Profile: Marcus Green

You’ve set up the business of your dreams. The marketing and public relations strategy has worked with military precision. The staff are trained, the equipment is in place. But, without warning, you lose your gas supply. Without power, you are impotent and all your painstaking preparations are ruined. Money drains away. Your creditors become twitchy.

This is the scenario that Marcus Green and his team work around the clock to avoid. He wants Sheffield-based Fulcrum Utility Services to become the leading energy connections provider in Britain, and after undergoing painful adjustments, the company has a fighting chance of achieving this goal.

The company has already got a string of high profile projects under its belt and analysts responded favourably to its latest trading update. It recently supplied gas to the National Indoor Sports Arena & Velodrome in Glasgow.

According to Cenkos, the half year results to September 2011 marked a huge step in the company’s transformation. Analysts have been impressed by Fulcrum’s newly signed deals to partner with Carillion, McNicholas and Turriff, and its investment in sales and marketing.

Other analysts believe the share price fails to acknowledge the company’s turnaround potential.

When Mr Green joined the company as finance director in March 2011, it was going through a period of upheaval. He became chief financial officer in July last year, at a time when a restructuring process was coming to an end. In the previous year, around 100 staff had left the business.

Fulcrum, which is listed on AIM and has received backing from asset manager Marwyn Capital, was once languishing in a “forgotten corner” of National Grid.

Over the last six years, Marwyn has launched 15 acquisition vehicles, and raised more than £1.5bn in acquisition funding. It specialises in raising the game of under-achieving companies.

“Fulcrum needed to go through a period of change,” said Mr Green. “The management team had identified that, and taken it out of the National Grid. It needed to change the way it did business in a market that was liberalising. I had the opportunity to be involved in a business that was undergoing rapid change, particularly a massive cultural change from what was a public sector heritage.

“Fulcrum had a poor reputation for customer service. It was very focused on the internal processes and not focused on what the customer needed, and as a result, the turnaround times for quotes and delivering gas connections to customers were far too long. Customers were quite often frustrated by the time it took to get what they saw as a simple gas connection.

“If you’re a food manufacturing business, or a restaurant, then having gas in your premises is business critical.”

Fulcrum was losing money when the current management team took over in July 2010.

Mr Green added: “The initial focus was on cost reduction, and that inevitably means people leaving the business. We have seen about a third of the workforce leave the business which is quite unsettling. For a few months in 2011, it knocked the company sideways.”

Some members of staff had been with the company for more than 30 years.

“To suddenly see a number of their friends leave the business was really quite hard for them,” said Mr Green. “We did that (restructuring), and difficult and unsettling as it was, it was necessary.

“We’ve also set about changing the way that Fulcrum contracts the people who dig the holes. Fulcrum’s specialism is primarily around design and engineering. We’re not the people who dig the holes and connect the pipes – we contract that out. The contracting arrangements that were in place were dated and not commercially robust enough. Once we’d reduced the overhead base of the business, we set about looking at how we contracted with our prime contractors.

“That’s now largely done. The challenge now is to grow the business and get some revenue and momentum behind the process.” Mr Green relishes the chance of bringing a dash of commercial vigour to organisations that used to be at the heart of the public sector.

A business studies graduate at Leeds Metropolitan University, he spent eight years at KCOM Group, the Hull-based IT services and communications business, which used to be owned by the local council. As finance director with KCOM’s Affiniti business, Mr Green carried out a restructuring which cut costs by £10m.

He recalled: “I joined KCOM in 2000. The business in East Yorkshire and Hull had a lot of those public sector practices and public sector cultures. You can take a lot from them, but they don’t always transfer quite so readily to commercial businesses that are really focused on performance and value.

“Quite often, the public sector doesn’t think hard enough about the value it delivers and the cost of delivering. Any organisation, whether it’s public or private sector, is funded and has to be accountable for spending that money wisely. I’m not sure all public sector organisations have been as good as they could be at that.

“A lot are getting better but there’s still some way to go in focusing on accountability, creating value and looking at where every pound is spent. That’s what commercial organisations have been doing for decades. Public sector organisations need to be a bit more focused on doing that.”

After the restructuring, Fulcrum still has 240 staff, including 150 in Sheffield, which means it can respond to any upturn in the market. According to analysts, it’s on course to have achieved revenue of between £44m and £45m for the last financial year.

“We hope to take market share from some of the other players in the market,’’ said Mr Green.

“Businesses that have been turned around throw out opportunities for employment and development. That’s very much where Fulcrum is.”

A fair chunk of Fulcrum’s business comes from the construction sector, so the company has its finger on the economic pulse. Mr Green said: “We serve a lot of housing developers. Some of them are starting to open up their land banks and spend money on some of the smaller areas, of 30, 40 and 50 plots. We’re getting quite a lot of activity in that area.”

Outside work, he heads to the hills in order to scan new business horizons.

“The important thing when you have a demanding job, is that you escape from it through hobbies,’’ he said.

“Walking or outdoor pursuits offer a great way to do that – they blow the cobwebs away and clear your mind.”

Marcus Green Factfile

Name: Marcus Green

Title: Chief Financial Officer, Fulcrum UK

Date of birth: April 3, 1971

Education: Manchester Metropolitan University – Management studies, Leeds Metropolitan University – BA (Hons) Business Studies, Chartered Accountant

First Job: Warehouse Assistant

Favourite song: Lullaby, The Cure

Car driven: Audi A6

Favourite film: Easy Rider

Favourite holiday destination: West Coast of Scotland or Isle of Skye

Last book read: Steve Jobs Biography, Walter Isaacson

What I am most proud of: My two daughters, Scarlett and Ava