Jon Dixon is the European managing director of OCRA Worldwide, who are sponsors of this newsletter and we caught up with the busy Jon between meetings.
What does your company, OCRA Worldwide, do?
We establish and manage onshore and offshore companies, trusts and
other types of international business structures to meet the specific
objectives of our clients, fiscal and otherwise.
Broadly, these objectives include corporate re-structuring, wealth protection
and tax reduction, international expansion and market entry.
Our focus is to understand, assess, design and implement a solution that best fits our clients’ specific needs and goals while maximising all available benefits.
We can also help you decide under which flag to register a new yacht or aircraft.
You obviously market to a very specific client base; how do you reach them?
We spend a fortune on pay-per-click. We try to be the top choice in Google for any relevant word search. If you type in ‘offshore tax’ we want you to be able to find us.
We operate worldwide and are well-known. We advertise in the British Airways inflight magazine and on television on BBC Worldwide. You can see our TV ad on our website.
We�ve got a good brand and want to raise our profile. We are naturally moving away from print and increasingly towards the internet.
What is your role within the company?
I joined in 1995 and specialise in structuring international companies for global trade, consultancy services and investment. I work across our network and enjoy meeting our clients worldwide.
How many people do you employ and what type of employees you look for?
We employ over 300 people globally and I would say that, broadly speaking, we look for professionally qualified and highly motivated individuals who are looking to prosper and take responsibility.
What advice do you have for employers in today’s market?
It is important to employ quality rather than quantity.
What do you mean by that?
I would rather employ three people on £35 k, than six on £18k. We have gone down the route of training people from scratch, but it didn’t work for us. We need people who know what they are doing from day one.
We want multi-linguists and tend to employ a lot of staff from outside the UK. Mauritius and Malta have proved successful. They are educated to a high standard and seem to have a better work ethic. I don’t want to put the British down, but they leave university and expect to walk straight into a top job. It doesn’t work like that.
We’ve got a multi-national staff; a Maltese lawyer, a Polish receptionist and a Spanish employee who speaks five languages. In today’s market languages are important and the average 20-year-old European seems to be of a higher standard. The baccalaureate seems to cover a lot of subjects well.
http://www.ocra.com
http://www.ocramarine.com
http://www.ocra-aviation.com
http://www.ocra-london.com/index.asp
http://www.ocra.com
