Lorraine Baker, Accounts Controller

Lorraine joined B & M Europe in March 2010 as Accounts Controller, her main duties being to run the day-to-day functions of the accounts department and to assist Claire Brennan, Financial Controller.

Lorraine started a career in Accountancy straight from leaving secondary school, when she joined a firm of chartered accountants in Hungerford, Berkshire as an Accounts Clerk. Here she experienced both manual and computerised accounts systems, along with auditing, bookkeeping and preparing year-end accounts.

In 1985 she moved to Thames Valley Eggs into a Sales Ledger role and in 1986 progressed to manage the team. Business was ‘cracking’ until 1988, when Edwina Currie’s salmonella statement changed the egg industry drastically. Lorraine left the company as PA to the Company Secretary in 1991 to have her son Thomas and in 1993 her daughter Bethan.

In 1999 Lorraine joined HotLizard, a web development and software company in Basingstoke as their Accounts Manager; during her 10 years with the company the clientele included several top 100 recruitment companies and large corporates. She saw staff numbers increase from 4 to 35 and set up both a manual then fully computerised accounts systems, Lorraine’s role was predominantly financial but included office administration, health and safety and HR.

Lorraine has completed the Reading half-marathon and the full Moon Walk marathon. She also enjoys travelling, cooking, supporting Liverpool FC and spending time with her family and friends.

 

Les Billing, Sales Director

Les recently joined the B & M team as Sales Director from the IT components and Electronics Distribution market.

Les’ background is in semiconductor technical sales starting at Texas Instruments in 1979 straight from university where he did a degree in Science and the Environment.

Les was involved in starting up and running the sales activity for Microprocessor and Memory Distribution Ltd starting from zero and achieving £65m whereupon in 1993 the business was sold to Arrow Electronics Inc.

Since then he has been involved in many managerial and strategic senior roles in Arrow Europe ending up running the Northern European PC component business as part of the European management team under the Microtronica brand.

Les has joined B & M to help drive the expansion of this successful IT Technical Services group through the expansion of its customer base and broadening of the services offered by B & M to our blue chip customers.

In his spare time Les likes to ski, play squash, swim, cycle and spend time with his friends and young family.

 

Karolina Blechova, Recruitment Administrator

Karolina joined B & M Europe in March 2010 as a Recruitment Administrator.

Karolina comes from the Czech Republic. After completing her A-levels, she came to the UK to work as an au-pair to help improve her English. She spent two years living with her au-pair family, looking after two children. She very much enjoyed the role and found that it came with plenty of excitement such as one occasion where she had to rescue the family dog from a police station!

After passing her English exams, Karolina decided to stay in the UK and in 2007 began working as a recruitment consultant for a legal recruitment agency in Reading, dealing with the recruitment of qualified solicitors in London and the South East. This role gave her the opportunity to build her skills in the recruitment sector, and gave her the chance to take on a great deal of responsibility and to work independently.

In her spare time Karolina enjoys a good book or film, attending exercise classes, skiing, cooking and visiting family in the Czech Republic. 

 
Claire Brennan, Financial Controller

Claire joined B & M in May 2007 as Financial Controller to oversee the day-to-day running of the Accounts department. She started her career eighteen years ago working with Deloitte Haskins & Sells (now PriceWaterhouseCoopers) as an Auditor.

In 1991, Claire joined Piper Trust where she worked with two of their retail ventures, Postcard (a small group of card shops), and Pitcher & Piano (a national bar chain). She spent a total of nine years with Pitcher & Piano where she was instrumental in their fast-track expansion programme. During her time with the company she studied both AAT and ACCA, and obtained a Wine & Spirit Education Trust (WSET) Certificate in Wine.

In 2000, Claire moved to Tootsies Restaurants where she developed both an accounts team and financial systems, neither of which existed before. During her time at Tootsies, the company expanded from having eight sites to thirty.

Outside work, Claire likes to travel when given the opportunity. Following her interest in wine she has travelled extensively visiting vineyards as far as the Casablanca Valley in Chile and Montana Valley in Australia. She is also a keen sailor and completed her Day Skipper seven years ago, although she has not had much opportunity to pursue this since having her baby son. She is currently teaching him how to swim so that he will be confident when she next ventures on a sailing trip.

