Ep179 Antony Erotocritou CEO Ardonagh Specialty: We’re not slowing down

Today’s guest is someone with a fascinating story to tell.

Today Antony Erotocritou is the CEO of Ardonagh Specialty but he has ridden the Ardonagh story all the way from its origins in the debt-for-equity swap for troubled UK retail consolidator Towergate in 2015.

Ardonagh has since been on a journey to build its specialty and international operations, which included 2021’s transformational deal to buy the newly-formed Corant Global Group, comprising the brokers Ed and Besso.

The organic and inorganic investment continues at high speed. Over the last eight years, perhaps the only part missing from this story has been a clear narrative from the broking group itself. It has given the impression that it is too busy with its head down to worry about what others might think of it.

Ardonagh seemed happy to leave a vacuum that many of its peers have been eager to exploit.

It’s fair to say that media coverage of the group in the past few years has been chequered, with as many negative stories of team defections as positive ones around new hires or acquisitions.

Well, this podcast gives me the sense of being the start of the group getting out on the front foot.

Ardonagh Specialty has consolidated its many brands into Price Forbes and Bishopsgate and Antony has a very positive growth story to tell.

As a former CFO he is absolutely on top of the numbers and strategy and we have a very detailed discussion about the economics of scaling up an expansive broking platform.

He’s excellent company and as someone who arrived to rectify one of UK broking’s most serious mis-steps, here is someone who knows in great detail how expansion should not be done.

Here we learn how he thinks it should be done properly and given his unique experience, it’s really worth hearing him out.

There’s a lot to learn and plenty of myths to be exploded.

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