ATOZ Tax Advisers Luxembourg’s Post

Transcript

Today I have the pleasure to welcome in the studio Alex Zulkowski, who is an independent director and a cofounder of Atos Welcome. Welcome. So can you just tell us maybe the genesis of Atos? Yes. So as you know, I did my. The period of my career, a big part of my career in BIG4 firms or Big 5 at the beginning. And after disaster of Arthur Anderson. Which was a pity. We joined in Luxembourg and other BIG4 firm. And so we noticed that. Time left for client service was dropping. Uh-huh. And replaced mainly by administrative work. Mm-hmm. From KYC and all the regulations and as this firm was a multidisciplinary firm, audit consulting. Text, we decided. Together know about keys nobody. The others. That it would be nice to be independent of all this. Legal commitments. And that was the beginning. And we. That's the idea of creating what became Atos. And. Based on just what we did best, Always supposed tags advice, Just focusing on tax. Just focusing on text and only on text. And after we create it says. It will just start with A5 partners. And seven people of stuff on the first day. That was on the 21st June. At 7:00 in the evening. Uh-huh. And from there we moved to premises we had rented. In letzenberg Airport wher. Still. And we started with these five people. And over the. Three weeks he came here which came we were over 20 people were just so we were recovering all our clients of keeping all of our clients. We had not in three weeks all of our clients that took a year in total because there were commitments and contracts etcetera, which have to be respected. But all our clients joined us. OK. So from there you, you, you started, you leave the world where you were very comfortable which was the main stages. Of development for Atos, Well, the main stage is. Well that we are always considering 2 main points. First is our people and 2nd and our clients our people. That is, we said Autos is a member firm, so our people are not only employees, but they are members and partners. For those in the development of the firm. That means specialization or, huh, training. Communication. Teamwork, Uh-huh. And that is the first basis which we had and which we always have today. Where we are more than. 250 people now. And the clients we partnered always with clients with respect it's and we were open to the clients, we did the best service we could provide for them and we were always open for critics and. Tips for improvement and what would you say that this culture, because I think that's a very, very strong asset and differentiator of Atos, would you say that you basically got inspired from the very strong culture of art you understand and you put it at the center of Atos? You can read this too, yes. So this the Anderson culture which we took over, That means open, direct. You can say everything but you. And you can promise everything, but you have also to deliver. So very strong ownership, Williston ownership of all people who are working saying exactly there's managers. Who are working with partners, but they can when they have plans. So you can go freely for it and if there are problems, they come to his partner who is guiding and helping, but they are free to develop themselves and that is also respected and also or not. Not only financially, but also in promotions and. Yeah, it's really interesting because as you say, we've seen the big four grow a lot over the past two decades. Mattos has also grown dramatically. But the corporate culture remains the most difficult part to obtain, especially when you reach, when you pass 1000 employees, of course, it becomes almost impossible. But you demonstrated that once you have this culture where everything starts happening easily, you don't have to micromanage, you don't have to be. You have. To keep away from everything you empower people and you have to have enough people and the best people off because the worst which can happen to you said is you have not the right stuff in place. Then you are restricted in selling services exactly instead of and if you have more people than you need, you're motivated to sell more exactly. But as you say, there's a keys to get the top qualities of. Making faces on training, permanent training, stay on top so you can always impress your clients and and maintain the trust in the relationship. Very good. So what could we say now to the new generation? Now I'm sure we could compare, 20 years ago starting a business was very different to today. What do you think the new generation can learn from the Atos success? He believes that it is not more. It's not easier today than it was at the time when you want to have to start the business. You have your business plan, you have the idea, you are convinced that it's the right thing to do, then you can manage it. You have to take a certain risk. That's normal. But without risk, no glory. Mm-hmm. And I would say to everyone who was who wants to start a business, you should think about it. To very clear business plan. To all the risks and. Positive sides, analyze them and then. Sit down and take a decision and if this decision is done, he has to go through it. Who's the end? Attract the right people. Exactly what is the most important is to attract the right people, and that was we were lucky that we had. More than 20 or 30 people who joined us after, after we left and the after we, after a year or two years, we got a certain reputation and it was easy for us or much easier for us to hire good people on the market. And just to give people an idea of how sharp you are because it's a small world. And I came to see you 16 years ago with the business plan and it was one year, one business plan was 3. This and the first thing you told me is, OK, that's not enough. You need to do 3 business plan like the main scenario, the disaster scenario and the fast growth scenario. And you said I don't want three years, I want five years. So I went back to my homework. I came back to you and I was sure of everything except one number, which I basically made-up. And I was hoping in all those pages of numbers. And I remember you just looked at it like half a second and you immediately said. What is this? It was exactly the number I didn't want you to ask me about. Sorry, I don't know how you did it, but this is how sharp people are at at at those. And yes, it's it's always impressive every time I go there. I was interviewing recently Fatah and Kiss. The culture is very strong. And of course, the level of. Of mastery is second to none. So I do believe here, of course, there are there are lessons to to to learn. So you talk about the risk appetite. Do you think in terms of the uncertainty of the market? I think when you started, we were still very optimistic about everything. How would you address this risk in this global mess that we have, you know, England election, French election, war in Ukraine? So the things you cannot change, you have to adapt. So it's just a decision taking, just decision. You go back to the thing, you take a decision. Too dangerous, not too dangerous. Yeah, you go ahead and you, you never look back. Yeah, perfect misses. You can look back. But not to regret. Exactly. Perfect. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you.