BBC NEWS | Business | Mobile boss Snook moves into health care Mobile boss Snook moves into health care Joia Shillingford BBC News business reporter Hans Snook once predicted we would receive calls via earrings He may not be a teenager, but Hans Snook, chairman of mobile phone retailer Carphone Warehouse, has an uncanny knack for picking up on trends. He downloaded the Crazy Frog ringtone on to his mobile as soon as he heard it. It turns out that hundreds of thousands of young people have done so too. He also had a Motorola RAZR phone, one of this season's hottest mobiles, as one of his four handsets. Or he did until his partner Helen "stole it". Futurology But what does the former boss of Orange - who once predicted we would be making calls from earring-style phones - think will be important trends for the future? Crazy Frog ringtones and wallpaper have wowed mobile users He forecasts that one day all communications networks - whether fixed or mobile - will be linked together. "There'll be one big global network that reaches everywhere," he says.

"When you're near a cheap fixed-line network, bluetooth (short-range radio) in the phone could connect to it and let you make calls over it," adds Mr Snook. This would benefit mobile operators too, he says, because they wouldn't have to put base stations into every building. It would also get round the problem of buildings with poor mobile coverage. Mobile stress reducer More useful, or more amusing, services for mobiles will also be key, he says. I don't do anything unless it is fun. I have to believe in it, it has to be good for people. And it has to be profitable Hans Snook, chairman of Carphone Warehouse For example, he is working with Health-Smart, a small UK company with biofeedback technology that can monitor key health indicators, such as blood pressure, heart rate and heart variability, via a small strap that goes round a finger. This could transmit the results to a mobile phone via bluetooth, he says. "The feedback will tell you if you are overstressed, and you can make yourself calmer by breathing better." Mr Snook, who once said he would have liked to be a psychologist if he wasn't a businessman, seems to have reduced stress in his own life.

It helps that he has made over ï¿½40m from sales of Orange shares and from takeovers of Orange by Mannesmann, and by Vodafone (when it bought Mannesmann). Emphasis on enjoyment Mr Snook is moving from phones to healthcare "I don't do anything unless it is fun," he says. "I have to believe in it, it has to be good for people. And it has to be profitable - or it won't last." He describes his role as chairman of Orange Thailand as fun but demanding. He took it on in 2002, shortly after France Telecom's acquisition of Orange and his departure as Orange boss. He stayed on as chairman of Orange Thailand after France Telecom reduced its 49% stake in the business to 10% last year, selling out to its listed Thai joint venture partner, Chaeran Pokhand Group. "My biggest job last year was to broker this deal," says Mr Snook, who spent many years working in Asia - for Hutchison - after going there as a young backpacker in the 1980s. But the deal means Orange Thailand must eventually drop the Orange name.

"We needed a brand that would be as successful as Orange with Thais," says Mr Snook, who expects "True" or "True Mobile" to be the final choice. "It will be my first experience of changing the Orange brand to something else," he points out. Health check La Zagaleta Lifestyle Magazine Subsciption. The Prestigious Brand Magazine in Andalucia, Spain. Founder and Former CEO of Orange Telecom at his holiday residence at La Zagaleta, Spain Edition 6 Download a PDF version | Leer en Español Hans R. Snook, the founder and former CEO of the mobile network Orange welcomes us into his home at La Zagaleta and opens up about the future of the telecommunications industry, his health regimen (or lack thereof), and how Spain managed to catch his attention. There have been founded rumours that this month, Orange -- the UK’s third largest mobile network -- will merge with T-Mobile in the UK, creating a mobile giant with 28.4 million clients. This marriage could mean problems when the databases collide, although the firms promise better coverage and customer service, a crucial factor that has been lax for both companies.

At this point, whatever the headlines may read, it’s impossible to speak of the creation of a “mobile giant” without mentioning the name Hans Snook. You may have heard of him. He’s that non-conventional (eccentric, some call him) leather-jacket-wearing businessman who founded Orange and once proclaimed the crazy notion that we would once be able to make phone calls over an earring-style device. That seemingly radical insight helped Orange become the leading mobile network during the years Snook oversaw the company. “I was always a few years ahead. I said that within 3 years of starting Orange, 50 percent of the population would be using a mobile phone. They thought I was crazy,” says Snook in his home office. Of course, we all know how that turned out, and Orange was not only leader in customer service in the UK but also in innovation. They were the first to offer a short messaging system, or SMS. When an Orange client would call customer service from their device, the representative would instantly recognize their name and address them as so. But how does a young man from Canada working in the hotel industry suddenly end up at the head of Orange?

THE FUTURE LOOKS ORANGE Born to a German mother and British father, Snook moved to England at the age of two and subsequently moved to Vancouver, Canada, where he started his professional career in the hotel industry. “I started as a busboy. I’ve been a male maid, a waiter, a desk clerk, you name it,” Snook recalls. “And then, at 34, I thought there’s got to be something better to do.” And so Snook sold everything he owned and went backpacking around the world, a two-year plan that would be cut short in Hong Kong, where he would eventually accept a one-year executive position at Hutchison Telecommunications. Under Hutchison, Snook unified the brand, opening mobile retail stores and making the company at one point the most profitable cellular and paging company in the world. Snook quickly expanded the business into Thailand, Malaysia and Taiwan. The turning point came when Snook was trusted to go to the United Kingdom to do some “damage control,” venturing into a market he hardly knew. The UK division was under shaky leadership that had prompted declining numbers. “It was a big black hole.

All of the money we were making in Asia was getting lost in England.” Snook’s recommendations: Write off £280 million and invest another £700 million in a new network, not to mention fire thousands of employees along the way. “It just had to be done. Otherwise, Orange would have never made it,” Snook explains. Needless to say, Snook was not the most beloved man in England, but his plan of action became what we know today as Orange. That was in 1994. Since then, Orange has been twice sold, first to the German firm Mannesmann in 1999. At this point the UK customer base had grown to 3.5 million and Orange had cornered 20 percent of the UK market. Quickly after, in August 2000, France Telecom acquired Orange for a hefty €40 billion, serving then a 9.3 million client base and growing. Under France Telecom, Snook lasted almost a year as an advisor to the chairman, but soon parted ways to get away from what he called “creeping beaurocracy” and to follow a more alternative path.

