Originally Posted by
caaardiff
Agreed, however a CEO is only as good as their Management team. If there's a well placed, experienced Management team covering the necessary fields to run well and a CEO that can hold all of that together, then it should work. Take a look at Boris Johnson!!
Spencer has been at CWL for many years and knows his job and the Airlines incredibly well. He knows what CWL is up against, but some could argue as he's always been on the commercial side of things, would he be any good with the operational side of things? Deb is the opposite, knows the operational but maybe not so much the commercial.
This is why I don't understand why some posters want to cut the Management team down to minimal, almost making them multifunctional to save money, which would lose the effectiveness of the team in their specialised fields.
Lets not forget what originally got CWL in to this mess in the first place. An inexperienced, and quite frankly useless, uninterested and arrogant MD that only had experience of running Bingo halls. Lack of funding by it's owners and a breakdown of commercial relations with the Airlines, with maintenance and cleanliness of the terminal building taking a hit because of cut backs. Let that happen again and the £52m spent on the Airport will never been seen again.
What I have observed during recent times is business after business after business cutting back while their balance sheets shooting in to the red and them needing to scale back to try to balance the books, unless a business has a bottomless pit of third-party money to support it then if it doesn't remain in the black then it ultimately goes out of business.
On to this mentioned finance director on something like 80k per annum plus 8k car allowance, besides being a tax fiddle how can a car allowance of around £37 per working day possibly be justified when surely the government should be encouraging everybody to go green and utuilise public transport as much as is possible, the previous poster stated "take a look at Boris Johnson", exactly, get on your bicycles and leave the cars at home.
A previous poster suggested that the finances be directed within the ''group' for this to be shot down to the effect that it's not just Cardiff Airport but St Athan and Valley handling also, well so what, those are hardly mega businesses, it's common practice and becoming even moreso for businesses to sub-contract out to reduce overheads, does CWL manage it's own car parking, no it doesn't, does it manage it's own food and beverage outlets, no it doesan't, does it manage it's own newsagents, no i doesn't, does it provide the aircraft fuel, no it doesn't, to name but a few these are all sub-contracted out so why not, until times improve and can justify it, sub-contract out finance directing, there are plenty of independant accountants out there!
It's apparent that CWL isn't being operated as a commercially minded business and if the new finance director can't figure out that the business cannot afford to employ him, well he can't be worth his weight.