Steve Ingham is chief executive of PageGroup, the 12th-largest staffing firm in Europe. He joined Michael Page (as the company was then called) in 1987 as a consultant and was promoted to operating director in 1990 and appointed to the board as executive director of U.K. operations in 2001. He became managing director of U.K. operations in 2005 and was appointed chief executive in 2006.
Frits Goldschmeding is the founder of Randstad and the former president and CEO of Randstad Holding nv. Under his leadership, Randstad grew into one of the world’s largest temporary employment organisations. In 1999, he became a member of the supervisory board of the Randstad Group. In March 2011 he stepped down, but as the major shareholder,he still keeps an eye on his company.
Henrik Höjsgaard has been CEO and president at Proffice AB since January 2014. Prior to joining Scandinavia’s third-largest staffing firm, he had been CEO of Postnord Logistics since 2007. Höjsgaard has a long international career, including as a ship broker in Copenhagen, Oslo, London and Hong Kong. He has also been CEO of Keolis Nordic AB and has had various managerial roles in Sweden and Denmark, including as CEO of TNT International Express AB.
Albert Ellis is CEO of the Harvey Nash Group, which had revenue of nearly £700 million in its most recent fiscal year. Ellis was originally appointed to the board in 2000 as chief financial officer and then CEO in 2005. In 1998 he joined Harvey Nash from Hays plc. Prior to that he worked in the accounting and auditing profession after qualifying as a chartered accountant. He is also on the board of Asia House and is an advisor at London City University’s Cass Business School masters in information leadership course.
Gerry Mason trained as a design engineer at Salford Technical College in the mid-1950s before emigrating to Toronto, Canada, where he studied mechanical engineering at the Ryson Institute for Technology. He then founded Morson in 1969, which he led until turning control over to his son, Ged Mason, in 1999 (see separate entry). He continues to serve as nonexecutive director on the board.
Steve Russell is group chief executive of Bond International Software, a provider of specialist staffing software for recruitment agencies worldwide. During Russell’s career in software development, he has held a number of senior management positions, including group managing director of Scan Data International plc. Russell formed the company, which then acquired a controlling interest in Bond Associates Ltd. in 1988. On the acquisition of Bond Associates Inc., he became the group’s chief executive, and following a successful flotation on AIM, became CEO.
Olivier Lemaitre is executive board director Europe at PageGroup, in charge of the group’s operations in continental Europe. He launched Michael Page Brazil in 1999 and returned to Europe in 2002 to lead the Frankfurt office. He was later appointed as managing director of Michael Page in Germany and Switzerland and launched the Austrian business.
Sir Alec Reed, CBE, FCMA, founded REED in 1960. In 1972, he founded the Reed Business School and in 1995, he launched reed.co.uk, one of the leading job sites in the U.K. He also has launched various charities, including Womankind Worldwide, Ethiopiaid and the Big Give. He is a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants and was awarded the institute’s outstanding contribution to business performance award. He has written several books and was knighted in 2011 for services to business and charity. Reed is the sixth-largest staffing firm in the U.K. and was floated in 1971.
Rosario Rasizza is CEO of Openjobmetis, which he launched (as Openjob) in 2000 to take advantage of the rapidly developing staffing market and was rebranded in 2012 following the acquisition of Metis. In 2003, he embarked on a rapid expansion scheme through a series of acquisitions. Rasizza was awarded the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic in 2008 and was nominated president of Assosomm, an association representing employment agencies in Italy, in 2013. He founded Globalservice in the early 1990s and in 1997, with the introduction of new legislation regulating temporary agencies in Italy, Rasizza opened the firsttemporary staffing agency in Varese.
Károly Pataki became CEO of Trenkwalder International AG in December 2013 after serving as chief sales officer. Prior to Trenkwalder, Pataki was deputy general manager of Dunapack Ltd. and CFO and later CEO of Prinzhorn Holding. Since 2013, he has been a member of the Senate of Economy in Austria. Trenkwalder is the largest staffing provider in Austria and a market leader in Hungary and in the Black Sea region. The company has approximately 70,000 employees and recorded turnover of €1 billion in 2012. Trenkwalder has 300 branches in Central and Eastern Europe.