Snook was leaving behind more than 10,000 employees, years of 18-hour days and jet setting around the world promoting the image of the brand. More importantly, he would be leaving behind a vision of what Orange could one day become, including groundbreaking ideas that have not yet been taken advantage of by the firm. THE UNIFORM “I don’t have a self-perception,” Snook says. “I say I’m not quirky, but I probably am.” Dressed entirely in white, Snook is sitting in his living room in his La Zagaleta residence, surrounded by Hawaiian tribal busts and framed photos of his horses. He has 25 back in England, where he resides most of the year. For most of his career, Snook was known not just for his leaps in the telecom industry, but also for his non-traditional choice of attire. It’s been said that he would close business deals in jeans and a leather jacket. An odd choice for a man running a number one mobile empire in Europe. “It was really an accident. I was flying from London to New York for a press conference.

The flight was delayed and I didn’t have time to go back to the hotel and change, so I presented one of our products in jeans, a white shirt with no collar and a black leather jacket. The media thought that I had matched the casual nature of what we were presenting. So it sort of stuck.” The “uniform” became part of his daily attire, even for special occasions at restaurants where a dress code was not to be deliberated. He was even confused with a priest once, and had the entire staff at the prestigious London nightclub Annabel’s calling him “your eminence.” “The last time I wore a suit was at a dinner with Prince Charles,” Snook recalls. MOVING ALONG Behind the collarless dress shirts is a visionary businessman who now plays by his own rules. The post-Orange way of life has taken him to explore an alternative side to what was once a desire to explore the medical field. “I originally wanted to become a doctor. When I was younger I managed to get into the university library and get access to medical books. You know, 70 percent of med students think they develop a terrible disease from reading these books. I went to my family doctor thinking I had Leukaemia.

Of course I didn’t, but I even got a second opinion!” He gave up on being a doctor and attended the university of British Columbia, constantly switching majors before deciding on English literature and Psychology. Snook came 3 credits shy of graduating, but he doesn’t seem to be bothered too much. Aside from serving as Chairman of TrueMove (Thailand’s third largest mobile phone firm) and the non-executive director at DDD Group which formulates software that converts 2-D images to 3-D, Snook serves as the Founder and Chairman for The Diagnostic Clinic, a London-based clinic that combines Western treatments with non-traditional medicine and methods to provide patients a more accurate and personalised health assessment. According to Snook, no one treatment is right for one condition, or for every person who suffers from it. “I know for a fact that we’ve improved many people’s lives,” says Snook. “We’re not afraid to be a bit pioneering as well.” Quite ironically, Snook is a chain smoker. “Somebody’s gotta do it,” he says. But in his defence, Snook is partaking in golf lessons, something he’s always wanted to do.

He also takes close to 18 different vitamins a day, something that he says helps to counteract the effects of smoking and drinking. Also, he’s installed a gymnasium in his La Zagaleta estate. FINDING FREEDOM IN SPAIN In the last year, Snook and his partner Helen have moved to La Zagaleta to get away – for at least 6 weeks of the year – from what he calls a nannified England. “The UK has become so politically correct. The Egg and Spoon race, the Three-Legged race…they have been prohibited!” Snook discovered Spain when he began to visit Helen’s parents in Marbella. “The people, the weather, the food. I felt a better sense of freedom than in the UK. I was getting fed up with the rules. It’s what I love about Spain, they do what they want.” After Snook and his wife toured 10 properties at La Zagaleta, they decided on the first home they looked at. And it became perfect, according to Snook. “I love the security measures. And the Steak Tartare at the Club House – it’s consistently great. The wildlife is amazing,” he says.

So now that he has more free time, does Snook feel retired? “No, I don’t,” Snook answers. “I do enough to keep myself interested, in mobile phones and health. I am a workaholic, but on my free days, I completely switch off.” As eccentric as the media may have once baptised Snook, his energy is relaxed yet correct. Open yet reserved. Perhaps it’s the newfound Spanish way of life taking effect.

Interview: Olaf Swantee of France Telecom Orange | Global Telecoms Business Interview: Olaf Swantee of France Telecom Orange 29 August 2008 A year after joining Orange from the IT industry, the group's mobile head Olaf Swantee tells Alan Burkitt-Gray about the priorities of getting it right in highly competitive national markets while benefiting from an international operation and brand Read more: Orange France Telecom TeliaSonera Compaq HP Hewlett-Packard Sol Trujillo M&A Olaf Swantee: the industry that has to be customer centric, as 90% of business now comes from existing customers France Telecom is looking for new international alliances following the withdrawal of its overtures to TeliaSonera, according to Olaf Swantee, Orange's head of global mobile operations. Swantee was speaking to Global Telecoms Business a couple of weeks after France Telecom — which now uses the Orange brand for virtually all its operations around the world, including France — told TeliaSonera that it would not increase its offer for the Swedish-Finnish incumbent. Of course, it never formally bid anything, but had indicated that it would bid 56 Swedish kronor per share, valuing the company at €27 billion.

The board of TeliaSonera, plus the Swedish state, which owns 37%, were looking for 60 kronor or more. TeliaSonera's shares were then trading in the high 50s; within days of France Telecom's withdrawal, they had dropped to around 45 kronor. But Swantee, who joined France Telecom only in mid-2007, was not dismayed. "TeliaSonera was not a must for our strategy. We are looking at different possibilities to create synergies in our core markets and efficiencies." So will there be a big-bang merger in Europe — two incumbents or an incumbent and a media company, perhaps? "I wouldn't rule it out," says Swantee. "Our M&A department is very careful. There are many, many opportunities." But it's easy to get caught up in the excitement of a merger: Swantee has the experience to prove it, from his previous job, when he lived through the Compaq-HP merger. Courage "It is much harder to have the courage to say we will not do this," he says.

