Dear reader,
We have entered the "Year of the Tiger" 2010, and (with some distance) we can look back on a turbulent, different and challenging year 2009, in Europe as well as in Asia.
The fall-out of the economic crisis, marked by tumbling stock markets and restructuring of a large number of multinational companies, hit the Asia Pacific market early 2009. Most of our clients from aviation to logistics, from maritime to chemicals to heavy industry and high technology were more or less severely affected, with only few exceptions.
For JR Cape 2009 was a year with ups and downs, however we managed to keep our consultants on board, to develop new services complementing our existing portfolio and to capture new corporate accounts. The latter in addition to serving our repeat customers helped us achieving a balanced result.
During the crisis we could see several new (however not surprising) developments in the international executive recruitment market. Due to the limited hiring activities across industries and (in most cases) a lesser anticipated urgency in finding and employing new key personnel, we have observed a certain move into more basic recruitment, away from retained executive search. But with the start of 2010 this paradigm has slightly changed again, and the buyers market has begun to move into balance again, where sought-after talent are not regarded as a commodity anymore.
In Asia Pacific many of our clients have undergone significant structural and organizational changes in 2008-2009, and alongside with cost pressure and slow markets having consolidated at a lower level compared to the pre-crisis scenario, HR managers were asked to reinvent themselves and find ways of how to quickly "rightsize" their organization. Most multinational companies took the crisis as an "opportunity" to repatriate costly senior expatriate management staff, a development we foresee ongoing in the future as well. This has opened up more career opportunities for local managers to move up into senior executive roles within the MNC environment in this region.
Despite the obvious difficulties in executive recruitment with up to 20-30% of consultancies having closed down (depending on the market) JR Cape was active in developing new areas of business and in stabilizing the existing portfolio.
Our Asia Pacific organization became member of the international Sigma Search Partners network, a leading group of senior executive search consultants established across Europe, the US and Brazil. First successful joint cross-border projects have proven this decision being the right step at the right time.
Further, JR Cape has developed internal and eternal resources to engage in international HR consulting projects ranging from salary benchmarking and compensation & benefits to organizational development, executive coaching and mentoring. And on top, closely monitoring recent HR and recruiting practices, JR Cape invested as a partner in a new career-networking-community.
Although 2009 was not a year of growth for our organization, JR Cape was able to fight the economic crisis and come out stronger than before.
Our Korea entity has shown an unbroken upward development with a strong increase in senior assignments and necessary additions to our consultant team.
Early in 2010 we appointed Miriam Wegmann, a former consultant with JR Cape Singapore, Managing Partner of our Hong Kong office, in order to stronger develop this interesting market and better serve our international clients there.
Our core market in Europe is Germany. JR Cape Deutschland has had a break-even result in 2009, side-by-side with the overseas operation. A great success was achieved in receiving "Preffered Supplier" status with a world-leading aviation and defense technology company.
Our strategy of quality growth with focus on certain market niches has proven successful in the past and shall be our future target as well. With our enhanced professional services portfolio and an increased client base we are set to take further steps into new markets in 2010.
We hope that our dedication and client focus will again be highly recognized by existing and prospect JR Cape clients this year.
JR Cape herewith would like to extend our great thanks to all our business partners and candidates for professional, fruitful and sustained cooperation in 2009 and wish you a successful "Year of the Tiger".
