Mark Gunton on growth
“When you come to work and the business is growing so fast, you’re going at 100%. Everything’s close to the edge, a bit off balance. It’s a real thrill.”
“Chase adventure”
Mark Gunton is a real numbers person. A background in finance and accounting. Always looking at the bottom line. Makes nearly all his decisions based on figures and percentages. In fact, when you add up all the traits of the typical numbers guy, Gunton fits the description pretty much to a T. Except for one thing: It bores him to distraction.
Underneath his analytical aptitude and behind his genteel British accent, Gunton is also a frontiersman. A man with a restless heart and an appetite for new experiences and uncharted adventure. After 15 minutes with him, you’re more likely to picture him in a saddle on a cattle drive than in pinstripes behind a desk. It was the restless side of Gunton’s personality that led him to TNT back in 1989.
“I was a very bored accountant working in the city of London and a good friend of mine was working in the express industry,” he recalls. “Express was just taking off in Europe then, and it was growing about 20 to 25% per annum. That contrasted strongly with the 5% growth in the financial services industry where I was working. It was cowboy country, really. Anything could go.”
So one Friday during his lunch break, Gunton ventured out onto the frontier. “I went to a recruitment agency and said, ‘I want to work in the express business.’”
That move and his skill with numbers landed him a management accountant job at TNT Express and a move to the Netherlands. By 1994 he had worked his way up to group controller, and when the role of financial director for the Americas opened, “I quickly put my hand up – and I got the job and moved to New York,” he says. To Gunton, who had always been intrigued by the US, the move was an opportunity to explore “the quirky, wacky side of America. It was a new adventure.”
Over the next few years, Gunton did experience the interesting and the odd aspects of his new country, and he and his family did indeed have fun. But he also proved that his business savvy transcended numbers and finance, that he also had a way with strategy and with people. In 1999, after a year at corporate head office as finance director for the Express division, Gunton was appointed general manager for North America; he currently heads the Americas, Middle East & Africa business unit.
Gunton is now on the frontline of some of the most promising parts of TNT’s business today. In the mature market of North America where native sons UPS and FedEx dominate the terrain, he and his team are proving that TNT can succeed by focussing not on serving the broad market, but on delivering superior services for niche segments of the healthcare and other sectors. And Gunton’s experience on the ground floor of the European express industry is helping TNT make strides in the emerging express markets of the Middle East and Africa. But the booming market of South America is perhaps the most exciting plane in Gunton’s portfolio.
In Brazil—South America’s largest economy and a bellwether for the region—the acquisition of Mercúrio catapulted TNT Express to a leading position in the country, and provided a solid foundation for regional growth. “Mercúrio was the number-one draft pick of anybody who had aspirations to take the lead in South America,” says Gunton. “It’s part of TNT now, and we’ve got a huge advantage because of it.”
While Gunton is a bit of a rebel who likes to do things his own way, he knows his history—and he knows when the right thing to do is the thing that’s already been done. In South America, that means replicating the success TNT has gained in other parts of the world by developing and running exceptional road networks. “Here in South America there’s a lot of latent demand for customers to switch from air to road and we intend to meet that demand.”
“On the old Silk Road in Roman times, nobody was trading from Genoa to Beijing, but people traded all along the route. We won’t create services to send goods from Puerta del Fuego to Bogotá because it would take too long and be too risky,” he says. “But a network that facilitates trading between the many segments along the way will thrive,”
When he talks about the potential in the markets under his command, Gunton can’t hide his rambunctious side. “In these markets, the rules are different. You have to build something new every day; you have to perform every day. In Europe, the game has been in play for a long time,” he says. “But here we can write our own story. What we can be in South America is really up to us.”