"I'm pleased about that approach, based on my experience with good integrations and bad integrations." Swantee joined Orange after many years in the IT industry, ending as a senior vice-president of HP, responsible for enterprise sales and software in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. "I've been 17 years in IT before telecoms," he says. "I started with Compaq. Then I moved to Digital Equipment, and then Digital was bought by Compaq, which was fine as I'd left on good terms. Then HP bought Compaq." And, now he's well clear, he can say: "The Compaq-Digital merger was certainly not one of the most successful in history, but the HP-Compaq one worked very well. It took some time but it worked very well." And that experience informs his view about consolidation in the telecoms industry. "Let's be very, very careful and think a long time before you do something like that," he says. But, he admits, "consolidation will happen".

The simple version of Swantee's job title — head of global mobile operations — shows clearly that he is a direct successor to former CEO Sanjiv Ahuja, and before that Sol Trujillo, Jean-François Pontal and the memorable Hans Snook, who founded the Orange brand as an innovative UK-only operator in 1994. It become part of France Telecom in 2000, and since then the brand has been adopted by the whole group. But Swantee's official title, on his business card and on the list of the management committee on the FT website, is: senior executive vice president, personal communication services and UK/EME [Europe/Middle East] operations. A mouthful, but in good Orange style — it probably dates back to Snook — the back of his card bears just the word "hello", in orange Helvetica on plain white. That's because, like most of the other members of the France Telecom main board, he has a dual role. One function "is the mobile business across the group, the line of business, including France", he says.

That is the Ahuja/Trujillo/Pontal job, though his description indicates a closer integration of the French mobile operation with others than in the past. The other task is "key countries outside France, a total P&L perspective: the UK, European countries outside France, and the Middle East, and of these Egypt is the fastest growing". Emerging services That means responsibility for all Orange's operations in those territories — mobile, fixed, internet and business services plus emerging services such as IPTV. "On the board of Orange FT all individuals have two functions," says Swantee. "It is an interesting way to set up. It forces team work across the company. I'm responsible for the mobile business across the group, but my colleague Louis-Pierre Wenes is responsible for France as a total entity." Wenes is also responsible for Orange's fixed-line operations across the company, as a line of business, "so he's discussing with me what we have to do in the UK", says Swantee. The chief financial officer, Gervais Pellissier, is also responsible for Spain. And the board member in overall charge of human resources, Olivier Barberot, is responsible for Poland. Is that a good idea?

"I haven't come across this before," says Swantee. "I've mainly worked for American companies before and this is not a traditional way." But he supports the idea. It gives a person who has a particular function — whether that is fixed or mobile, or finance or HR — a parallel profit and loss responsibility in a territory, involving all functions. "Because of the nature of the industry, we have a very local P&L. We talk about our performance in Spain, in the UK, and so on." It means that executives can swap experience on issues such as sales and distribution. "In more mature markets, we're looking at how we should structure our distribution strategy, how much we should sell indirect, how much we should sell direct, how much via the web," he says. "Can we share retail best practices across the group? How do our call centres operate? That is an example of a function that can be led by someone who has that knowhow and background." As well as having multiple responsibilities, Swantee lives in a world of multiple cities and multiple nationalities. "Typically I do Monday in Paris and on Monday evening I go to London by train," he says. That's fortunately just over a two-hour trip these days.

London is his official base, but "I spend typically one day during the week in one of the other countries, and at the weekend I try to be home with the children." Home? "At the moment — and I've been just a year with the company — my family is in Switzerland, in Zürich. I'm Dutch and my wife is Swedish, and our children were born in Switzerland, so have Swiss passports." It's a multilingual household: the children speak in Dutch to Swantee, in Swedish to their mother, and in Swiss German outside the house. Customer centric So, after a year, what does Swantee bring to Orange from the IT industry? "The most important is that for most of my career I've been focussed on customer roles — marketing, sales, customer management, and that is a big benefit especially in an industry that has to be customer centric," he says. In mobile telecoms, "we're moving from a period where the technology was relatively new, not very well understood", he adds. "Typically 60% of our customers in the UK for example were new customers a couple of years ago. Now 90% are existing customers.

In a market like that you need to be very customer-centric. I certainly bring a lot of experience around customer processes, sales, marketing, to FT Orange." A second advantage, he says, is: "I've developed an ability to work in very international environments and to drive international coordination. I wouldn't call it globalisation. We're a company with an international footprint." Telecoms is not like IT, though. Later on in the interview he pointed to one essential difference. "Go to IBM and you can get one contract round the world." Products are identical. "In telecommunications, to be present in every country with a full-blown telecommunications service is just so difficult," he points out. So Orange FT — like most other operators — uses partners. "That is a good model, especially for business customers." So there is an essential national element to telecoms, which has to be taken into account. "Everything is decentral and that's fine, that's good," he says. "Most of your investment is local, most of your P&L is local, your investments in the network, call centres." And "the telecommunications product is developed locally — the network, the contracts".

So in a global company that has local operations, "it is important that we share services, starting with R&D", he says. "It doesn't make sense to have R&D in every single country, so it's important that products that are developed somewhere round the world need to be implemented and executed country by country." And IT is another case where resources can be shared. "It doesn't make sense that every country has its own PC strategy or its own applications," he says. "We can do a lot of sharing in that area. There are a number of areas where we can build more international coordination and cooperation." Challenging Billing is mainly still done locally, he says, "but we use billing expertise because it's a very challenging area. If something is technically challenging it's very good to put it in one place and share it. It would be very expensive to put it everywhere — and there are only so many experts that are available." A few months after Swantee joined Orange, the company appointed Tom Alexander to run its UK operation. Alexander was the founding CEO of Virgin Mobile in the UK, the pioneering MVNO and still one of the most successful.

