After more than 30 years, it’s goodbye Hoskyns, bonjour Cap Gemini, as the French company asserts its branding on all its subsidiaries. In a bid to raise its stake of the worldwide computer consultancy and services market, the former Cap Gemini Sogeti SA believes it will present a more unified front by doing away with the individual company names. From today, Hoskyns Group Plc becomes Cap Gemini UK, Sweden’s Cap Programator, Holland’s Cap Volmac and all the information technology entities worldwide will take the Cap Gemini name. Only the management consultancy arm Gemini Consulting, will retain its name. The firm has also completed its capital restructuring. The Cap Gemini Group SA holding company is now 25% owned by Daimler-Benz, 25% by French group CGIP, Compagnie Generale d’Industrial et de Participations SA, 20% by founder Serge Kampf and his management team, and 30% trades on the Paris Bourse. As well as the name changes, the company, which has traditionally operated geographically, with each country being a profit center, has set up four vertical market sector operations. These are Telecommunications, Pharmaceuticals, Travel & Tourism, and Finance & Insurance. These will be operational from January 1 1997 – although they were foreshadowed as long ago as the beginning of 1993 with the Genesis program, which was also intended to see country operations run as part of the unified group, so the 18-month program will have taken four years. The group is also aiming for greater convergence between Gemini Consulting business and the Cap Gemini services side, as well as greater cross border co-operation. One challenge it has is to educate its profit center managers in a new way of doing business. The other, far greater, challenge, is to compensate for the loss of equity in the individual company names, by substantially increasing its market share. Hoskyns managing director Tony Robinson, who has been with the company since 1967, says he has some personal regrets about no longer working for Hoskyns, and admits there is a lot of equity in the name. However, he believes the unified group will find it far easier to compete when pitching to global customers. As for Hoskyns’ founder, Sir John Hoskyns, Robinson says he is sad, but says it is a logical, sensible move. Sir John has apparently declined to change his own name.
