Culture of autonomy key to group's success

If it had not been for a chance lunch invitation, Mr Roy Bailie, might never have had the chance to become the entrepreneur he is today.

At the time he was the general manager of W & G Baird, the Belfast printing company owned by the British Printing Corporation.

He was in his early thirties, "getting bored" and had toyed with the idea of emigrating before he sat down to lunch with the group's financial director in London.

Barely 24 hours later he and a partner were trying to raise the finance to buy the company. Fast-forward 24 years later and it is a £44-million-a-year sterling business, employing more than 750 people in Northern Ireland and Britain.

His experiences are not unique; Northern Ireland boasts its fair share of entrepreneurs such as Mr Bailie and others including Dr Allen McClay, the founder of Galen Holdings which is now a $2 billion public company.

But Northern Minister for the Economy Sir Reg Empey wants to encourage more people to go into business for themselves. He wants to create a new culture of entreprenureship in Northern Ireland and convince people that starting a business can be both worthwhile and a rewarding challenge.

When Mr Bailie led the management buyout of W & G Baird in 1977, he confesses that he had no idea what lay ahead.

"At that age you think you can do anything, I have a 22-year-old who thinks he can rule the world and that is a great attitude to have.

"I knew the people involved and I knew the business which is always a start but you have to work at making it work," he said.

He believes enthusiasm is a key requirement if you want a business to succeed and that you cannot be afraid to take the next step for the company.

In the last 24 years the W & G Baird Group has made nine acquisitions and diversified from the original printing company it was into a range of related businesses.

"We made our first two acquisitions in 1984, seven years after the management buyout. MSO was formed from the amalgamation of two long-established Belfast printing companies, McCaw Stevenson & Orr and RR Browne," Mr Bailie said.

The W & G Baird Group currently consists of six companies including Thanet Press in Kent, one of the oldest printing names in England and Corporate Document Services, a high-tech corporate communication company.

According to Mr Bailie, the group still applies the same test to each new acquisition as it did to its very first.

"We have the enviable record, with the exception of our last takeover of Corporate Document Services, that each of the companies we bought were struggling and we were able to manage their difficulties and turn them around.

"Essentially the criteria for acquisition is what are we going to do with this company and if we cannot answer that question, then we do not buy it," he said.

He says that the end result is what any potential acquisition can contribute to the group.

"Obviously our bottom line is important but in the case of Blackstaff Press, which is a small publishing company, there are other considerations.

"It does very well in relative terms but it is the only company I have bought that never makes any money. It is very difficult to make money in a small publishing company, its ethos always eats up the profits," Mr Bailie said.

According to Mr Bailie one of the key components of the group's success has been its culture of autonomy.

"W & G Baird has changed during the last 24 years because it now has scale, but I believe its ethos remains the same. When I worked for British Printing Corporation it was quite centralised and I determined that in the first takeover it wouldn't be centralised and that companies would be allowed a fair degree of autonomy and we have done that.

"Our companies are run as totally independent units with their own board and their own managing directors."

He said the other guiding principle that has remained constant is that the welfare of the group is considered before it embarks on any new direction.

"We are still acquisition hungry, but we are a privately held company, so we tend to buy and then consolidate.

"We have always had the view that we have never had an acquisition that would effectively damage the entire group, but we still believe there are opportunities out there for us to pursue in the future," Mr Bailie added.