Shortly after his arrival in December 2007 Alexander committed the operation to have its call centres in the UK. "We were not happy with the quality," says Swantee. "In this market one of the key priorities must be customer centricity." What does that mean? "In any company that says it's focussed on the customer, the difference must be what other priorities you have. Do you have enough time to focus on it?" says Swantee. "We have decided to have a very limited set of priorities and that is the number one priority — and second is the execution of that priority. We have decided to focus the entire organisation on improving customer satisfaction for the simple reason that most of our customers nowadays are repeat customers and we need to have not only satisfied customers but loyal customers. There's a big difference between loyalty and satisfaction." Swantee can measure the progress of this policy through his email inbox. "When I started I received about 100 emails a week with customer complaints." And he took phone calls personally, his PR person — sitting alongside — chips in.

"When I arrived I felt that everyone in the company needs to go back to focussing on the customer and hence I took those emails very seriously The problem was that most of them were negative — 99% of them — and they pointed to some really serious issues." Responsiveness People complained about lack of responsiveness, he says; "the time it took for someone to pick up a phone call". But customers also complained that they "had to call back and re-explain their issue, which points to the lack of a ticketing system", he adds. "That has been for us a key priority." And over the months since then? "We are making some progress. For example we measure how long it takes for a customer to get someone on the phone — a very basic and crude measure but an important measure, when you have 6,000 people in call centres. Within 20 seconds. One year ago less than 60% of the calls were within 20 seconds. Today it's over 94%." Now, says Swantee, he's seeing more thank-you emails. "I do believe we're making progress." Meanwhile Swantee and Alexander have introduced other efficiencies.

In London, where the company for some reason managed to have two head-office buildings, there is now just one. "We'll sit more closely together, but with what we save we can buy some more shops, and employ more sales people," he says. "And we looked at the amount of management consultancy we used here, and we stopped that — maybe in the past that was good to do, but we need to use that money to spend on customer services, on things that matter in a consolidating market." Behind this pressure for better service is, of course, a desire to drive more revenue and persuade customers to use more Orange customers. "Today our non-voice revenues are 18% across the group," says Swantee. "It's growing in every single country — in the south it's a little bit lower, in the UK it's 22%. But we believe there is more potential." Unfortunately, with all it's marketing genius, Orange still hasn't come up with a better term than "non-voice" to include SMS as well as mobile internet access, mobile TV and other new services. But the key fact is that "when you look at who is using them, it's a very small group of customers", he says.

"We have 11% of our customers, and that's representative of all operators, produce 71% of all data use." But there are signs of change. "The customers that are using the iPhone are using 76 megabytes a month. The BlackBerry users, about two megabytes a month." Swantee has both: an iPhone for his private life — and Orange is one of those companies selling the iPhone, though not yet in the UK — and a BlackBerry for business. Opportunity He describes the low levels of use by most customers as "the short tail", adding: "There is a major opportunity, a fantastic opportunity, by being really customer centric, to develop the long tail, to make sure that non-voice, mobile internet, becomes really intrinsic in everyone's life." How? "By making it seamless across different devices," he says. What do you do if you want to find your way to a restaurant? Find a map on your desktop PC and print it out, he says. "A seamless experience would be what our Californian R&D centres are working on.

With one click you can send the map to your telephone, and then it is automatically activated on whatever device you have and it immediately activates the navigation in your car." Facebook gives another opportunity for seamless services: your mobile device could update your page as you travelled. "We have a unique opportunity as a company to build the tools to make that seamless, because Orange is not just mobile but fixed." IPTV offers other opportunities. "We have developed a product called TV Everywhere. It allows you to watch TV on your TV screen, and then if you have to go, it transitions automatically to your cellphone and you can continue watching." A variant, Rewind TV, allows you to store the rest of the programme on your phone and watch later. And there are TV podcasts, which download news bulletins on your phone that you can watch on the way into work. "The innovation is very important," says Swantee. "And we continue to work on the basics. The reason people use non-voice is the devices become available that give a good experience, and we have the networks." But people are concerned about the prices for data services, he admits. "We are very specific about giving people the visibility about how much they will pay for the service," he says.

"There's still work to be done but we've made progress as an industry. It's more transparent. A couple of years ago you didn't know what your bill was going to look like." Energy But all this data growth gives Orange and other operators a different sort of challenge, "an economic challenge", he warns. "We see about 100% data growth per year and that has an enormous load on energy consumption." Part of this is connected with the number of base stations that operators need to have, but data storage is also a concern. "The ICT industry — IT and telecommunications — is producing about 2% of the total CO2 output — that is similar to the aviation industry. In this context of producing non-voice revenues we need to address those particular issues." In France today the company uses 693 terabytes of storage for mobile data, he says. "We have models that show in 2012 we will need 10,000-20,000 terabytes." So, over four years, that could be a 15-fold to 30-fold growth factor. Clearly there's an need here for more energy-efficient storage. Other operators are showing similar concerns.

Meanwhile the industry is changing is other ways. "The borderlines between different segments is blurring," he says. "In the past Nokia was producing devices, Orange was building a network and was a real network operator, Google was producing some solutions. Today most of these companies are playing in each other's gardens." About 6% of Orange's €53 billion annual revenue comes from new services including content, and "our expectation is that it will be 15% in 2010", he says. "The key players are trying to get to content. That's why Nokia is developing applications, that's why we are developing applications, why Google is producing an operating system with partners." So here's another parallel with the IT industry, where companies sometimes work together and sometimes compete. "We have recently announced a far-reaching agreement with Nokia, a very technical agreement, that is a clear example of that: we have put our engineers together to find the best model for the customer," he says. "Let's not just try to push our own applications all the time, but find the right balance between the two." Partnering, he says, "is essential in the telecommunications world.