 

Samantha Cruickshank, Account Director

Samantha joined B & M in 2007 as Account Manager after spending three years in the telecommunications industry.

After studying languages at Oxford University, Samantha began her career at IBM where she was trained in the IBM portfolio and completed their sales training programme. This provided a solid basis for understanding customer business drivers and requirements as well as working with dynamic teams for the development of complex business solutions.

After some consideration, Samantha decided that she would like to make better use of her language skills and took a break from IT sales to complete a post-graduate certificate in education in Modern Languages. She went on to teach French and German, benefitting from the training in self-analysis and reflective development required of the modern teacher.

The increasing governmental demands on the teaching profession became too far removed from the core skills of teaching and Samantha left to join Ericsson. Here she consolidated the sales skills which she had developed at IBM and extended them through continued exposure to the commercial environment.

Working as an Account Manager, Samantha is now using her skills to develop B & M's business.

In her spare time, Samantha likes to work on her newly replanted garden and spend time with her family.

 

Tracey George-Jones, Account Director

Tracey joined B & M in April 2008 as an Account Manager having spent 9 years as a Senior Account Manager at Black Box, a worldwide network services company.

After studying Biology at Manchester University, followed by a spell working as a chalet girl in a Swiss ski resort, Tracey began her career at 3M as a sales administrator.

Tracey enjoyed working in a sales environment and moved into her first sales role in 1987 working for a small IBM & Compaq reseller called Combro, which by 1992 had become part of the ICL Fujitsu group. This was an exciting time in the IT industry as technology was moving rapidly and networks were just starting to be implemented in many organisations, leading to a growing demand for computer resellers to provide more specialised services.

Tracey later worked for Computacenter and SCC before moving away from the IT industry to join Sub-Contract UK, a business services company, as contract renewals and customer services manager.  After 5 years in this role Tracey missed the challenges and the pace of the IT industry and moved to Black Box.

In her spare time Tracey enjoys family life, cycling, tennis and working on a major family project to design and construct a garden from what was a large bare patch of earth.

Seamus Hayes, Senior Account Director

An IT sales professional with over 30 years' experience within the industry, Seamus has had a number of roles predominately within the services sector.

Seamus began his career with a subsidiary of the Glaxo Group, training staff to use computer systems for such activities as telesales and stock control. In 1984, Seamus began working in sales for Nixdorf Computer (now Siemens-Nixdorf), where he handled accounts in the government and financial sectors.

He later worked in sales management for Omron Systems and Datalect Computer Services, before being appointed European Services Sales Director for Hitachi Imaging Solutions in 1998.

In 2000, Seamus moved to the Gartner Group and then to Allnet Limited (a subsidiary of Cable & Wireless) before joining B & M in July 2004. Here, Seamus manages our Dutch and Irish accounts as well as a number of high profile UK-based organisations.

Seamus enjoys sport and has played football at a senior amateur level. Nowadays he prefers golf, which he plays with a handicap of 13.

 

Ed Hopper, Business Director

Ed Hopper joined B & M after graduating from Durham University in 1997, since when he has developed wide-ranging expertise in the provision of technical support services and consultancy. His particular specialisation is in providing specialists for projects within the banking and insurance markets, where his knowledge has been instrumental in providing highly experienced specialists for a variety of projects with customers such as the Royal Bank of Scotland Group, Abbey and Norwich Union.

Ed is also responsible for helping to develop new business markets for B & M, growing our business to ensure that we build on our thirteen years' experience and continue to provide services that are relevant to our customers in the UK and Europe. Ed has led the development of our business in France, Luxembourg and the Republic of Ireland. In addition to his responsibilities as Sales Manager, Ed is the B & M Account Manager for five of the UK's 'big six' high street banks and some of the country's largest insurance and retail organisations.

In his leisure time, Ed spends his time freestyle kayaking and represented Great Britain at the 2003 Freestyle World Championships in Graz, Austria. He has also retained a link with his alma mater, providing advice and helping to fundraise for the Durham University Canoe Club.

