鈥淏usiness can never just be about balance sheets,鈥 said Christian Bleakley, CEO of Firstcom Europe. 鈥淚t鈥檚 also about achieving success by building teams and creating an environment where your colleagues want to learn, work hard and move forward in their careers. This ultimately affects everything a business does, including its growth trajectory."
As a self-proclaimed 鈥渟ports fanatic鈥, Christian knows a thing or two about building teams. As a younger man he played semi-professional rugby league, was unbeaten as an amateur boxer and enthusiastically supports Manchester City. If he wasn鈥檛 in the telecoms industry, he says he would be coaching sport or running a network of gyms.
Having started his telecoms career in Bolton in 1993, he moved up the ranks and eventually started his own telecoms company in 2009. However, by 2019 he realised the telecoms industry was moving to internet based cloud services and merged the company with Firstcom Europe. He now leads the group from its new international headquarters in Lostock, Bolton. Firstcom Europe operates in four European countries, Denmark, Sweden, Germany and the 海角视频 and is an expert in unified communications where customers can use messaging, voice calls, video or fax on the device they choose; mobile, fixed phone, tablet or computer.
鈥淲e remain committed to Bolton,鈥 Christian said. 鈥淢ainly because of the great people we have been able to recruit here. It gives me a huge amount of satisfaction to see young people join the company, sometimes straight out of school, and progress from being inexperienced adolescents to serious professionals." He lists a number of apprentices who joined Firstcom as teenagers and have gone on to become experts in the telecom and engineering industries.
Whilst the business is busy making inroads into Europe and other parts of the 海角视频, the company鈥檚 headquarters remain in Bolton where it provides local employment and career progression opportunities in a high-tech industry. Not only has it recruited in the area for almost 30 years, but many customers and suppliers are in the north west too.
Firstcom is seeking opportunities to expand its business customer base beyond its current footprint. Earlier this month it completed a purchase of a telecoms company located in Hertfordshire and Suffolk. This deal added an extra 拢6.2m of turnover to the group and Firstcom has also recently completed a number of local customer base purchases.
鈥淭here are other exciting acquisition opportunities in the pipeline,鈥 said Christian. 鈥淲e see great opportunities in Manchester, this is an area of interest to us鈥.
With new headquarters and a couple of acquisitions under its belt, Firstcom has had a busy month.
鈥淚n this game, it鈥檚 not possible to stand still, otherwise you will get run over,鈥 said Christian. 鈥淏ut to win you鈥檝e got to get the right team.鈥
Firstcom Europe can be contacted on 0333 023 0380, or visit .
