Manchester-headquartered UKFast has hired Ian Brown from Booking.com to become its new Chief Executive Officer.
Brown replaces founder Lawrence Jones, who stepped down as CEO last October in the wake of sexual misconduct allegations. Jones said he was taking “a leave of absence” following allegations first published in the Financial Times, which he said were “false and malicious”.
Jones and his wife Gail then exited the business last month following the announcement that private equity investor Inflexion had become majority shareholder, increasing its stake to 75%.
Brown joins the cloud hosting firm after more than five years as CEO of fellow Manchester tech giant Rentalcars.com, which in 2018 became Booking.com’s Transport Business Unit.
He said: “I’m incredibly pleased to join another of the UK’s flagship tech companies, and indeed to move from the Northwest’s leading B2C tech business to its leading B2B tech business.
“The sheer pace of change right now in areas such as cloud, home working, and security all point to multiple opportunities for UKFast and its customers. I’m delighted to be joining the UKFast team at this exciting time.
“Many people don’t realise quite how large the B2B partnerships business is inside Rentalcars and Booking. Regardless of whether it’s B2B or B2C though, the goal is always the same: take away all the hassles and anxiety, and just make it massively easier for your customers to do what they want to do.”
Before joining Rentalcars.com, Brown was a senior partner at Oliver Wyman Consulting, where he led three of the firm’s practice areas globally: Travel & Hospitality, Distribution & Wholesale, and Pricing, Sales & Marketing. He was also one of the founding partners of OW Labs: the firm’s digital practice.
Richard Bishop, UKFast Group’s Chairman said: “At UKFast, Inflexion is committed to making significant investments in capability in specialist areas such as cloud security, networks and remote desktop services. Ian brings a unique experience to UKFast of what it takes to really scale a UK tech business into multiple markets by focussing relentlessly on customers.”
