Going, going, gone. ATG Media's Anne Somers talks live online auctions

Anne Somers, CEO, ATG Media

When Anne Somers started in magazine publishing in the late 1970s, the media landscape could hardly have been more different. There were no computers on desks; no InDesign; no digital photography; let alone online live auction bidding. Today ATG Media is not only the UK's largest operator of online art and aniques auctions, through thesaleroom.com, but it has just completed the acquisition of BidSpotter, the US industrial auctions operator. ATG already manages BidSpotter.co.uk and through iBidder.com handles overruns on electrical goods and a range of commercial lots including property. 

In 2006, the year it launched thesaleroom.com, ATG sold 3,722 lots online. Six years' later, ATG sold 335,311 lots – an increase of over 9000 per cent with hammer prices totalling £52m. (This is just its art and antiques auction business.)

Anne Somers led a successful MBO from then-owners DMG Media in 2008 with backers now called Mobius Equity Partners and raised a further £4.5m from Mobius to fund Bidspotter.

Not all hard-boiled print media executives have made the transition to this brave new world as successfully as ATG's chief executive, Anne Somers. Here are some of her thoughts about her journey.

Headhoncha: So how did it all begin?

Anne Somers: The Antiques Trade Gazette was founded in 1971 and the original founder saw an opportunity because until then the only way people knew what was happening in the arts and antiques market was from local advertising. Collectors and dealers only knew about auctions in their locality. The whole aim of the magazine was to bring together buyers and sellers, initially nationally but soon internationally, so covering auctions in Paris and New York. In a way that's what we still do today.

HH: When did you see the online opportunity?

AS: We watched the dot.com boom come and go: the antiques trade was to be honest quite traditional. So we were late into the market. Antiques businesses didn't digitalise their photos and many operated without computers. So we had a very thriving – still do actually – print business. At the end of the 1990s, as broadband became available, we sat down to work out a strategy. We decided to upload digital versions of our clients' catalogues onto our website. While in a print catalogue an auctioneer might be able to focus on just 20 lots out of a 600-lot auction, we could illustrate each lot. We started printing catalogues for clients but really so we could digitalise the images and then upload these onto our site.

HH: So you were a service provider?

AS: Yes, and we still are. After catalogue hosting, then we launched live auction bidding in 2006 and that's been our major success story.

HH: How did you get involved with BidSpotter?

AS: Initially we leased their live auction platform for two years from our launch, while we built our own. This was the beginning of our transition into a development environment, which is where we now operate. We then went on to run BidSpotter's UK site for two and a half years. We had also launched iBidder.com. It was a no-brainer when BidSpotter US came onto the market that we should acquire it in terms of fit. We want to service auctions in whatever discipline and this gives us a foothold in the US.

HH: Are you any longer really arts and antiques specialists?

AS: We are very focused on the auction market but now we offer a variety of portals for any item that is being sold at auction. We have also provided all the technology behind the German site, lot-tissimo.com, for example. We want to offer our auctioneers an extensive bidder list. Recently we had 1000 registered bidders for an arts and antiques auction. We have bidders registered with us from 150 different countries. Ten years ago you might have 50 people in the room and another 10 on the phones.

HH: What's in the pipeline?

AS: We are trialling a saleroom delivery service. We are trying to give people who buy through online auctions what you might call the Amazon experience. Last month we shipped about 1000 lots and we will now roll this out to all our auction house clients. It takes the headache away from them. The shipping is easy: the packing is the pain. We provide a professional packing service.

HH: Were you always entrepreneurial or did opportunities just present themselves?

AS: I think I always had a sense of entrepreneurship. We were privately owned before DMG owned us but even under DMG they encouraged us to be very entrepreneurial, so even as part of a much bigger group, there was that independent spirit.

Eversheds' 2013 Global Board Report: older, smaller and slightly more diverse

Today's boardroom

In this second report compiled by global law firm, Eversheds, quantitative data from 500 large companies across the globe present a fascinating insight into the composition, effectiveness and changing character of the corporate boardroom. Some 38 per cent of the companies sourced were also part of the 2011 board report, allowing for direct comparisons over a five-year timeline to be drawn. These data are then given colour by qualitative in-depth interviews with 85 board members.

Performance was based on share prices on the first trading day in July of the five years under review.

There are some interesting contradictions. 

While diversity (that embraces differences in skill sets, expertise, international experience, age and background as well as gender) is seen, by 61 per cent of board directors to have a positive impact on performance, the trend is for non-executive directors to be recruited from the same industry sector in every region except for Hong Kong.

While having a comparatively higher ratio of executives to non-executives on the board showed better share price performance, there has been a decrease globally from an average 3.2 in 2007 to 2.1 in 2012.

