New CEO at Capgemini China

Today the new CEO started work in the office. Chen Bo, previously of HP and Bearingpoint will be our new CEO. He takes over from Theo De Hair, who has been here as an expat whilst we searched for a local CEO.

Chen Bo's immediate advantages are that he has a long working history in China, is a local, and has excellent Chinese language and local network. This will help us win major clients and inspire confidence in staff.

I have yet to find out more about Chen Bo's personal working style. An interesting point to note is that he doesn't speak little English. Along with Chen Bo, we have hired a dozen or so managers from other consultancies, also locals (and some returnees).

The pace of localisation is seemingly accelerating - with the effect that the interesting point isn't so much that Chen Bo doesn't speak so much English - but that some of our expat senior managers don't speak Chinese.