Kevin Gaskell, President - EurotaxGlass's International AG
An engineering graduate, Kevin (49) became Managing Director of Porsche GB Ltd in 1992, aged just 33. Over the next five years he was responsible for the turnaround of the UK business and the growth and development of the Porsche marque. From 1995 he was also concurrently Managing Director of Lamborghini GB Ltd.
In November 1996 he took the position of Managing Director of BMW (GB) Ltd with responsibility for all UK sales and distribution operations. He led the business to three successive years of record growth. In 1999 BMW sales in the UK exceeded 70,000 cars with a combined turnover in excess of £1.5 billion.
He left BMW in 2000 and established Epyx / 1link, the UK’s leading fleet sector ecommerce platform. He joined EurotaxGlass's as Group CEO in April 2001. He has since led the expansion and growth of the company and conducted an MBO of the group supported by Candover in 2006 in a deal worth over 480 million euros. He became President of EurotaxGlass's in December 2007, with Alastair MacLeod taking over as CEO.
page topMichael Hyatt, Technical Director - SMMT
Mike has over 40 years of experience at a senior level in the Automotive Industry. This includes extensive experience in the management of whole vehicle design development programmes.
Trained as a mechanical engineer, in the mid 70,s he joined International Automotive Design in the late 70,s. As Director of Programmes he played a major role in the development of the company, establishing it as one of the most successful international independent, global design and development consultant companies.
He had the responsibility for meeting all the commercial aspects, client timing and engineering deliverables on all programmes which included several whole vehicle programmes for global vehicle manufactures.
He has worked as a senior adviser and consultant to the Automotive Directorate of the DTI, where he has been involved in various international projects. As well as providing industrial advice to the Automotive Directorate, he has responsibility for the development of business opportunities for UK automotive SME companies in China.
For the past 6 years he has worked as Technical Director at the SMMT involved in the development of regulatory directives both for safety and environmental engineering and development. He has also been responsible for the Foresight Vehicle programme and represents the SMMT on the board of innovITS and Cenex the two centers of excellence set up by the DTI.
page topCharles Morgan, Managing Director - Morgan Motor Company
At Television News Team Ltd, Charles Morgan directed and filmed with Sandy Gall, the first documentary to go behind Russian lines in Afghanistan in 1982 and show the conflict between Ahmed Shah Massud, his Mujahadeen and the Russian army in the Panjshir valley.
After joining the Morgan Motor Company, Charles Morgan spent three years completing a part time MBA in manufacturing management at Coventry University.
Broadly, his work at the company has involved initiating quality improvements to the range of products and the services the company provides. The addition of new technology and of new models, notably the Aero 8, is essential to this process. The future of the company depends on the development and training of the workforce and the links with the best suppliers to maintain the process of continuous improvement throughout the company.
Charles Morgan led the team that developed the Aero 8 - the first completely new Morgan for thirty years. The car is Europe’s first AIV (aluminium intensive vehicle) and is 20% lighter than comparable vehicles.
MMC has been voted Specialist Manufacturer of the year 2000 by Autocar magazine, won the Guild of Coachmakers annual motor industry award for 2000 and for 2001, collected the Sir Henry Royce Award from the Guild of Carmen. In 2002, the Morgan Motor Company was voted one of the UK’s 100 most visionary organisations by British Telecom.
In 1978 and 1979 Charles Morgan won the British Racing and Sports Car Club and British Racing Drivers Club production sports car championships driving a production Morgan Plus Eight. In 1997 and 1998 he competed in the FIA International GT series driving a factory prepared Morgan Plus Eight GTR. His interests and hobbies include skiing, together with the history of art and architecture. As an amateur he paints and draws.
Charles is a member of “Celebrity Speakers Limited” and is invited regularly to speak at functions, giving a huge variety of people from all walks of life, the benefit of his knowledge and experience as head of the “First and Last” Family owned sports car company in existence, which is presently approaching its Centenary celebrations in 2009.
Most recently Charles has made headlines as the driving force behind the “Aeromax” Coupé, a one-off build for a private customer in Geneva, which is based on the company’s successful Aero 8 model. He has also been appointed Director of the consortium formed for “The LIFECar Project”, which aims to make Morgan the first sports car manufacturer of a zero emissions, fuel celled car, being both ecologically and economically efficient. The project is due to launch a prototype vehicle at the Geneva Autoshow in March 2008.
Charles Morgan has just written a Centenary book called “Morgan 100 Years” together with Gregory Huston Bowden published in September 2008 by Michael O’Mara Books.
page topDr Paul Nieuwenhuis, MA, PhD, FIMI - Centre for Automotive Industry Research
Born in the Netherlands and studied in Australia, Belgium, Spain and Scotland, where he obtained two degrees from Edinburgh University. A lifelong interest in cars and car making allowed him to get a job with the Motor Industry Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. The unit was later privatised; this moved him into the consultancy world, carrying out projects for most of the world’s car and truck makers, while he also became a special advisor on state aid in the automotive industry to the European Commission (DGIV).