Younger boards performed better than average and yet directors are getting older - now averaging 60 compared to 58 five years ago.

While having a CEO from another company as non-executive leads to superior performance, there are fewer CEOs serving on other boards than two years ago.

The good news is that in the last five years there has been a 50 per cent increase in women directors across all regions. The largest increases are in Europe (+156 per cent) and Hong Kong (+133 per cent), where to varying degrees legislation has forced change. The problem is, because we start from such a low base, all this means is that a board that was all-male five years ago might have one woman today, or a board that had one woman five years ago might have added one more to the ranks. 

For John Heaps, chairman of Eversheds, there was one finding that stands out: "I hadn't realised that boards were getting smaller and that loosely-speaking the best performing companies have the smallest boards."

Compared to five years ago, boards are 8 per cent smaller, and compared to three years ago 7 per cent smaller. The 2007 average of 13.4 board numbers has shrunk to 12.3 by 2012.

"Some might say smaller boards are more agile and find it easier to make decisions," says Heaps. "In big boards, directors tend to make speeches and presentations. There isn't the proper dialogue. This is borne out by our interviews with directors, where 93 per cent think boards should have fewer than 12 members."

Notwithstanding regional variances, that are often due to legislative and cultural factors, this trend to be smaller is significant. In Australia the average board size is just 8 and in the FTSE 250 the average board size is an astonishing 6.7.

 This may be impacting on the progress of women and diversity in general, especially since tenure is growing to a global average of 6.7 years – a 13 per cent jump over five years.

"This trend to be smaller does present a challenge for chairmen keen to increase diversity," Heaps says. 

"I think the process would be improved if more opportunities for non-executives for private companies were advertised," says Heaps. " We might get more talented women to step forward to be considered for these roles."

 

Sporting chance: women playing a man's game

Sir Stirling Moss, the former British Formula One driver, has been stirring it up. In this Radio 5 Live Special he questions women's ability to compete in F1. "I think they have the strength, but I don't know if they've got the mental aptitude to race hard, wheel-to-wheel," the 83-year old says. "We've got some very strong and robust ladies, but, when your life is at risk, I think the strain of that in a competitive situation will tell when you're trying to win."

Susie Wolff

Bernie Ecclestone, F1's commercial boss, sees no reason why a woman shouldn't compete on the racetrack except that the cards are stacked against them. "Unfortunately, the way things are, I don't imagine a lady will ever get the chance to drive a Red Bull or a Ferrari," he acknowledges.

Susie Wolff, Williams' team development driver is tipped to be the UK's first woman to compete in Formula One, but recognises that breaking into it is much harder for women.

It is almost 80 years since Enid Bagnold's fictional character, Velvet Brown, rode her beloved Piebald to victory in the Grand National – the world's toughest steeplechase. She is, of course, only able to compete with the collusion of trainers and friends who enter her under the identity of a young male jockey.

Today, thankfully, women jockeys don't have to resort to subterfuge to compete in the sport of kings. That doesn't mean, though, there aren't hurdles just as challenging as Becher's Brook on their progress round the track. 

Chantal Sutherland

Canadian Chantal Sutherland is perhaps the world's most famous jockey with 900 wins and £29m in prize money in her career to date. She was narrowly pipped to the post in the 2012 Breeders' Cup Classic, one of the world's richest races. Hayley Turner is the only woman to rank in the UK's top 40 jockeys on the Flat.

The barriers for women seem to be highest in sports that allow men and women to compete alongside each other. Other examples are darts, snooker and bowls, where there is neither physical contact nor any inbuilt advantage to being male. In all these sports, however, women continue to fight to be let in to what is still perceived as a man's game.

The relationship between competitive sport and women has historically been fraught and that legacy lives on. And yet there's a reasonable body of research that shows a strong correlation between girls' participation in sport and their academic and career achievement. Irene Rosenfeld, chief executive of Mondelez (formerly part of Kraft Foods) and DuPont chief executive, Ellen Kullman, were both gifted basketball players, for example. Indra Nooyi, chief executive of PepsiCo talks of playing competitive cricket as she was growing up in India. Christine Lagarde, the first woman to head up the International Monetary Fund, represented France in synchronised swimming.

Ernst & Young, the consultancy firm and a sponsor of the Rio 2016 Olympics, last month launched the Women Athletes Global Leadership Network to "advance the dialogue" and set up a strong mentoring foundation to advance the cause of women in sport globally.

 

Last Night gets First Woman Conductor at last

Marion Alsop (Grant Leighton/marionalsop.com)

It's not long ago that we discussed the dearth of women conductors raising the baton, and the background against which Marion Alsop stands as a shining example. So we have two reasons to celebrate now  that after 118 years, the Last Night of the Proms finally gets its first female conductor and that it is Marion Alsop who will create history on 7 September later this year in the Albert Hall in London.