The issues are more complex, more challenging." But even before this, Orange is growing, he says. "Take the country footprint. We have solid growth from markets in Africa, eastern Europe, the Caribbean. In Egypt we have 27% revenue growth, 16 million customers. In Romania we have over 10 million customers. We are very high growth in these markets." And in mature markets? "Solid growth," he reports. "In the UK we grew in our last financial quarter 9.5%, and every quarter before that, the last four, 9-10% year on year, so phenomenal growth. And in our largest market, France, we still managed to grow about 3.5% from a very high base." Consolidation At the same time, the spectre of consolidation lurks above everyone in the industry. In the US there have been some spectacular mergers, creating Verizon and AT&T as two powerful competitors. In Europe there isn't the same experience — yet. "Orange is the number six worldwide and last year produced €7.8 billion in cash, €53 billion in turnover. With that financial muscle we have a chance to be proactive in that consolidation game," says Swantee.

"I certainly believe consolidation will happen and we have the power, the financial strength to be able to play a key role in that process." But how easy would it be to transplant the Orange strategy and brand to new members of the organisation? "We're all very decentral, and that makes it all normally harder. It can also be an advantage especially when we expand our footprint. The Orange brand is a very powerful brand, a very human brand and a brand that is exciting and works in mature markets and high-growth markets. We recently rebranded our operations in Jordan: a big success. I was in the Dominican Republic: the brand works fantastically there. It's linked with progress," he says. "I am convinced that to state in a consolidating market that the product is a commodity is the biggest mistake you can make. You can always differentiate in a market. You just need to have the courage to invest. It will differentiate us, a bit more value in a consolidating market.

It is extremely important, next to becoming more efficient." GTB Olaf Swantee Head of global mobile operations at Orange (unofficial title) since 2007 Official title: senior exec VP at France Telecom, and member of France Telecom's group management committee Responsible for personal communication services and UK and the Europe (excluding France) and Middle East region Dutch national, born 1966 Learn and talk about Graham Howe (businessman), Alumni of the University of Birmingham, English company founders, Living people, Orange S.A. He was born in St Albans . He went to St Albans Grammar School for Boys (now known since 1975 as the comprehensive Verulam School ), and later attended the University of Birmingham where he obtained a Bachelor of Commerce . Career[ edit ] Mobile phone evolution (on Orange networks) Hans Snook had the ideas for Orange in the UK, when it was originally owned by Hutchison Whampoa , who would later found Three . It was Graham Howe who would get the company off the ground. They met in 1992. Orange UK launched in April 1994. It floated on the London Stock Exchange and on the Nasdaq in April 1996.

In October 1999, Orange UK was bought for £21bn by Düsseldorf -based Mannesmann AG, then run by Klaus Esser . In early 2000, Vodafone bought Mannesmann in a hostile takeover, and Vodafone was forced to sell Orange UK, which was bought by France Telecom (now known since August 2000 as Orange S.A. ) for £26bn. On 7 May 2002, he became Chief Operating Officer of Orange S.A. [1] having been Chief Financial Officer of the Group (former France Telecom). He left as deputy Chief Executive of Orange S.A. on 24 March 2003 [2] [3] when Jean-François Pontal also retired as Chief Executive. Personal life[ edit ] He is married to Jane, and has three sons (born June 1993, March 1996, and October 1998). He lives in Harpenden , home of the former Sir Edward Salisbury FRS , the famous botanist. He married Caroline Jane Doyle on 28 December 1991 in Bradford .

BBC News | BUSINESS | New rumours over Orange boss Tuesday, 7 November, 2000, 11:33 GMT New rumours over Orange boss Hans Snook: phones are not his only interest The future's bright, the future's... I'm not sure how best to continue to help the company going forward Hans Snook, chief excutive, Orange Well, involves some murky shades for Orange boss Hans Snook if the latest rumours over his future are to be believed. The man who created a mobile phone giant with 8 million UK users alone has, again, hinted his future may lie on the edge of his prized 'OrangeWorld'. Mr Snook, who has earned a maverick reputation for habits such as attending black tie events in a leather jacket, is known to possess a large portfolio of non-financial interests - in areas such as feng shui alternative medicine, and colonic irrigation. And he wants "to have more time to pursue these interests", he told journalists at a trade exhibition on Monday. Could he "legitimately" exercise his enthusiasm for alternative medicine while acting as chief executive at Orange, he is quoted as asking in Tuesday's Financial Times.

"I'm not sure how best to continue to help the company going forward," he commented. Speculation dismissed Orange, not for the first time, has dismissed speculation over Mr Snook's future saying he will "continue to lead the group" he founded in 1994. And Mr Snook himself later on Monday suggested a link between Orange and activities such as "alternative therapies". But what lends the latest speculation some credence are the corporate ructions surrounding Orange, which a year ago was an independent company, and has since changed hands three times. It was bought by Mannesmann last November. Then in February it passed to Vodafone, when it pulled off the Mannesman takeover. In May the firm was bought by France Telecom, after trade regulators voiced concerns over the share the enlarged Vodafone would have of mobile phone markets. New colleagues It is a very different group of colleagues Mr Snook works with today than he did a year ago. Klaus Esser: strained relations The Mannesmann takeover prompted the resignation of a swathe of Orange directors, many of whom had been with the firm since before its flotation in 1996.

At Mannesman, Mr Snook, born to a German mother and British father, reportedly had a strained relationship with new boss Klaus Esser. And under the current ownership, he has found his executive wings clipped by the deployment of France Telecom director Jean Francois Pontal to Orange. Last month Bob Fuller, Orange's chief operating officer since 1997 and widely regarded as the man who turned Snook's visionary ideas into reality, was poached by cable television company Telewest. Independence Nonetheless, Mr Snook, who has always stressed Orange's "independence", might look forward to the firm's relisting early next year. Ananova, the virtual newsreader owned by Orange Orange is, with other France Telecom mobile phone interests, being floated as a company worth perhaps �80bn. And it is, so far, set to pursue the OrangeWorld strategy Mr Snook has drawn up for "humanising" the internet by, for example, developing voice commands into systems. Orange has bought Wildfire, developer of technology which converts voice to digital data. In July it purchased Ananova, the virtual newsreader, and one of the most noted attempts yet to merge the human and virutal worlds.

