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Christiane Wuillamie
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As a young girl growing up in South
Vietnam, Christiane Wuillamie learned martial arts and was taught
to shoot by her father, an officer in the South Vietnamese navy.
Unimpressed by what she saw of the communists during the Vietnam
War, she adopted political views "to the right of Ghengis Khan -
although I've grown pinker as I've got older".
Now 41, Wuillamie is a petite, uncomplicated and fiercely
driven woman, founder (in 1994) chairman and chief executive
officer of CWB, one the fastest growing IT consultancies
specialising in the banking sector.
Notable among her firm's recent projects has been the design
of the "Asterisk" system for Deutsche Bank, enabling the bank
effectively to measure and manage exposures and credit risk for all
counterparties across the globe. The system, which CWB reckons to
be the most comprehensive of its kind, is now being marketed to
other banks.
Wuillamie came up with the idea for her business while
working in IT departments in several City institutions. She was
frustrated by her inability to find consultants who would share
risk with their clients on big IT investments by working to a fixed
fee and deadline. She set up her company with a £30,000 loan from a
friend, which she paid back with interest within six months.
CWB now provides consultancy, software solutions (including
credit risk management) and outsourcing to Credit Suisse, HSBC and
DrKB, among others. It has a turnover of more than £19 million and
employs 250 people in London, New York and Singapore.
Earlier this year, Wuillamie was runner-up in Veuve
Clicquot's Businesswoman of the Year award. Now she has hired her
former boss at Swiss Bank Corporation, Hugh Hughes (until recently
chief executive of SocGen Equities International) to guide CWB to a
flotation within two to three years.
"I've had so many e-mails telling me this appointment will
really put CWB on the map," she says. "You have here a man in his
prime, about to be promoted, who understands the equities business
inside out, taking a bet because he thinks this will be so much
fun. It's a sign that for the first time the business people are
really taking technology seriously."
Hughes describes Wuillamie as a "marvellous salesperson who
knows technology inside out and, most importantly, understands the
financial services business".
Wuillamie was born in South Vietnam in 1958, to a French
catholic mother, and her childhood was overshadowed by the Vietnam
War. She was a tomboy who enjoyed trailing her father (by then
separated from her mother) around naval bases and dressing up in
uniform. When teaching her to shoot, her father told her: "When you
shoot someone, you have to shoot to kill". Fortunately, she never
had to put herself to the test.
Her father was a man who took his principles to extremes.
When Saigon fell to the communists, he put his family on a ship,
then went back into the city and stayed. This act - which Wuillamie
describes as "totally daft" - resulted in 12 gruelling years in a
re-education camp. "I don't disagree with the idea of dying for
your country," she says, "but I think exposing yourself to
unnecessary risk is madness."
In 1972 she was sent to a French boarding school near Lyons,
before coming to live in England in 1975. "I wanted to become a
nurse," she says, "but then I changed my mind and went into
accounting. I was brought up terribly spoilt with lots of help
around the house. I found I just couldn't deal with giving people
bed baths."
After her accountancy course, Wuillamie spent six months
working with Vietnamese refugees ("doing my save-the-world bit")
before enrolling on a 16-week computer course. She began work as a
computer programmer, and in a buoyant job market, moved through
several management positions at software companies before arriving
at the City market maker Savory Milln.
After it was taken over by Swiss Bank Corporation, she
managed all the bank's distribution computing and the trading floor
and user-support functions. She took charge of the technology
department when she was 29, but by 1993 she had grown disenchanted
with the lack of understanding of financial services among IT
consultancies. She took a year's sabbatical, during which time she
worked as a freelance consultant, before deciding to set up CWB.
According to Wuillamie, the aim of CWB is to coach banks how
to use IT appropriately. She advocates rationalisation of existing
IT systems and smaller IT budgets to focus the minds of managers on
making what they have more efficient. "IT is a component in the
business process," she says. "It is not an end in itself."
Wuillamie, who last year gave birth to a baby daughter, tries
to give her women staff flexibility in their working hours to
enable them to bring up families (she works from 8.00am until
4.00pm in the office and then from 8.00pm until midnight at home).
But she maintains that she is not politically correct and
describes herself as sexist. She expects "good manners", such as
for men to walk on the outside of the pavement and to open doors
for women. And she is opposed to legislation to make it easier for
women to reach the top, stressing the importance of "individual
determination".
