CEO Today Europe Awards

www.ceotodaymagazine.com 78 CEO Today Europe Awards 2018 the united kingdom IAN DOUGLAS CEO of Global Marine Group FIRM PROFILE Global Marine Group (GMG) is an innovative market leader in offshore engineering, which is widely recognised as a high quality, independent strategic partner across multiple sectors. The Group consists of three business units; CWind, delivering power cable and asset management services topside and subsea to the offshore renewables and utilities market, Global Marine, providing fibre optic cable solutions to the telecommunications and oil & gas markets and Global Offshore, delivering trenching and power cable lay services to the oil & gas industry. The insatiable demand for international communication bandwidth, driven by the internet, and the revolution in offshore renewable energy generation, has created a growing demand for GMG’s comprehensive offering. The Company has an extensive global footprint with two successful joint ventures in China, S. B. Submarine Systems and Huawei Marine, and one joint venture in Taiwan, CWind Taiwan. GMG’s combined experience and knowledge has led to significant embedded intellectual property and an enviable track-record. In 2017, GMG introduced its third business unit, Global Offshore, and added the Global Symphony to its fleet to support GMG’s trenching and power cable laying capabilities. GMG’s crew transfer vessel (CTV) fleet has conducted operations at all of the UK’s offshore wind farms. GMG owns the world’s largest independent marine contracting fleet. The Company’s workforce has an impressive total of over 6,300 years’ service, and an average service length of 11.8 years. The Company has installed over 300,000km of subsea cable, 21 percent of the world total. The Company delivers maintenance support in three of the world’s six contracted telecommunications cablemaintenance zone agreements, and in the past five years, has achieved an impressive 99.7 percent of the KPIs across all of its maintenance agreements. The Group aspires to achieve its vision of ‘engineering a clean and connected future’. GMG was presented with Shipowner of the Year Award by Offshore Support Journal earlier in 2018, in recognition of a company that, above all others, demonstrates excellence in the operation of its vessels and has, in the past year, demonstrated an exemplary record of achievement in at least one of the following categories: business development and growth of safety, quality, efficiency or environmental sustainability. This award follows GMG’s recent success at the Pacific Telecommunications Council Conference held in January 2018 where the Company was announced as runner up in the Lifetime Innovation Award Category for its contribution to Universal Joint (UJ) and Universal Quick Joint (UQJ) technological developments. ABOUT IAN DOUGLAS Ian Douglas became Chief Executive Officer of Global Marine Group (GMG) in 2011. He has been the driving force of the Company’s transformation into an innovative market leader in offshore engineering. He renewed the Company’s focus on core capabilities, while also shedding underperforming assets. In 2014, Mr. Douglas brought on board supportive new shareholders through a transaction with HC2 Holdings, a publically traded (NYSE:HCHC) diversified holding company based in the U.S. In recent years, he has orchestrated strategic acquisitions to align with the changing demands of the marketplace, capitalise on the expanding construction and maintenance market in offshore wind, and maintain the Company’s position as a leading player in the installation and repair of subsea telecommunications cables. Mr. Douglas lived and worked in Asia from 2002 to 2016, when he returned to the UK. While in Asia, he led the diversification and growth of GMG’s Shanghai-headquartered joint venture, S. B. Submarine Systems, which since its formation in 1995 has become the leading provider of cable lay and repair services in China. In 2008, Mr. Douglas founded and became the inaugural CEO of Huawei Marine Networks (HMN), a joint venture between Global Marine and global telecommunications leader Huawei Technologies. Since then, HMN has become a top three player in the turnkey telecommunications market, completing more than 40 major projects providing broadband data technologies globally. With a robust outlook on the sector, Mr. Douglas is focused on a long-term growth agenda, including building a strong team throughout the business, continued modernisation of the fleet and asset base, developing the Company’s range of services and bringing enabling technologies to the forefront. Mr. Douglas is a Chartered Engineer with a degree in Mechanical Engineering and an MBA from Henley. He is one of only a handful of business leaders to receive the Friendship Award – the highest honour awarded by the Chinese Government for contributions to China. www.globalmarine.group