TRIUMPH OF TALENT 30 Years of Amrop Portugal TRIUMPH OF TALENT 30 Years of Amrop Portugal ÍNDICE Maria da Glória Ribeiro 9 Alexandra Ribas 11 Margarida Pedrosa 12 Martinho Tojo 13 STARTING FROM SCRATCH 4 Nuno Lopes 14 LEARNING TO GROW 16 Luís Filipe Pereira 15 Filipe Ferreira 21 WORK IN PROGRESS 32 Hugo Martins 23 AND THE FUTURE IS João Lopes 25 Ricardo Gonçalves 26 AROUND THE CORNER 50 Stephan Morais 27 Pedro Cruz 28 Ricardo Vargas 29 Esmeralda Dourado 30 Luís Conde 31 Cristina Marques 37 Eelco van Eijck 39 Pedro Pina 41 António Casanova 43 Isabel Barros 45 Title: Triumph of Talent Daniel Traça 47 Editing: Ana Rita Ramos Luís Rodrigues 48 Texts: Teresa Ribeiro Carlos Rodrigues 49 Design: Mário C. Pedro Paulo Azevedo 55 (marioeditorial.com) Rui Miguel Nabeiro 56 Photography: Filipe Pombo/ AFFP; AMROP and provided Paula Carneiro 57 Graphic production Sofia Tenreiro 58 and printing: VRBL Pedro Almeida 59 Circulation: 2.000 Cláudia Portugal 60 July 2018 Jaime Esteves 61 Legal Deposit: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 30 ans déjà ! LORSQUE MARIA DA GLÓRIA m’a demandé d’écrire la pré- face de ce livre, j’ai été touché par la fidélité de son souve- nir et me suis retrouvé brusquement transporté en 1988. 30 years have already gone by! A l’époque, le Groupe que j’avais créé existait déjà de- PREFÁCIO puis plus de dix ans. Au plan international avec le réseau WHEN MARIA DA GLÓRIA asked me to write the preface Amrop que j’avais cofondé et, en France, avec Sirca que for this book I was indeed moved by the faithfulness of her j’avais décidé de développer au sud de l’Europe. Je cher- memory and, suddenly felt like I was back in 1988. chais quelqu’un de talent pour ouvrir notre filiale à Lis- At that time, the Group that I had created had already bonne. been around for more than a decade. Internationally, with Je me souviens très bien de mon premier contact avec the Amrop network, which I co-founded, and in France with Milo. Ma décision en sa faveur s’était imposée à moi im- Sirca, which I had decided to develop in Southern Europe médiatement, malgré sa jeunesse, tant j’avais été frap- as well. At that time, I was looking for someone talented to pé et séduit par son leadership, son énergie, sa déonto- open our subsidiary in Lisbon. logie et son intelligence de notre profession I remember my first contact with Miló very well. et de son marché. J’ai le sentiment que nous My decision to select her was almost immediate nous sommes mutuel-lement choisis pour when, despite of her youth, she captivated me engager ensemble cette aventure entrepre- with her leadership capacity, her energy, ethics, neuriale à Lisbonne. intelligence e know-how of our profession and Recruter Milo comme Directrice Générale est of her market. I feel like we chose each other to l’une des meilleures déci-sions que j’ai prises be a part of this enterprise in Lisbon. au cours de ma vie professionnelle. L’autre Recruiting Miló for the General Manager po- bonne décision qui a, de façon déterminante, sition was one of the best decisions I made influé sur le destin de nos activités est, trois ans plus throughout my professional life. The other good decision, tard, d’avoir confié à Milo notre marque Amrop dont elle and one that had a major impact in the fate of our activity a fait un succès au Portugal, no-toriété et leadership was, three years later, when I trusted Miló with our Amrop sur le marché, services diversifiés, équipe compétente et brand, which she turned into a success in Portugal, through recon-nue. notoriety, market leadership, diversified services, and a Deux décisions heureuses, rien de plus. competent and renowned team. Nous nous sommes ensuite toujours parfaitement en- Two happy decisions, that was it. tendus et je lui ai laissé, en pleine confiance, une large We could always understand each other perfectly and ulti- autonomie, efficace et toujours loyale. Tout le reste, c’est mately, I gave her total autonomy, with the utmost trust in donc elle qui l’a réalisé. Avec sa détermination, son ima- her efficiency and loyalty. Everything else she achieved by gination, sa vision juste de l’évolution de notre profes- her own merit. With her determination, imagination and ac- sion, concrétisée sur un marché fortement concur-ren- curate vision of how our profession should evolve, she con- tiel et souvent difficile. quered a highly competitive and often hard market. Bon anniversaire, longue vie à Amrop Portugal et féli- Happy Anniversary, long live Amrop Portugal, and my most citations amicales et admiratives à sa créatrice, à son sincere congratulations, esteem and admiration go to its âme depuis trente ans.• creator, the soul of the company for the past thirty years.