The Last Night of the Proms is arguably the single highest profile event in the classical calendar, widely broadcast and of course culminating in the free-for-all that is Land of Hope and Glory. It is also one of the only opportunities that conductors get to make a speech.

Congratulations to Alsop and congratulations to Radio 3 Controller and Director of the BBC Proms, Roger Wright, for choosing her.

Dobelli's Art of Thinking Clearly is a must-read

Rolf Dobelli's fascinating investigation into the unhelpful psychological processes that stop us making good, rational decisions is finally available in English. The Art of Thinking Clearly digs out 99 different errors of judgment we are all prone to make and uncovers reasons why we do so.


For example, there is the danger of drawing false conclusions or confusing cause with effect. Harvard has a stellar reputation as a university and many highly successful people have studied there. Ergo it must be a great school. Not necessarily, warns Dobelli. It might be terrible but attract the brightest and most driven students. We see a swimmer's body and conclude that a disciplined regime of training has made that body shape, not that the swimmer is a successful athlete because she was born with a natural body shape that ensures her superiority in the water.

There is the tendency to stop thinking when in the presence of authority. Dobelli cites the airline industry where, after a series of spectacular collisions forced by pilot error, the industry adopted a worldwide training programme. The programme is designed to remove the authority of the pilot ensuring a co-pilot feels able and encouraged to question and challenge decisions. The result has been a huge drop in pilot-induced crashes. The boardroom suffers from the same problem and very few companies have managed to train out the authority factor, Dobelli points out.

Dobelli has an MBA and PhD from St Gallen University in Switzerland and is also founder of the world's biggest provider of book summaries - getAbstract. He draws on behavioural economics and cognitive psychology to help codify these blocks to good decision-making.

We tend to be over-optimistic. Ask a room of people if they believe they are above-average drivers and typically at least 70 per cent will raise their hands. French men, when asked if they are above or below average lovers, will claim, in 90 per cent of cases, to be better than average in bed. This, by the way,  is a particularly male trait.

Women, on the other hand, are disproportionately influenced by what Dobelli calls 'social proof' or herd instinct. If everyone goes in one direction, who are we not to follow? Social psychology experiments in which actors are hired to give a wrong answer show us to ignore what we know in favour of going with the flow. Mass market consumer brands have built multi-million pound dollar businesses on this human fallacy - nine out of ten cats prefer Whiskas.

A nursery school needs to encourage parents to pick up their children on time: there are persistent offenders and teachers are forced to stay later and later. The school introduces a fine that has a rising scale, so for every 15 minutes late you are, the more you pay. What happens? There is a sharp rise in the number of parents who arrive late. Why? Because the school has changed the rule from a moral one (I should be there on time - it's not fair on the school) to a monetised one (I'm paying so it's OK if I am late). The fact is money tends to devalue: businesses looking to motivate people can learn great lessons from this.

We are prone to be over-influenced by the 'now' factor - where immediacy is all. If you haven't seen it, this test in which children are offered one marshmallow immediately or two if they wait, shows the strength of immediate gratification as an influence on our decisions.

Amazon's 'pay extra to get it tomorrow' delivery offering plugs directly into this.

There is also what Dobelli calls the 'sunk cost' in which we hang on to past investments of time, money and effort. You buy some theatre tickets that are non-returnable. A much better offer arrives for the same evening but because you have paid for the tickets you feel you should go to the theatre. Dobelli points out that the money has already gone - therefore you should do what will give you the greatest pleasure. Governments find it hard to pull out of useless wars because of the loss of life, but those soldiers are already dead, and their loss shouldn't influence a decision today, argues Dobelli.

When Die Kunst das klaren Denkens was first published in Dobelli's native German, it dominated the non-fiction bestseller lists. It deserves to do the same in the English-speaking world. Apart from being an entertaining, fascinating read, it offers real insight into some of the ways in which we follow false thinking and draw wrong conclusions. A recommended read.

What's in your employer brand? Wolff Olins' COO, Sairah Ashman, is on the spot

Sairah Ashman

Sairah Ashman is Chief Operating Officer for Wolff Olins, the global branding consultancy, and is this month's Director of the Month for Director magazine. In this two-part interview, Headhoncha talks to her about employer branding, the traits that are proving attractive to today's high potential talent and whether men and women are looking for different things in an employer.

Headhoncha: What are the key traits that are essential factors in creating a positive employer brand?

Sairah Ashman: People today want to join a company that is making a difference. Newer companies, such as Google, embody these values, they have a sense of purpose and treat their people well. Also a brand like Google benefits from a strong, positive image so working for the brand gives you a positive glow, makes you proud to be part of its story.