Flotation dispute But Mr Snook may yet find impure hues in the repackaged the company. France Telecom has yet to decide whether Orange will be refloated primarily in France or, as Mr Snook would prefer, in London, French newspapers say. A management revamp at Orange is also known to be underway, which reports say could push Mr Snook to a more backseat role. But, with outside fascinations to pursue, and a fortune already made, Mr Snook's future looks bright, whether it is Orange or not. Search BBC News Online Network operators fail to develop services By David Manners 4th March 2014 The view from within the electronics industry – individual comment pieces from people working in the technology sector. He who pays the piper . . . . The network operators have had nearly 30 years to develop services, says David Manners.

As operators they’ve been in pole position to develop new services but they’ve pretty much failed and the Googles, Facebooks, YouTubes etc have done the job instead… Chairman and CEO of Orange – Stéphane Richard The trouble with network operators is that they’ve always been big companies and the people who get to the top of big companies are usually politically ruthless operators intent on their personal advancement rather than people who create new products and revenue streams. Now the operators are complaining that the companies which provide services over the networks – Facebook, YouTube, Google etc – are getting infinitely more money than the operators. ‘Fair shares’ they’re bleating. “The risk for us is being excluded from the world of services. If that happens, we’ll be downgraded to simple pipes,” says Orange’s CEO Stephane Richard. If the operators are excluded from the world of services, they have only themselves to blame. When Hans Snook founded Orange in 1994 he introduced innovations at launch such as Over-The-Air-Registration – allowing new purchasers of phones to take them home and decide on the tariff and get help and advice – and an automatic linking of a phone with an account so customers were greeted by name when they phoned Orange.

This was revolutionary stuff in 1994. Snook preached the ‘phone as personal electronic servant’ making life better for phone-owners. Snook was a services guy. Two years after Orange launched, the company IPO’d at a value of £2.5 billion in 1996 and six years after launch, in 2000, it was bought by France Telecom for £30 billion. That’s value creation on a scale which the politically ruthless self-advancement types seldom achieve. The network operators have had nearly 30 years to develop services. As operators they’ve been in pole position to develop new services but they’ve pretty much failed and the Googles, Facebooks, YouTubes etc have done the job instead. Somehow one thinks France Telecom were a bit daft to relinquish Snook’s services in 2001. They weren’t to know it then, but they were setting Orange up to be a ‘simple pipe’.

Recommended Articles The Investment Column: Take profits on reinsurance broker Benfield | The Independent The Investment Column: Take profits on reinsurance broker Benfield Big Yellow has some long-term benefits in store; Sneak in as Snook comes on board DDD Group Friday 13 January 2006 00:00 BST Click to follow The Independent Online When the biggest hurricane season in history hit the US last autumn - causing between $60bn (£34bn) and $80bn of damage - Benfield was one of the few companies in any sector, and one of even fewer in the insurance industry, to emerge as a net beneficiary. As a reinsurance broker, its revenues and profits almost entirely depend on the demand for and price inflation of reinsurance. Six months ago, things were not looking so great. With premiums falling and the insurance market apparently in the downward part of its cycle, Benfield's profits were falling and its shares were moving sideways. Enter hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma, three of the biggest storms on record hitting the US in quick succession.

With billions due to be paid out in claims, premiums began to rise again, as well as demand for both insurance and reinsurance - creating a clean break in the cycle. At the same time, regulatory intervention in the US, which highlighted bad practice within some of Benfield's rival companies, presented the group with the perfect opportunity to expand. Consequently, the group invested some £12m in its infrastructure and staff to capitalise on the moment. In the months since the hurricanes, Benfield's shares have soared by almost a third. However, updating the market yesterday, the company conceded that the effect of the catastrophes on its second half had not yet been as significant as it may have hoped. On the bright side, however, it said it expects that the best is yet to come. In fact, it believes the full effects of last autumn may well still be coming through in 18 months' time. Against such a backdrop, Benfield is naturally optimistic for 2006 and forecasts revenue growth of up to 20 per cent. But the question now is how much of this has already been priced in by over-exuberant investors in the wake of last autumn's events.

Its shares are currently trading at an exorbitant 32 times last year's forecast earnings - almost double the valuation of its closest UK listed rival Jardine Lloyd Thomson. Benfield's stock may still conceivably climb a little higher, but for those who are not already shareholders, it's far too late to join the party. Existing investors may want to think about taking some profits soon. Big Yellow has some long-term benefits in store The self-storage group Big Yellow is expanding fast. It surprised investors yesterday with news that it had acquired five extra freehold sites in December, taking the total number of stores the group has opened or in planning and development to 52. Given the competitive nature of the property investment market these days, this is a great result for Big Yellow and means it is on track to meet its growth targets. The company is replicating a US business model, building self-storage warehouses in densely populated parts of the country where people can house their junk if they have accumulated too much of it or if they are about to move house. The average customer keeps things in storage for eight months and more than half the business relates in some way to the housing market.

Some of this is home improvements, and as a result the group is not as dependent on a buoyant housing market as it might seem. Big Yellow is in essence a play on demographic trends. People are moving house more often and are living in increasingly smaller homes. This trend is unlikely to be reversed any time soon and despite the extra sites the group has secured, Britain has a long way to go before it reaches the density of the warehouses that are common in the US. Meanwhile, Big Yellow is a conservatively run operation. Despite its property assets the group has only modest debt levels and it is intent on growing organically. Both of these factors reduce the risks associated with an investment in the company and make its shares a long-term hold. Sneak in as Snook comes on board DDD Group DDD Group has developed a piece of software which can transform two dimensional images (2D) on mobile phones and television screens into three dimensional ones (3D). Yesterday the group announced two vital bits of news to the City which could prove to be the making of the company. First, it unveiled a £1.3m fundraising, the proceeds of which will finance DDD's future development.

