Insight | Building business in China
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Just a few months since we opened a brand new office in Beijing, I recently travelled with fellow Executive Team members Ronald Spithout and Michele Franci to China, supported by a very able team of China specialists. We spent a day in Beijing with each of our local channel partners – China Telecom Satellite (CTS) and MCN Beijing (MCN). CTS and MCN are working very hard to bring Inmarsat products and services to the Chinese markets, on the back of the construction and recent opening of the Inmarsat BGAN SAS and GSPS gateway in Beijing, which positions our services uniquely in China and insures our continuous worldwide coverage for our L-band services.
As ever, we were bowled over by CTS’s and MCN’s generous hospitality and commitment to the Inmarsat relationship. We are optimistic that we are at the beginning of a period of tremendous growth for our services in China, including of course Global Xpress.
We then headed off to Chengdu, in Szechuan province, two and a half hours’ flight south west of Beijing, where we met Spaceon, a local manufacturer of Inmarsat terminals.
Spaceon provided us with very generous hospitality, showing us their impressive development facilities whilst spending time discussing their capabilities, experience, and where we could work together for mutual benefit.
Suffice to say it was a busy trip which highlighted several exciting areas for us to collaborate and continue to build a profitable business together.
Before we left, we were fortunate enough to spend some time at one of the three Chinese national panda sanctuaries. It is wonderful to see how these endangered animals are being so well-protected for future generations. We were even lucky enough to see some pandas as young as two weeks old; a unique experience and fantastic way to end our trip.
Rupert Pearce was Inmarsat’s Chief Executive Officer from January 2012 until February 2021. Rupert joined Inmarsat in January 2005 as Group General Counsel and, from January 2009, additionally held the position of Senior Vice President, Inmarsat Enterprises. Previously, Rupert worked for Atlas Venture, where he was a partner working with the firm’s European and US investment teams. He was previously also a partner at the international law firm Linklaters, where he spent 13 years specialising in corporate finance, M&A and private equity transactions. Rupert received an MA (First Class) in Modern History from Oxford University and won the 1995 Fullbright Fellowship in US securities law, studying at the Georgetown Law Center. He has been a visiting fellow of the Imperial College Business School, London, lecturing on the school’s Entrepreneurship programme, and is the co-author of Raising Venture Capital (Wiley).
