In Brief: National Centre for Enterprise; Oracle Finance; UK Warranty; FMG
THE first national conference on intrapreneurship is to be held at Leeds Town Hall this autumn, featuring guest speaker Rosie Swale Pope, the author and adventurer who ran 20,000 miles around the globe.
The aim of the conference, on November 20, is to encourage businesses to harness the passion and entrepreneurial spirit within companies, creating “intrapreneurs”.
Ajaz Ahmed, the founder of Freeserve and Legal365, Darren Fell, the MD and founder of Crunch, the fastest growing accountancy service provider in the UK, and John McConnachie, head of intrapreneurship at Monmouthshire Council, are also on the line-up.
Jamil Ahmed, head of marketing and customer services at the Centre for Enterprise said: “Following the behaviour of some sectors, we have become a nation of businesses which no longer take risks. We take the safe option, and as a result our economy is stagnating. We want to encourage larger businesses to become more entrepreneurial in their attitudes, which will help to stimulate creativity, challenge boundaries and grow the economy.
“Two of our top speakers, Rosie Swale-Pope and Ajaz Ahmed, are exceptional individuals and sought after speakers. Rosie will share her inspirational story of walking alone and unsupported around the world. Her moving story is aimed particularly at those directors with responsibility for people development that can learn from her single-mindedness in meeting challenges head on.”
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A YORKSHIRE-based provider of finance for high performance and specialist vehicles has recorded its best quarter ever since launching seven years ago.
Oracle Finance, which underwrites some £250m of funding each year, secured finance for car owners totalling more than £75m in April, May and June.
The business, which is based in Knaresborough and operates two satellite offices in London and Glasgow, employs a sales team of around 30.
Oracle Finance managing director Peter Brook said: “Despite what can only be described as extremely challenging economic conditions over the past few years, we have seen our sales increase by 20% year on year.
“The second quarter of 2013 has been incredible and business is 35% up on the first three months. We are putting this down to the economy starting to turn the corner, the strength of the prestige car market, and variety of financial packages we are offering to clients looking to purchase their dream car.”
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UK Warranty, the joint venture between Leeds-based specialist insurer UK General and service and support provider Pacifica has teamed up with online retailer Buy It Direct to launch a new product.
UK Warranty managing director Neil Martin said the new product was aimed at “shaking up” the UK warranty market, which is worth almost £600m annually.
Buy It Direct is based in Huddersfield. The firm expects the deal to deliver £15m of retail income.
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FMG has signed a deal to provide incident management services for Tusker’s specialist salary sacrifice customers and drivers.
The contract will initially cover more than 6,000 vehicles from over 110 public and private sector businesses and sees Huddersfield-based FMG extend its relationship with the specialist fleet provider.
FMG will support a range of vehicles under Tusker’s salary sacrifice car scheme, which provides a tax efficient way for businesses to offer all their employees a brand new, fully insured and maintained car at a cost lower than they could achieve in the retail market.
FMG will provide full incident and repair management services to support the scheme’s drivers, as well as providing access to live data and claims tracking through its Ingenium online platform.
FMG, which last year had a turnover of £85m, helps to monitor the road network and coordinates specialist recovery operators to remove broken down vehicles, road traffic collisions, loads, passengers and coordinate incident recoveries to return traffic flow to normal, helping to minimise disruption.
