John Richard Knight

Has a deep and lifetime knowledge of IT and running IT multi-million pound businesses and projects. He was involved in rescuing an IT company through a Management Buy Out.

He has rescued many IT projects that were failing and has directed other projects with impossible deadlines in the Banking, Credit Cards, Utilities and Telecom sectors. The largest IT Development Project was £24 million into 10 countries. The largest Data Centre Operation was £900 million pa billings.

He is also an IT Outsourcing Specialist who was responsible for a £30 million turnover department within DEC UK. He was subsequently headhunted to help rescue Network Si, when it was turned around from £8 million in debt, to selling it 2 years later for £8.5 million. During his outsourcing time, there were many prestigious banking clients and his operations staff ran their dealing rooms with Sun Systems Servers, their desktops and a disaster recovery data centre. The Desktop Operations included running 5,000 PCs each, at American Express UK, London Underground and National Air Traffic Control. He was responsible for the European section of a worldwide FX system for a major American Bank, with a VPN, growing the operation from 4 countries to 14 countries. He also managed a classified project for the European Central Banks via the Bank of England.

He has been responsible for Amex Plastic Card data centre billings in Europe, Middle East and Africa totalling £900 million pa, following which he ran their £41 million Money Card business in 8 countries, mainly in the Middle East, developing Turkey and Portugal virtually from scratch. He also set up a Visa Card merchant Operation in the UAE & Oman.

He produced 60 sales & marketing promotional and training videos marketed as the “Video Brochure Concept” which was ahead of it’s time, nearly 30 years ago, whilst setting up a seaside hotel from scratch with his wife. Subsequently, they bought a 21 bedroom AA 2 star hotel in Great Malvern, selling the seaside hotel for redevelopment into 8 flats.

He was latterly semi-retired in Spain for 8 years, running his own Real Estate Agency, an Ex-pat magazine called BRITCHAT and an on-line regional guide called Guide2Valencia.

Swimming, Geo-caching, Socialising, Adobe graphic design software, Travelling, Scrabble, Family & Chess

Objectives

He is now officially retired and visiting Shenzhen in China for a year, doing some part time teaching of Business English with some Management Training thrown in. John is available for Consultancy, or as a Non-Executive Director, in any aspect of his wide areas of expertise. 

Specialities & Skills

General Manager. Company Rescue & MBO. IT Outsourcing Specialist. Major multi-million pound implementation projects for IT Hardware/Software. Rescuing IT projects. EMEA Data Centre Operation. European & Middle Eastern plastic card business operation. UK Telecom Services. Introduction to Chinese Manufacturing Industries. Property Sales & Management. Graphic Design - Website & Printed Publication Production.