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Mike Harris, Executive Vice Chairman of Europe’s leading online
financial services company Egg Plc, is giving an open talk at
Cambridge University next week. He will deliver the next Cambridge-MIT
Institute Distinguished Lecture on Wednesday 20th March, entitled
“Leading Change in the Digital Economy”.
Mr Harris, who previously helped launch First Direct, and then
the mobile phone company One-2-One, will discuss how Egg’s digital
strategy has enabled it to compete and succeed in an increasingly
fast-moving and uncertain business environment. He will describe
how Egg has been able to manage rapid change, and will discuss
the task facing industry as more and more of the economy goes
digital.
In its three year history Egg has revolutionised the British
financial services landscape through innovation and by leveraging
the cost savings of the online model to provide best-of-breed
products. Egg’s success has resulted in customer numbers to
date of over two million, and the purchase of the French online
financial services provider, Zebank.
Mike Harris has led the creation of a number of companies.
He is also the chairman of Lost Wax, a pioneering European software
company at the forefront of agent software development.
The lecture will take place on Wednesday 20th March
at 3pm in Cambridge. It is also being broadcast live by video
link to other UK universities, including Durham and Oxford,
and to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston.
The talk will then be followed by an interactive question and
answer session, in which members of the audience at all these
sites can put their queries to Mike Harris.
For more information please contact:
Rachel Simpson CMI Tel: 01223 327207
Prior to his current position at Egg, Mike launched and was
CEO of Prudential Banking plc which later became Egg in 1998.
Egg floated on the London Stock Exchange in June 2000, and Mike
was CEO of Egg until 2001.
Before joining Prudential, Mike served for four years as a
main board director of Cable and Wireless, one of the UK’s largest
public companies. He grew Mercury profits from £100 million
to £219 million, and turnover rose from under £1 billion to
around £1.7 billion per year. He negotiated the sale of 20 per
cent of Mercury to Bell Canada Enterprises and built a partnership
with Cable TV Industry, culminating in the flotation of Bell
Cable Media. He also co-stewarded with Dick Callahan of US West
to launch a new mobile telephone company, One-2-One.
Before this, Mike was Chief Executive of First Direct, the
UK’s first direct banking operation.
The Cambridge-MIT Institute is the joint venture between Cambridge
and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Supported by
the UK government and industrial partners, it aims to help convert
pioneering research and teaching excellence into economic success.
The CMI Distinguished Lectures are a series of monthly talks
by experts in the fields of science, technology and management.
The next Distinguished Lecture on April 24th will be
about forecasting climate change, and will be given by Ronald
Prinn, Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry at MIT. In his
talk, “Climate Change: Integrating Science, Economics and
Policy under Uncertainty” he will discuss the forecasting
system that MIT has developed to try and predict more accurately
the effect of future greenhouse gas emissions on the atmosphere.
He will go on to debate the challenges for governments in trying
to devise economically sensible and politically acceptable policies
that respond to the problems of climate change.About Egg:
- Egg plc is Europe’s leading e-commerce financial services
company, providing banking, insurance, investments, mortgages
and a shopping portal through its Internet site and other
distribution channels.
- Egg plc floated on 12 June 2000 raising proceeds of approximately
£150 million and is listed on the London Stock Exchange. Prudential
plc continues to hold 79% of the share capital.
- Egg is consistently ranked one of the top European financial
services domains by independent website ranking company Nielsen//NetRatings.
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