Also, and probably more important, was news that the mobile phone industry bigwig Hans Snook has joined the board as a non-executive director and that he bought a 3.1 per cent stake in the company via the fundraising. Mr Snook's reputation in the mobile phone industry is second to none (for those who don't remember he founded Orange in 1994 and quickly turned it into a global player) and having him as a director is clearly a big coup for what is still a very small company. More recently, Mr Snook has had great success as a director of the mobile phone content operator MonsterMob and Carphone Warehouse and there is no doubt that his knowledge and industry contacts will be invaluable to DDD. So far the group has secured a key licensing deal for its software with a top five mobile handset maker - for legal reasons the company has not disclosed its name - and further such agreements are very likely in the future. But the beauty of DDD's software is that it goes beyond the mobile phone arena.

It allows normal 2D pictures from TVs, digital cinemas and computer games to be played on 3D displays without requiring the content to be created specifically for 3D, which greatly adds to the company's potential revenue streams and makes it more desirable from an investment point of view. If Mr Snook is backing the group then so should investors. Buy. Telco veteran Richard Moat breathes in the fresh Eir Telco veteran Richard Moat breathes in the fresh Eir The future is bright for Ireland’s biggest communications company, says the former Orange executive Fri, Jul 15, 2016, 07:00 Updated: Thu, Oct 27, 2016, 10:49 Richard Moat CEO of Eir. Photograph: Aidan Crawley Richard Moat , the no-nonsense Brummie who is chief executive of telecoms group Eir, has made his Irish home in perhaps the State’s most prestigious village – Dalkey in south Dublin – where he rents a comfortable pad near the waterfront.

Taking a walk last month, he bumped into Yanis Varoufakis , the celebrity former Greek finance minister and all-round handsome devil, just down the road from his house. “I thought to myself: ‘Wow, he is one of the most famous men in Europe. What’s he doing here?’ ” Varoufakis was in town for the Dalkey Book Festival, a four-day extravaganza that is fast becoming a Web Summit for the literati. The festival was co-founded by David McWilliams, who might consider himself an Irish Varoufakis only with more hair and less motorbike fumes. Other speakers at the event included Bob Geldof and Malcolm Gladwell , the Tipping Point author. Moat’s interest was piqued. Eir arranged for a camera crew to go to Dalkey and interview as many interesting people as they could find. The results will be posted online by the company in two weeks time. Why would a telecommunications company dispatch a team to record interviews at a luvvies’ book festival? Welcome to the new media world, where content is king and the old order is being overturned, at times painfully but irresistibly.

Eir is no longer just an infrastructure company, or a telecoms network, or even a consumer brand. It is now also a content company and media platform. “The book festival stuff is the first bit of content we’ve done, apart from sport,” said Moat . “We’ve never been in this world before. We’re dipping our toe into content, but our major focus is to make sports work.” Last December, Eir agreed to pay in excess of €20 million for broadcaster Setanta Sports , with the deal clearing its final regulatory hurdle on April 1st. This month, it rebranded the channel as Eir Sport and announced it has secured the exclusive Irish rights to the 2019 Rugby World Cup. ADVERTISEMENT Eir Sport is the linchpin of the telco’s new broadcasting strategy as it develops content to beef up its television services, The ultimate goal is to tempt more subscribers into its broadband package, delivered over a network embellished with €1.2 billion worth of new fibre, with another €1.3 billion to come. Ideally for Eir, customers will sign up for the “quad play” bundle comprising landline, Meteor mobile, broadband and television.

Broadband and fixed-line, however, remain the key products for the company. The group has about 980,000 mobile customers currently and about 370,000 broadband accounts, including 190,000 high-speed eFibre subscribers, plus more than 50,000 television accounts. Four years ago, it was all very different for Eir, then known as Eircom . It exited the largest examinership in the history of the State, writing off €1.8 billion from a staggering €4 billion debt pile and handing ownership to its lenders. Its fibre rollout was already underway, but Ireland, its only market, was a mess. Six weeks after it exited court protection, Moat was appointed chief financial officer, before taking on the top job in 2014. Fuelled by Ireland’s economic recovery, the opportunities afforded by Eir’s fibre roll-out and the sacrifices of staff who co-operated in a massive realignment of costs, the company’s fortunes have since been transformed. Revenues and profits are rising steadily, Eir’s balance sheet is fixed, and it is lining itself up for a possible stock market flotation in the next few years.

Moat seems proud of his work. He has had a long and varied career to get to this point, taking him halfway round the world and back. A turnaround specialist, he has learned that, although businesses can be complex, business is quite simple, really. “You’ve got a group of people and a bunch of assets. If the people are motivated well enough to use the assets intelligently, you’ll have a successful business,” he says. Birmingham background Moat was born just outside Birmingham. His father worked for 43 years for an engineering business, working his way up from the shopfloor to management. Moat went to Cambridge and got a law degree, but he retains a touch of that quintessentially English, workman-like quality about him. He trained as an accountant and worked in London’s insurance industry for Lloyds and Sedgwick , before joining Marathon and the oil industry in 1980. He did 12 years with Marathon, first in treasury and then in the US doing auditing. But then the oil industry hit a crisis in the years after the first Gulf war. “Oil was about $9 a barrel, and all our investments in the North Sea were uneconomic.

People were getting laid off left, right and centre. I didn’t think the industry had a future, so I went looking for the next big thing.” He found it when he switched to the mobile phone industry and Hutchison Whampoa’s Microtel , the precursor to the UK network, Orange . Moat was there when the new brand was born in 1994. “Canning Fok [who remains Hutchison’s managing director] thought we were completely mad to call it Orange, but he went along with it.” In the first few months, Orange picked up just a handful of customers, and Moat began to doubt that the mobile phone industry would work. But things picked up, and Moat was corporate finance director when it floated in 1996. Hans Snook , his boss at Orange, forecast that mobile penetration would soon reach 25 per cent. Moat still doubted whether it could grow that fast. “I thought ‘What’s he smoking?’. But it grew twice as fast as Hans predicted.” ADVERTISEMENT Following a 1999 takeover by Mannesmann , Orange was eventually sold to France Telecom and Moat stayed on. He was sent to Thailand to set up Orange.

