Leasedrive VELO

Board changes at Leasedrive Velo Group
17 February 2010

The Leasedrive Velo Group, one of the UK’s largest independent privately-owned vehicle management groups in the UK announces today a number of changes to its management structure.

Robert Whitrow, former BT Fleet finance and commercial director, has been appointed financial director, David Bird is to become the managing director, having previously been the chief operating officer, and Roger Partridge, chief executive officer, is to relinquish his day-to-day full-time responsibilities.

New managing director, David Bird, said: “After working for the company for all but the first three years of its history, Roger has decided to move out of day-to-day executive involvement.

“In the 24 years that he has been with the group, he has proven to be a fantastic asset to the company. Besides being CEO since 2003, when he was instrumental in the BIMBO management buy-in, buy-out transaction, Roger has held the positions of managing director and general manager. He was also responsible for establishing the group’s highly successful rental management division in 1993, developing the short and mid-term rental business into one of the UK’s largest vehicle rental management divisions for the corporate market.

“Roger has successfully managed the growth of the business for over ten years and ensured that the company has maintained its unbroken record of profitability. Under his leadership, the Leasedrive Velo Group has become a major player in the fleet management sector.”

Concerning the appointment of Robert Whitrow to the Group, David Bird, said: “Attracting Robert Whitrow is a real coup. He has unrivalled experience and is without doubt the best qualified person to take over the financial responsibility for our business. He has unparalleled operational skills allied to expertise in mergers and acquisitions, which can only further support our ambitious growth objectives through both organic growth and acquisition.”

Robert Whitrow held the position of finance and commercial director at BT Fleet between 2002 and the end of 2009. He was initially recruited to undertake a strategic evaluation of potentially outsourcing BT Fleet, which BT plc then retained, and has subsequently grown to look after over 75,000 vehicles for a range of customers. Since joining, he was closely involved with the radical restructure of BT Fleet to improve services and efficiencies and moved it from a pure cost centre to aggressively pursuing profitable third party fleet business, thus reducing costs. The strategic, operational and cultural changes resulted in BT Fleet winning the Fleet Van Award for ‘Van Fleet Management Company of the Year’ in 2008 and ‘Best Van Fleet Management Initiative of the Year’ and ‘Best Van Service & Repair Company of the Year’ in 2009.

Previously Robert held the position of head of corporate finance at BT plc during which he acted as overall project director for one of the largest ever UK de-mergers, that of mmO2, BT’s worldwide wireless business, valued at circa £7bn and preparing Yell as a standalone entity, initially for an IPO but subsequently for an eventual £2.1bn trade sale. He also advised on BT’s £5.9bn rights issue in 2001.

Before joining BT, Robert worked in various positions at KPMG between 1985 and 1998, latterly as assistant director with KPMG Corporate Finance.

A Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales and Fellow of the Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment, Robert is married with two sons. Aged 46, he lives in Langley Burrell, near Chippenham, Wiltshire.

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