FROM THE CEO
Hello everyone and welcome to the first issue of 2024 – and my first as Saga’s new CEO. I’m both humbled and excited to be given the chance to lead this fantastic business into its next chapter. Saga is a great British brand, blessed with an ever-growing band of discerning, loyal customers. I’m determined to do my best for all of you as well as our shareholders – many of whom are readers of this magazine.
So, a little bit about me. I was born in New Zealand 50 years ago, which happily makes me eligible for all our products and services. My parents moved back to UK when I was five and I grew up in Margate, Kent. After studying at the University of Portsmouth I became a graduate trainee at Pfizer, a particularly good first career move because it’s where I met my wife, Gill. Since then, I’ve held senior roles across multiple businesses including Sky (which really was like the TV show Succession), Debenhams, where I was CEO, and as CFO at the Co-op. As we like to say here, experience is everything. I will be calling on everything I’ve learned over the years in these very different companies to strengthen and build the Saga brand.
While I get enormous satisfaction from my work, I am first and foremost a family man. Gill and I have two teenage children – Thomas, who is at university, and Katy, who’s coming up to her GCSEs. We live in Berkshire with a spectacularly lazy cat, and in my rare moments of free time
I love to hit the road on my motorbike. I’m also an enthusiastic amateur painter after surprising ever yone by taking an art course a couple of years ago. Many of my fellow students were in their seventies and eighties and I learned a lot from their resol