 

Matt Jones, HR Manager

Matt Jones joined B & M in February 2008 having worked in human resources and recruitment for several years. Matt's main duties at B & M include managing the HR team, planning and implementing strategies to source specialists and dealing with all internal human resources issues.

Matt's first position in the industry was at Manpower where he worked as a recruitment consultant for over three years. He progressed from ad hoc recruitment in a town centre branch to running Manpower's newly-won Hewlett Packard contract, working on site at HP's Reading and Bracknell premises.

Matt then moved to a more HR focused role, working for a small IT software company. His primary task was to implement an HR structure and to grow the company from 30 staff to over 100, which he successfully achieved. Matt dealt with all aspects of HR including ultimately making himself redundant when his work with the company was completed! Matt also managed several newly formed departments on an interim basis including a team of 20 telesales graduates.

He took up a new challenge, managing a recruitment team within a private healthcare company, dealing primarily with a new diagnostics project in the West Midlands. The project quickly grew to over 200 medical and administrative staff, at which time Matt's focus changed from recruitment to employee development, including working on several training modules.

Matt spends his spare time immersing himself in any sport he can find, whether it be watching or taking part - captaining his local football and pool teams and supporting Reading FC.

 

Jerry Smart, Managing Director

An IT professional with over 38 years experience, predominantly in the IBM mainframe arena, Jerry has spent the last 26 years focusing on the provision of technical services for large enterprise systems.

Having initially trained in accountancy, Jerry moved into IT in the early '70s. He worked with the British Printing Industry Federation to develop new computer systems to reduce industry waste. In 1980 he joined Avis Europe to manage the development of new customer marketing systems.

He joined service provider Coveford Data Systems in 1984 as Account Manager, then UK Business Manager. Jerry subsequently integrated the UK and Swiss operations.

Joining B & M in 1993, Jerry's primary objective was to create an infrastructure and to build the newly formed business. He subsequently developed the marketing and human resources functions as well as taking responsibility for finance and legal. Jerry's current focus is on corporate development and in providing a challenging environment to enable staff to achieve and to be successful.

In his spare time, Jerry enjoys bridge, chess, photography and travelling.

 

Paul Smith, Technical Manager

Following a course in Computer Studies at Hatfield Polytechnic, Paul started work in the north of England with DEC/VAX equipment, providing computer support to staff and students at a college of further education. Here, he got to grips with the more physical aspects of the job such as laying out cable and occasionally drilling holes in walls.

About two years later he left for the south to work at a research laboratory where he moved into the world of IBM mainframes. Paul quickly realised that he was one of the few technicians working in IT who actually had a relevant qualification. Everyone else he met appeared to be a biologist, mathematician, ecologist and, in one case, an ex-plumber!

Subsequently he worked as a freelance Systems Programmer, designing and setting up mainframe computer systems for a variety of clients throughout Europe and in Australia, predominantly working with MVS, RACF and Assembler.

Paul joined B & M in 1997 as Technical Manager, tasked with designing and installing a new Windows-based computer network. Paul is now responsible for advising B & M on technical developments across all IT platforms, providing technical resources to the company and for maintaining and upgrading computer systems and networks.

Paul also has an active interest in the music business. He is a director of a professional music organisation, works as a live sound engineer and studio recording engineer. He has worked with a variety of professional and amateur musicians, poets and voice-over artists.

 

Sarah Yandle, HR Team Leader

Following the completion of her BA in Business Administration at the University of Glamorgan, Sarah began her career as Payroll Assistant for a Social Services division in South Wales. She subsequently moved into a support role for the Children’s Service Department.

Sarah relocated to Hampshire and joined B & M in 2003 as HR Administrator and has developed an expertise in identifying suitable specialists for our customer requirements. Sarah has succeeded in cultivating relationships with our specialists and has helped to tailor how B & M focuses its attention to meet their needs. Sarah is also responsible for delivering valuable and essential administrative support to our Account Managers, thus helping to increase our core business productivity.

In 2007 Sarah moved back to South Wales to be close to her family and now works for B & M remotely.

In her spare time, Sarah can be found visiting family and friends, cycling in the Welsh valleys and renovating her new home.