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INTERVIEW


MAKING THE CALL Victor Zhang leads telecoms giant Huawei in the UK, a company which has risen to become mainland


China’s biggest investor in Britain in just over a decade. With plans to create a design centre in the UK, Lawrie Holmes meets the man who heads the UK arm of an Asian fi rm forging its own path


F


ew companies represent the new face of thrusting Asian entrepreneurialism as well as China’s Huawei Technologies.


With 140,000 staff in 140 markets, its telecoms systems connect a third of the world’s mobile phones. Huawei is also unusual in that three-quarters of its business is outside China and it is almost totally owned by the majority of its workforce, in a country where most big companies are state owned. Huawei is taking an increasing interest in the UK. The group has announced it will increase its UK workforce from 700 to at least 1,000 by 2014, and in January it acquired Ipswich-based photonics developer, CIP.


It is also about to build a European design centre to develop a smartphone in the UK. Huawei UK chief executive Victor Zhang says there are a number of fundamental issues drawing the technology giant closer to these shores. Firstly, there are several globally


signifi cant telecoms groups that Huawei supplies to, including BT, Everything Everywhere (the Orange/


16 | springboard | www.ukti.gov.uk


France Telecom and T-Mobile UK joint venture), O2 (owned by Spanish telco giant Telefónica) and Vodafone. These relationships are not just about working as a supplier; Huawei has on-site staff at the companies’ centres. “We work with key customers by joining their teams to develop new solutions,” says Zhang. “We want to address their challenges, so we have a lot of technical experts working in the UK.”


CREATIVE HUB Secondly, there is a pool of talent in the UK that Huawei has targeted as being especially valuable. The development of the design centre, expected to be built this year in London, is recognition of the strong presence of design and creativity in the UK. “In the UK, you can fi nd lots of experts for design and also marketing,” says Zhang. Although Huawei has yet to confi rm how many staff will be employed at the design centre and where it will be based, Zhang is particularly excited by the Tech City project. Another area of great interest for


Huawei is the UK’s ability to contribute


to its R&D function. The group’s 62,000 strong R&D workforce has traditionally been based in centres close to major manufacturers. In Europe, there is an R&D base in


Paris, Milan and Munich and three in Sweden, clustered near to Ericsson and Nokia (out of 23 worldwide). However, the acquisition of CIP, which grew out of BT’s research division, brings green technology to Huawei in the fi eld of fi bre- optic transmission systems. Could there be more bolt-on acquisitions in the UK? Zhang says there could be, depending on what might fi t. “We’re open to buying new businesses in the UK,” he says. The group has also invested £1m in research projects at Southampton, Swansea and UCL universities. A further key aspect of Huawei’s


interest in the UK is shaped by what it considers to be a very benign working environment. “Our feeling is that the environment here is very welcoming,” states Zhang. “The UK Government is very helpful to Huawei as a Chinese inward investor. It gives a lot of support to introduce us to potential business


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