Managing expatriates in a global company brings challenges large and small, from whether to guarantee them a position when they return home to whether to pay for their nanny to join them abroad. At LAN airlines, the company offers tax counseling, relocation services, help with permanent residency visas and many other perks to ease the transition of moving abroad and either staying or returning home, said Debra Hernandez, LAN’s human resources director for North America. Hernandez led the discussion on expatriate issues at the July 16 meeting of HR Connections… Read More
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Ospina is CFO for British firm G4S, formerly Wackenhut
The Sky Warrior: G4S Chief Financial Officer Eric Ospina
Eric Ospina was in Buenos Aires and planning his next trip, to Costa Rica, where he was born, at the time of the interview for this feature.
So it is for WorldCity’s Sky Warriors, those intrepid multinational business leaders who are at any given moment as likely to be in the air as on the ground, or in a hotel bed rather than their own.
Ospina is the CFO for G4S, a British global security firm with offices in more than 110 countries and more than 570,000 employees. In 2002, when it was known as Group 4 Falck, it acquired Wackenhut, a security firm founded in Miami by George Wackenhut but moved to Palm Beach Gardens by the time of the acquisition.
What are your responsibilities for G4S?
I am CFO for G4S LATAM (Latin America and the Caribbean). In this role, I look after the daily, monthly, quarterly and annual reporting, budgeting and forecasting. I am involved intimately in all aspects of strategy development for the region. I serve as the gatekeeper for all [merger and acquisition] activity within the region, and I have functional supervisory responsibility for all finance staff in the 21 countries in which we operate.
With staff in 21 countries, you must be in the air quite a bit. I travel about 60 percent of my time “” 90 percent within LATAM and about 10 percent to Europe, mostly the United Kingdom.
*Do you find yourself in any one country or any countries more than
others?*
My travel is very even among the 21 countries although I have been
spending quite a bit of time in Central America and in particular Costa Rica.
How long have you been with the company?
I have been with G4S for the past 7.5 years and, before that, I was with KPMG for eight years.
What are your “must haves” when you travel “” you know, technology, reading materials.
Must have my HTC”“Dash, which is Windows-based. On this phone, I have my work and private email, my contacts, my calendar, rudimentary Word, Excel, Powerpoint and other applications. Books of various topics are a “must have” for the airplane and for boring nights stuck in hotel rooms.
How about a favorite restaurant somewhere out there.
Andres Carnes De Res in Bogota. This is a unique place and a unique experience.
What kind of miles are you adding to your frequent flyer program?
I would think that I travel over 100K miles by plane, but I have never measured it. If I were to judge by my frequent flyers miles, I think in the range of 200K per year. But I am not sure if this is a one-to-one relationship between FF miles and actual miles.
Words of wisdom or parting thoughts?
In almost 20 years of travel, I have missed only one business flight. I never get to the airport more than 1.5 hours before liftoff. Passing security, I take the express lanes or convince the security officers that I will miss my flight and they therefore fast-track me. And I wear slip on shoes.
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