client, ICS, where Steve Taylor and John Thompson are on 4 days per week secondments for the next few months, in the capacity of ex-officio Operations and Sales & Marketing Directors respectively. They are both implementing some major structural changes at a breathtaking pace.
Both John and Steve report that their responsibilities are exhausting but enormously challenging and fulfilling. John McLean of ICS says "Steve and John are currently carrying out an excellent job for the company.
Over the next few days, BSG will be setting up modern links at our head office. This is the first stage of our development towards sophisticated communication links to support our philosophy of office hotelling. More news will follow once there is more to tell (in the next issue or two).
Comments, as always, are welcomed at the address shown. Please fax articles through for the next issue (copy date 7 April). See you all, Z/Yen!