HH: What about not-for-profits? Can they have as strong a brand as a commercial brand?

SA: We've done some work with a number of really strong brands in this sector: Macmillan [the UK-based cancer support organisation]; Red [the global AIDS charity established by Bono]; and TED [the talks and conferences organisation devoted to 'ideas worth spreading']. These brands are both universal and democratic – they are for everyone.

HH: Are there any employer brand traits that are more important for women?

SA: I think most of the characteristics that are attractive to men are also attractive to women. However perhaps chemistry and fit, and feeling your employer's brand reflects your overall lifestyle, is especially important to women. So, for example, working flexible hours, an understanding about how you can exchange value, support for childcare, for example – these are all signifiers of a business that has a grown-up relationship with its staff and are actually important for everyone. Women, too, value being able to get ahead without there being an openly aggressive atmosphere. It's important for them to see other women succeeding so they can feel they can make it to the top too.

HH: What about the structure of the business?

SA: Companies that are less bureaucratic, less hierarchical, where people are collaborating and working in teams as opposed to working for a single person – the boss – are more attractive.

HH: Are there examples of employer brands that have really lost their way?

SA: If you take a sector like banking, then the Gen Y generation may see it as having lost any idealism, any sense of higher purpose and that's something that now banks have to fight to regain.

HH: Are younger people looking for different things anyway?

SA: The reality is that if you join a company with an expectation of only being there a couple of years, it's a very different decision than in the days when people expected their careers with one company to last decades, even a lifetime. Now, people expect to move not just employer, but globally too. It's a much more fluid picture and that impacts on the decision about who to work for. That's a big challenge for the future. Attracting the best and the brightest is hard, but hanging on to them is going to be harder and increasingly important.

This generation is also growing up with very different opportunities. When I was growing up you couldn't go out and make a film, or publish a book, or make a record. Those weren't individual possibilities - you had to have alot of money, connections, etc. In that flattened world, it's interesting to see what we have to do to attract and hang onto people.

I think an element of being able to create and to contribute in these areas is going to be increasingly important. There are some industries that are not well-placed to respond to these forces and that's quite a challenge for them.

Lord Davies two years on: losing momentum

Lord Davies of Abersoch

On the two year anniversary of Lord Davies' review into boardroom diversity in the UK's largest public companies, progress appears to be slowing, says a report by the Cranfield School of Management published today.

While in the six months from March - September 2012,44 per cent of all FTSE 100 board appointments went to women, in the last six months that has dropped to 26 per cent. The FTSE 250 has also seen a deceleration from 36 per cent in March-September down to 29 per cent from September to end-March 2013.

Dr Ruth Sealy, co-author of the report, said "Only a quarter of FTSE 100 companies have already achieved the target and the drop in the last six months is worrying. It is disappointing to see that women from outside the corporate mainstream, including entrepreneurs, academics and civil servants are still not being considered for FTSE board positions." 

Women now occupy 17.3 per cent of board seats in FTSE 100 companies - up from 15 per cent a year ago., while seven companies continue to have all-male boards.

In a statement today Lord Davies reiterated the threat of enforced quotas if business does not meet the voluntary targets. "Quotas," he said, "are still a real possibility if we do not meet the 25 per cent target of women on boards of FTSE 100 companies by 2015."

Brande Stellings, Vice President, Corporate Board Services for Catalyst, the US-based pro-diversity not-for-profit, said, "We applaud the progress that has been made. It's a great indication that voluntary goals work. We really think at Catalyst a focus on action is key. When you compare progress in the UK with what has happened in the US, then it makes you look at the voluntary targets, the reporting, the coalition-building as factors that figure into success."

"Catalyst recently looked at new board appointments to Fortune 500 seats," she continued, "and found first, there weren't that many of them and second, the proportion of appointments that went to women was not much higher (about 18 per cent)  than the current proportion [16.6 per cent] of women directors overall. This is just maintaining the status quo. One challenge is the low turnover of board seats in the US compared to the UK.""

The UK experience has shown progress is almost entirely limited to non-executive appointments in the largest companies: the needle has hardly moved in executive ranks. 

Commenting on this Stellings points out, "Culture change is hard and takes time. Catalyst did a study, Advancing Women Leaders, that looked at predictive power to see whether having more women board directors led to more women executives. In the study it showed a five year time difference - or delayed response."

Whatever the underlying reasons for a slowdown in the progress toward greater board diversity, Stellings is with Dr Ruth Sealy that it is not a lack of available talent.
"There's a big supply: there are plenty of women ready to be board directors. But there is still a challenge on the demand side," she said.