Foss Initiatives Limited
NEWS BLOG AND LINKS - Updated July 2011
Next Year | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | Previous Year
Chronological additions to this news page are made every month, from mid 2005 to the current date.
Winmark's CFO networking community hosted an event, chaired by Bryan Foss, consisting of a series of short presentations to brief CFO's on the interviewing needs of Chairs and CEO's when they are recruiting to the board
Bryan Foss joined a small panel including Martin Kitkatt, Partner at Wyvern and Catherine Richardson, Partner at St James Place, debating the topic 'The Changing Economy and Its Impact on our Businesses' at Horsley Towers, at the invitation of the Horsley Business Network.
At Cornhill in the City of London, Bryan Foss provided the opening talk to Lysis Financial's update on managing Insurance risk. Speakers include Chris Wood, Regulatory Risk Director at Aviva , and Colonel Huw Williams, who recently served as Commanding Officer of 3rd Battalion The Parachute Regiment in Afghanistan.
A further round table, chaired by Bryan Foss, explored tax planning and tax avoidance with specialists from EDF Tax, a number of Independent Financial Advisers and some representative business entrepreneurs and investors.
Consulting Stream hosted a panel debate in concentric circles at the IoD, with Bryan Foss as a panel member and Rick Wolfe facilitating. This debate explored what mutual environment would enable the best commercial contribution to public sector efficiency and change.
Round tables explore social media: Two executive round tables were hosted by Bryan Foss and Rick Wolfe (of Poststone) at Chez Gerard, Dover Street, exploring issues related to business, personal and family use of social media. Numerous companies were represented including Wanga Ltd, Decode.net, Capgemini and RIM, the Canadian producer of Blackberry handsets. A visual summary will be available here shortly.
Winmark NED network (info here) invited Bryan Foss to chair their 17th February 2011 presentation and debate of three NED case studies. These include Jane Tozer of Elexon on Due Diligence horrors, Christopher Joll of MJ2 Ltd on complex remuneration committee chair challenges and Claire Smith of Mott Macdonald Group on lessons from an unconvential NED in China.
Bryan also attended a subsequent 'Ashridge Masters in Corporate Governance' workshop, a PwC briefing for NED's on 'Controlling Health and Safety Risks', a Lloyd's of London FS Club briefing by Visa CEO Peter Ayliffe on electronic & mobile payments and a Portcullis House meeting with Tom Brake MP on 'The price of truth - Freedom of Information'.
Motive Television PLC (AIM: MTV) promotes Bryan Foss to Senior Independent Non-Executive Director (or SID) in addition to his existing Audit Committee Chair role. A useful example of Senior NED responsibilities is listed here
The Unintended Consequences of Regulation: Professors' Merlin Stone and Bryan Foss co-present for the chair, steering committee and members of the Financial Forum, life and pensions special interest group (RDR and the FSA). 2nd Feb 2011 at Gresham Street Our supporting RDR research paper is available in draft for comment here, with an associated paper from The Engage Partnership Ltd here
Edinburgh (Burns' night) RDR dinner debate: On 25th January 2011 Bryan Foss chaired this event for Capgemini Insurance VP Andrew McQuade, with strong representation from major L&P insurers, retail banks based in Scotland, also a key representative of the FSA's Consumer Panel.
Motive Television PLC strengthens board: Bryan Foss joins Motive Television PLC (AIM: MTV) the international digital television technology, software and services provider, as a board Non-Executive Director and Audit Chair. The Yahoo Finance press announcement can be viewed here
The Customer Framework: Merlin Stone joins The Customer Framework as Research Director. The Customer Framework helps large organisations become more profitable through more effective and efficient customer management.
Innovation and the Board: Bryan Foss and Rick Wolfe hosted a round table of main board members to explore 'how the boards of organisations will meet new innovation expectations'. Working collaboratively with Hermione Way and team of www.newspepper.com a video summary is being edited and will be available shortly.
Customer Retention in the Recession: Recent investigations by John Ginn, Merlin Stone and Yuksel Ekinci show just how big a challenge many organizations face in their ability to manage customer retention effectively. While leading organizations have embedded real-time customer life cycle management, developed accurate early warning systems, price elasticity models and ‘ deal calculators ’ , the organizations we spoke to have only gone as far as calculating the value at risk and building simple predictive models. Click here for the full paper
British Enterprise Bank (BEB) launch: This new UK bank focused on SME lending is being advised by a number of entrepreneurs and financiers including the economist, professor Merlin Stone. Launch details here
Board judgement and 'Dilemmas, Dilemmas': Bryan Foss highlights this new case-study-style book on practical board governance challenges by Julie Garland McLellan, reviewed by Bryan for the IDM B2B Council. Read the review here.
CIO magazine highlights SaaS and Cloud services as complementary to the mainframe: The CIO article quotes Professor Bryan Foss as saying 'businesses are “increasingly looking towards new operational funding models, including SaaS and Cloud, that provide speed and flexibility around the mainframe”. He implies that business CIOs want to find other options to the traditional arguments regarding alternative approaches to servers, so the coming of age of the cloud will significantly change this debate'. Click here for the full article
Next Year | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | Previous Year