Charles Abraham

I provide the commercial leadership for our UK&I business covering inflight catering, retail and our soft FM businesses. I am also responsible for all property and associated capital projects. My role as the commercial leader covers the following core activities: • Business development– developed a 5 year strategy for growth to align to corporate plans covering new and existing markets. • Corporate development – analysis of M&A / asset purchase opportunities. • Profitability analysis and action – provide ongoing account and business unit profitability analysis – focusing on profit maximisation as opposed to cost reduction. • Capacity analysis and customer fit – development of the use of operational modelling to evaluate the best customer mix to maximise business unit profitability. • Ongoing customer account management – providing leadership and support to the account management teams. • Business intelligence – building the local business intelligence database and tools for using the data effectively within the business. • Property strategy – leading the regional property strategy to ensure that our property decisions are commercially sound and align with our business development. • Tender management – ongoing leadership of the tender programme, taking successful tenders through to a post start-up stage. • Retail – development of retail concepts and delivery for customers, leadership of accounts and driving focused trading and growth. • Project leadership - Executive sponsor of the development of a new Heathrow hub, a £9.0m investment – one of the largest single capital projects in the group.

A role created for me to return to the UK, I was responsible for the strategic development of the business and asset base including all UK&I property and our approach to managing those assets for the next 10 years. I took the lead on developing new operational solutions for our business as well as understanding how to integrate automation into existing operations and the use of data to design our next generation of operational units.

A new function for the business, operational planning and control was introduced to define the actions of the operations and commercial teams using data to drive decision making. To deliver this, I am defining the strategy for the use of systems and data within the business to generate value and look to make this focus a sustainable competitive advantage. Responsibilities of my team extend across the business including: • Dynamic labour resource allocation for 2000 + employees • Production planning – alignment of both material and labour resources • Materials demand management for $80m spend in food and beverage across 9 sites • Demand forecasting across 30+ customers to drive accuracy and minimise waste • Revenue capture – complete billing services for region • Reporting and control of consumption of resources across the business • Business system management – ERP and T&A systems • Customer data and master data management including costing and pricing • Short, medium and long term demand planning fully aligned to business plan process • Pro-active demand planning for people • Business process development – leading cross-functional activities • Delivering a data strategy in the business looking at data and how it can be used

I provided the commercial leadership for the Oceania region of Gate Gourmet during a period of transformational change. The role encompassed all of the core commercial activity of the business as well as providing cross-functional leadership to ensure that the wider strategy and business plans were delivered. • Defined and delivered the commercial, systems and customer strategies as part of the 3 year business plan and also reviewed and refined the wider business strategy. • I was the executive sponsor for the new ERP system – leading the region wide roll-out of a platform that impacted the business and was the catalyst for transformational change for all business processes – a key strategic project. • Identified commercial opportunities in relation to the strategic labour strategy to maximise the benefit from our labour agreements. • Developed a new operational model for the region as part of the future strategy to change our direction and expand our footprint in the Australian market. • Provided leadership for change in the product costing and customer profitability analysis process – increasing transparency and ensuring the decision making process is appropriately informed. • Negotiated an AUD350m contract extension with our major strategic customer that provides the foundations for growth over the next 5 years and resets the relationship for mutual benefit. • Led the commercial aspects of two integration projects following acquisitions which jointly delivered 25% revenue growth and managed culturally different teams in process. • Leading business development in adjacent markets, M&A opportunities and existing markets across the Oceania region. • Developed business in new markets – built key relationships across the rail industry in Australia that led to the successful entry into the market • Global Account Leadership – I was the account director for 4 global relationships representing 3.5% of annual group revenues.

This was a specific role to drive transformation across the business – one covering the development of a new customer focused operational and logistics model that materially changed our existing business and the second on the delivery of culinary excellence within the UK.

This core function of this role was the management of one of the largest single airport accounts for Gate Gourmet. Specific areas of focus in the role were. • Project Management of the transition of the BA long haul catering operation; 95% of the operation was moved overnight with zero impact to the customer. This involved relocating circa 1000 employees and 3 million items of equipment. From the customers perspective the transition has been identified as a blue print for all similar transitions due to the structure, process and outcome. • Commercial change programme: I led the change from a closed book to an open book commercial framework which resulted in fundamental change across the organisation due to the customer having transparency over the cost structure. The programme laid the foundations for the duration of the term of the agreement and was critical from a relationship and financial perspective. • Product and Service Development; Management of the menu development process for British Airways and control of their budgeted spend per meal. Worked with the supply chain to develop exclusive solutions for the customer that generated the maximum value for the consumer.

Reporting to the General Manager for Heathrow I was responsible for one of the two operating units, both with 1000+ employees. The role was focused upon operational delivery, cost, quality and safety. Specific aspects of this role were: • Project management of the transition of business after contract loss, including the exit of the BA short haul operation to a new supplier and the transfer of 420 employees. • Delivered GBP2.3m in labour savings (8% of labour cost) through process improvement and a change in working practices which improved productivity across the operation – this involved extensive stakeholder management across the business including the employees and their union representatives. • Championed the implementation of a significant change to our internal value streams which reduced the operational footprint by 10% and delivered headcount reductions of 4% • Restructured the management and administrative team to achieve better value for the business and reduced the headcount by 30%.

I was responsbile for multiple public catering and events venues in London and also worked on business development for the market within London. I was responsible for managing the sales and marketing of the venues for events on behalf of the clients and delivered double digit sales and profit growth. The portfolio of venues for one client was also successfully re-tendered during my tenure as regional general manager.

I was general manager in two venues over this period. The first being a renowned performing arts venue and the second being a historic venue. I was responsible for all aspects of catering and hospitality operations and also sales and marketing for events. In both roles double digit growth was achieved on the bottom line.