Supponor CEO and leadership

Jay has more than 25 years' experience in operations, finance, technology, strategy development, implementation, turnaround and re-positioning with a long record of working with innovative technology companies and start-ups in the software, technology, new media and telecom sectors to successfully scale businesses on a global basis. He has lived and worked in Asia, North America and Europe where he has held a number of executive, investment banking and management consulting roles for innovative technology companies. Before joining Supponor, was the CEO of Fits.me after which he successfully exited after leading an MBO. Prior to this, Jay founded Atego as Executive Chairman after he led the MBO of Artisan Software Tools as CEO. Before this, he was CEO of Adaptive, an enterprise software company providing the leading repository technology for Metadata Management, Enterprise Architecture and Business Process Management solutions for Global 100 Financial Services companies and Governments. Prior to this, he was Managing Director of Interregnum plc, the technology merchant bank where he provided value-added corporate finance, including M&A, strategic planning and principal finance services to the technology & venture capital sectors. Previously, he was President of London-based PowerChannel Europe plc, a joint venture with ITV / Granada Media and CEO of US-based Imagitel, a hyper-growth telecommunications service provider with more than $55mm in revenues after having served as the company’s CFO.A Charted Director from the UK's Institute of Directors & Canadian Institute of Corporate Directors. Holds a Doctorate in Business Administration from the International School of Management - Honors (Paris, France); MBA from Baylor University - Summa Cum Laude (Texas, USA) and B.Sc. in Business Administration from State University of New York - Cum Laude.Active Angel Investor re-positioning, restructuring & managing rapid growth

I am an MBA educated Chief Financial Officer, Finance Director and Board Member with an exceptional track record of leading and managing superior financial performance within listed companies and organisations with significant public profile. I have gained extensive knowledge of managing large scale multi-site businesses, and combine a robust financial control environment with effective decision support and strategic management. Across my career I have developed expertise of operating within complex stakeholder environments and working with the Board to define and implement major change initiatives.

Key achievements:

-Refinancing of Wembley Stadium borrowings with new £300m facility delivering flexibility and cost savings of £12.5m pa (received IJ Global Refinancing award 2015)

-Delivered cost saving programme across The FA realising £28m+ of funds for reinvestment back into football

-Secured support for the £40m redevelopment at Cheltenham racecourse whilst at The Jockey Club

-Designed and successfully closed the first unlisted retail bond in Sport to fund the development at Cheltenham racecourse

-Developed and executed strategic plan for the growth of a retail focused food service business with revenues increasing by 250% in an 18 month period

-Extensive experience in acquiring and disposing of businesses, managing and negotiating the purchase and financial integration of 15 businesses with an aggregate consideration of £125m, demonstrating the delivery of the business case benefits with detailed post investment appraisal

-Negotiation and closure of numerous long term contracts in the sports rights and support services sector including Jockey Club Racecourses, Sainsbury’s and Woolworth’s contracts. Negotiation and completion of the South Wycombe PFI contract, one of the first PFI contracts closed in the Healthcare market

Specialist skills; Strategy formulation/execution; Planning & forecasting; Leadership & change management; Financial performance; M&A; Funding

Vesa Suontama is a CTO at Supponor and is based in Espoo and London. He has worked as R&D Manager at Navicore, R&D Manager at SSH COMMUNICATIONS SECURITY, and Chief Engineer/Smartcards at SSH COMMUNICATIONS SECURITY. Vesa studied at Teknillinen korkeakoulu-Tekniska högskolan between 1995 and 2001.

Technology executive with 25 years of international experience in the telco, finance, media and Internet industries. Experience encompasses product development/management, software/system engineering, innovation management, architecture, strategy, cyber security, public speaking, press/analyst engagement, M&A and consultancy.

Recognised product/technology visionary with proven track record of anticipating and harnessing new technologies for business growth. Ability to cut through the hype and rationalise innovation into measurable market opportunities. Client focused with a strong commercial outlook.

Strong track record of building and retaining expert engineering teams, developing corporate technology strategy, shipping product and driving business growth. Strong financial discipline with experience of managing budgets both large and small.

Specialties: Highly developed understanding of mobile, media and Internet technologies, including devices, networks, systems and software. Particular focus on the convergence of the broadcast and internet worlds from a business and technology perspective. Expert level knowledge of video systems in both the linear broadcast and online video domains. Expert in mobile network architectures from GSM to 5G. Extensive experience of building cloud native applications and migrating legacy systems to the cloud (AWS and Azure) using modern agile development techniques and microservices based application architectures. Expert insight into the use of virtualization, containerization and serverless computing to host scalable workloads. Currently focused on how to harness AI and data to drive digital transformation in a business.

M&A experience on both the buy and sell side (with successful exit for a private equity owned business) and have conducted extensive technical due diligence on acquisitions (completed multiple).