Since 1990, he has been with the prestigious Centre for Automotive Industry Research (CAIR) at Cardiff University. CAIR specialises in the economic and strategic aspects of the world automotive sector, giving it a rare overview of the industry. The centre is self-funding and attracts contracts from car makers, suppliers and other automotive stakeholders, including governments, world-wide. Here he also developed his special interest in the problems of making personal mobility compatible with our environment and with sustainability.
Dr Nieuwenhuis has co-authored The Green Car Guide (1992), Motor Vehicles in the Environment (1997) and the influential The Death of Motoring? Car Making and Automobility in the 21st Century (1997), among others. He also contributed to the Beaulieu Encyclopaedia of the Automobile (2000). Dr Nieuwenhuis is a fellow of the Institute of the Motor Industry, a member of the Society of Automotive Historians and a member of the UK Foresight Vehicle Steering Committee.
In 2001 he became a founder member of the ESRC-funded Centre for Business Responsibility, Accountability, Sustainability and Society (BRASS) at Cardiff University.
page topBen Rachel, Planning Director - CMW
Ben Rachel is the planning director of leading communications agency CMW; experts in the automotive sector who work for Lotus, Peugeot and Renault Retail Group.
Ben is a superb strategic thinker and an expert in automotive marketing. He was the brains behind the recent highly acclaimed launch campaign for the Lotus Evora which harnessed the powers of viral marketing to put the new sports car on the map globally.
He also came up with the idea of positioning Kylie Minogue as the face of the Streetka, a PR-lead approach which generated front page column inches. At the time of its launch in 2002 this was arguably an industry first, a departure from the traditional approach of using paid for advertising to promote a new launch.
Ben also worked advising Ford during the manufacturer’s early forays into interactive TV advertising when he worked for Ogilvy & Mather. He was involved in a number of landmark initiatives including the development of interactive TV commercials for Mondeo and Focus C-MAX, and for Ford’s viral marketing strategy. The agency’s first viral campaign for the Ford Fiesta was short listed at the 50th Cannes Advertising Awards.
Ben is a passionate advocate of “driver imagery”, believing that for most consumers, the subconscious message of ‘what their car says about them’ is probably the most important criteria when it comes to informing the purchase decision. For this reason, manufacturers who obsess about communicating reliability and dependability, might, in Ben’s view, be missing a trick.
page topMichiel Van Ratingen, Secretary General - Euro NCAP
Michiel van Ratingen joined Euro NCAP, as secretary general, in 2007. Prior to his current position, he held the post of technical director at First Technology Safety Systems Inc. from 2005, where he was globally responsible for development of crash test dummy products, sensors, test equipment and Finite Element Models.
Mr. van Ratingen’s automotive career began in 1995 as a product engineer at the TNO Road Vehicles Research Institute, Crash Safety Centre in Delft, The Netherlands. In 1997, he was appointed product manager crash test dummies and test methods; responsible for development of new crash test dummies, such as Q-dummies, EUROSID-2, WorldSID, and RID2 and development of crash protection assessment methods, including EEVC and Euro NCAP activities. Between 2003 and 2004, he was technology manager at TNO automotive, safety department; coordinating technological developments in R&DT, including accident analysis, virtual testing, test methods and crash dummies, structural crashworthiness, restraint and intelligent systems and material technology. In 2004 he became head of the automotive safety department at TNO Science and Industry, business unit automotive.
Mr. van Ratingen completed his PhD at Eindhoven University of Technology (Netherlands) in 1994 having previously gained a post-graduate professional doctorate in engineering on computational mechanics (1990-1992) and an MSc degree in engineering mechanics (1984-1990).
page topAnil Valsan, Research Manager, Europe - Frost & Sullivan
Anil has been with the Automotive Practice for over 7 years and currently heads the research division within the European practice.
His contributions to customised research include project managing and senior consultant roles in over 50 strategic consulting assignments for vehicle manufacturers as well as major Tier 1 suppliers. The nature of projects he has managed includes business opportunity evaluation, partnership/acquisition analysis, commercial due diligence, concept testing for new product launches, voice of customer studies, and supplier benchmarking, covering both the automotive OE and aftermarket.
Some of the diverse projects he has worked on include identifying strategic opportunities for suppliers in the automotive seat electronics market, analysis vehicle manufacturers’ comfort strategies, analysis of the R&D strategies of OEMs, analysis of the OE and aftermarket for various in-car infotainment system. He has also conducted strategy workshops and presented findings to top automotive OEMs and Suppliers. He is a regular speaker at international automotive conferences and is often quoted on reputed automotive and business publications.
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