She says: "I was brought up to take nothing for granted, and
believe that you don't get anywhere without hard work."
She even claims that being a woman is an advantage. "As a
woman, when you give your opinion to a man, he will take it," she
says. "Men have to position themselves. They have to be more
macho."
Philip Eade
Robert Hanson, Chairman, Hanson Capital
Robert Hanson
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A new joint venture could mean a return
to the limelight for Robert Hanson. Two years ago, fed up with
speculation that he might be about to succeed his father, he left
Hanson plc and founded Hanson Capital, a merchant bank that would
invest its own capital in projects as well as acting as adviser and
fund raiser for mergers and acquisitions.
Much of Hanson's time since then has been spent exploring
investment opportunities in the east Asia. Now Hanson Capital's
first substantial venture is an internet fund for small companies
in the United States that need capital to finance their early
development.
Millennium Hanson Internet Partners is a joint venture with
two Californian companies, the merchant bank Millennium Capital and
the technology underwriting firm Cruttenden Roth. By December the
fund had raised some£20 million.
It is one of few internet funds being offered to European
investors which will give them access to start-ups in America, and
the Millennium/Cruttenden partners should be able to identify
promising investments at an early stage.
If the fund is successful, Hanson may become high-profile
again: he not only inherited his father's adventurous business
spirit, but also his father's ability to interest the gossip
columnists.
Robert Hanson was born on October 3 1960, the eldest of two
sons of James (now Lord) Hanson and his American wife Geraldine
Kaelin. As a young man, James Hanson had walked out with the
actress Jean Simmons and was engaged to Audrey Hepburn. In 1965 he
founded one of Britain's most successful conglomerates and has
become that rare thing in Britain, a businessman who is also a
household name.
Son Robert went to Eton and then St Peter's College, Oxford,
where he soon became identified with the fast set, not least
because of his membership of the Assassins dining club. After one
high-spirited evening in a restaurant, he and two companions were
bound over by magistrates to keep the peace.
After graduating, Hanson went to work for NM Rothschild in
1983, telling Sir Evelyn de Rothschild that he saw merchant banking
as a career, not just a brief stop-off on his way to Hanson plc.
However, his colleagues at Rothschild were sceptical. "No one ever
doubted that he would eventually join his father," one recalled. "I
think that explained his extraordinary confidence."
Hanson's reputation at this time was as someone who worked
hard but also had fun. A magazine was forced to retract an
allegation that he played polo every Wednesday while at Rothschild,
adding that "if he ever did so, he made up the time".
Much of Hanson's time at the bank was spent abroad, in Hong
Kong - where he tried to learn Mandarin and acquired contacts among
the young, rich Hong Kong Chinese - in Chile and in Spain where, as
an associate director, he helped manage a fund management business.
But in 1990, he got the call from his father. "My father told
me I could make of the job what I wanted," he later recalled. "If I
did well I could get on the fast track."
Hanson spent the first two years at Hanson plc putting his
banking experience to good use working on acquisitions, preparing
potential bids for Powergen and Canary Wharf, helping to draw up
the plan to take a 2.8% stake in ICI - a deal which briefly
threatened to turn into a ground-breaking hostile bid for the
venerable British company - and looking at "hundreds of other deals
in private".
In 1992 he was elevated to the board, fighting off
accusations of nepotism with the promise: "There will be no dynasty
here. Hanson is a meritocracy."
At the same time, he sought to play down his playboy image -
he was by then well known as a "ladies man" - observing that
"glamour does not mix with seriousness" in the 1990s.
In 1994, he became chairman of Hanson Pacific, a subsidiary
aimed at developing business opportunities in Asia. In 1996, by
then director of corporate development, he played a key role in the
demerger of Hanson plc.
But suggestions in the press that he might succeed his father
as chairman in 1997 prompted an outburst from Lord Hanson.
"If you don't all belt up on the question of my son," he
said, "he is going to leave us. He is a brilliant young fellow
doing one hell of a job. He could well go out and find a job of his
own." The following year, that is more or less what he did.
Although the younger Hanson is no stranger to publicity, he
has only given one interview in his life, and is believed to be
enjoying the role of private businessman. But as his venture
expands, it remains to be seen whether he chooses to adopt a more
public persona with the press. He gave up polo some years ago, but
still seems know how to get the girl. He is currently engaged to
Sophie Anderton, the super model.
PE
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