“I started with just me and a piece of paper – the licence. When I left, there was 2,000 staff and one million customers. I thought ‘I’ve done well here, and I’ll get a nice job out of this.’ They gave me Orange Denmark.” He says “Orange Denmark” like a kid who got a wooden trike for Christmas, when all his mates got PlayStations. “It had been going five years and had never made a profit. Analysts said it had a negative enterprise value of £700 million.” Moat turned it around in two years and sold the business. He next served five years as head of Orange in Romania, before returning to the UK to overhaul T-Mobile for Deutsche Telekom in 2009. “Cultural challenges can be huge and they are different everywhere. Adapting yourself to them is probably the biggest part of the job. Ultimately, you’ve got to motivate the people who work for the business. “I always threw myself into it. I haven’t had a failure yet. I’ve always had good relations with key stakeholders, wherever I went.

I can’t really explain it, except to say it is something I’ve got in my skill set that’s really helped me.” In what must be a career disappointment, Moat had to make do with the number two job when T-Mobile merged with Orange in 2010 to form Everything Everywhere, the largest network operator in the UK. He left the following year as part of a major management reshuffle. A year later, he popped up as number two at Eircom in bailed-out Ireland. Having worked in top roles for some of the biggest global mobile brands, wasn’t that a bit like swapping a Mercedes for a Micra? “Eircom was owned by private equity and hedge funds, and that attracted me because I wanted to see what it was like to work for them. The other thing was that it wasn’t a subsidiary of a big corporate.” Moat points across the floor of Eir’s Dublin headquarters to its boardroom. “All the decisions are taken in that room. We don’t have to phone anyone else up. That was energising.

I also knew, if we could cure the company’s debt problem, it had a great future.” Speed bump There was a slight speed bump when Eir pulled a planned stock market listing in 2014, following which Moat took on the top role.The company is in decent shape now, however. It has rolled out its high-speed fibre network to “pass” near 1.6 million homes, and Moat estimates it will hit 1.9 million sometime in 2018, ahead of a 2020 target: “By that point, we will have covered more than 80 per cent of homes and businesses. We will probably look to speed up that roll-out even further.” Eir is considered a leading contender for the State’s National Broadband Plan (NBP) to bring subsidised high-speed fibre services to more than 900,000 rural homes. The tender will be awarded in two lots sometime next year, with Eir up against ESB and Vodafone’s Siro joint venture and also E-Net, backed by Granahan McCourt, John Laing and 3i.

Eir is engaged in something of an arm wrestle with the State over the NBP, as it has announced it will already “pass” 300,000 of the homes earmarked for the plan, which might force officials to scale back NBP under EU rules. If Eir follows through with its plan to pass more rural homes, it could give it the edge when pricing its NBP tender. Moat rejects the notion that it has been aggressive in its approach, and says it will cut the cost of the NBP for taxpayers. ADVERTISEMENT “We want to win both lots, but it is a competitive and a political process. Whether anyone can win both, that is up for grabs. If we don’t, we will take one and roll it out as fast as we can.” Moat says he sometimes gets frustrated with the national debate around broadband rollout. He is at pains to emphasise that Eir’s network is far larger in scale than all of its competitors combined. “That gets lost in some of the commentary when people are assessing who would do best with the NBP. It’s like we’re in a league, and you’ve got Manchester United .

Then you’ve got Hartlepool, Grimsby and Luton, and the commentator says ‘Luton look like they have a chance’.” The company is also pressing ahead with the roll-out of a further 450 4G sites for Meteor, as well as targeting 300,000 rural homes with superfast fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) broadband services. FTTH has so far reached about 34,000 homes. “I understand people in rural areas get frustrated waiting, but it takes time to run the fibre. I think people’s perception of our roll-out will change once more areas get lit up by the network.” The restructuring of Eir’s balance sheet that started with its examinership is now essentially complete. Moat recently raised a €500 million bond to refinance the last chunk of its most expensive debt. The original plan was to raise €350 million, but it kicked the number out after, Moat says, the order book went past €2.7 billion. The rest of its senior debt doesn’t mature until 2022.

The company’s formerly disparate shareholder base, which once numbered about 200 hedge funds and banks, has also been trimmed, bringing extra managerial stability for Moat. GIC, a Singaporean sovereign wealth fund, has bought out many of the smaller shareholders, as well as some of the shareholding of York Capital . About 80 per cent of Eir’s shares are now held by four blocs – Anchorage, which owns close to 40 per cent; GIC which has a little over 16 per cent; Davidson Kempner; and York. Last month’s GIC deal gives Eir an enterprise value of €3.5 billion, Moat says, which is up from the offer it received from an unnamed bidder last May, valuing it at between €3.2 billion and €3.3 billion. Moat says a flotation for the company looks, on the “balance of probabilities”, the most likely exit for Eir’s shareholders in coming years, although it depends on market conditions. What, then, for Moat? A successful IPO would surely provide him with the payout of his career. “I’m here for the foreseeable. Mary [his wife] likes living in Ireland and so do I.

We’ve had four wonderful years here and we want to be here for a lot longer. I hope, one day, we will buy a place in Ireland and spend a large part of our retirement here.” He’s not done yet, however. CV Name: Richard Moat Position: Chief executive Eir Age: 61 Home: Dalkey, Dublin Family: “Married to Mary, who has two kids from a previous relationship, and so do I, so we’ve four children in total. My son got married in Yorkshire two weeks ago.” Something about him that might surprise: “I have sung and danced in Baroque operas.” Something about him we might expect: “I am meticulously organised.”

Question: German-British businessman Hans Snook founded which phone company in 1994?
Answer: Orange