• Jean-Pierre LEGUAY Jean-Pierre LEGUAY S TARTING FROM SCRATCH TRIUMPH OF TALENT 30 Years of Amrop Portugal Amrop is an acronym. It means America and Europe, the markets where, upon its foundation, Amrop International wanted to establish itself. Nowadays the group has 70 offices in more than 50 countries, but in the late ‘80s many of them still didn’t exist. That was the Portuguese case. UP TO THE MID 80S, the social-economic conjunc- consultancy company, Maria da Glória Ribeiro, ture had discouraged foreign investment in Por- Founder and Managing Partner of Amrop Por- tugal. The 1974 revolution, followed by the PREC, tugal, admits that the day she met Jean-Pierre had dried the economy in such a way that it re- Leguay marked her life. Somehow, Amrop In- quired a “desert crossing” of about ten years for ternational’s responsible for Europe saw in her the recovery to happen. the features he was looking for and challenged Only in 1988, Jean-Pierrre Leguay, then Managing her to lead the small office he was preparing to Partner of Amrop International for Europe, lands open in Lisbon. in Lisbon. Two years earlier Portugal had become She did not hesitate. She felt that she “could be a part of the EEC, and those new European winds valuable piece in the achievement of a goal” and brought the promise of business opportunities. that was enough to mobilize all her energy. Soon His objective was to study the implementation of after that, she found herself alone at the head of Amrop in the Portuguese market via Madrid, but the entire operation from an office at António he soon realized that the distance separating the Augusto Aguiar Avenue. Puny, in her early twen- two Iberian countries should not be measured in ties and with little experience, the not so obvious kilometers, but in cultural traits. He concluded bet of Jean-Pierre Leguay had the mission to con- that such different cultures justified having au- quer the Portuguese market for executive search tonomous offices, with identities as different as from scratch. fado and flamenco. “The economic environment was too poor for Still very young, having just completed her Psy- those who had the ambition of developing a ca- chology degree, and doing her internship in a reer connected to the business world,” Maria da 5 TRIUMPH OF TALENT 30 Years of Amrop Portugal Glória Ribeiro admits, 30 years later. “In several fast moving consumer goods, which already used sectors there were only public companies, nec- search in other markets, and with international essarily committed with political agendas. Even banking and some industry, apart from the phar- beers were public! Telecommunications had no maceutical industry”. At first Amrop was only a expression, private banking was only beginning known brand among multinational companies to emerge. Industry had no new investors, there that integrated expatriates, or Portuguese people were some older, solid ones, who had resisted the who had already worked abroad and were famil- PREC”, she completes the picture, with eyes set iarized with executive search. To all others its con- far away, fixed on her starting point. cept and purpose had to be presented, which in It was in this scenario that she presented herself many cases resulted in unforgettable situations. to the world. Early on she reported to the Paris of- fice, under the guidance of Jean-Pierre, but soon after she received her own wings. Portugal was the “You want to hunt my head?” first Amrop office that started from scratch: it was Margarida Pedrosa, General Manager at MBA not born from a merger, association or acquisi- Consultants, a company that develops its activ- tion, and it operated alone in the market. The first ity in the Human Resources sector, has known competitors only arrived in Lisbon about a year Maria da Glória Ribeiro since their college days. after Amrop Portugal had opened its doors. Colleagues during the Psychology degree, they Maria da Glória recalls that, by the end of the kept in touch mostly because they followed con- 90s, the Portuguese executive search market was verging professional paths, both focused on the essentially b2c: “We worked with multinational world of organizations. companies in the consumer products area, the A privileged witness during the first years of Am- 6 TRIUMPH OF TALENT 30 Years of Amrop Portugal rop Portugal’s activity, as a friend of Maria da were to propose an interesting work alternative”, Glória, but also as her regular associate, she is she explains. the bona-fide depositary of some of the most fun In the 90s, with the market economy still start- memories of a time when executive search was ing to crawl and a work culture for which con- seen with suspicion by many local companies.