CABINET GAINSBURY & CONSORTS
Founded in 1992, CG&C is a small, discreet, Geneva-based consulting “boutique”, consisting of six independent consultants (“Partners”), with over 75 years of collective experience in consulting, who provide advice and assistance in connection with operational and business issues that tend to - and, in some cases, decidedly should - keep decision-makers awake at night.
Specifically, CG&C’s expertise resides in the prevention of value destruction and the reduction and management of risk.
At CG&C, we consider as risk anything with the potential to prevent a company fulfilling its obligation to enhance shareholder value. By the same token, we regard value destruction as being, almost invariably, the consequence of a risk becoming a reality - no longer a possible occurrence, but an actual event.
We are also keenly aware that attempting to avoid/manage all aspects of every risk may create a new type of risk: it is thus necessary to maintain a delicate and dynamic balance between risk and reward.
Risks come in many guises, but most risk factors are well identified, even though their potential for damage (ie, value destruction) may not be fully appreciated. For the sake of simplicity, and in common with standard practice, CG&C divides risk factors into three main categories:
While these categories do indeed encompass all corporate risks, CG&C considers that the sui generis character of two types of risk fully justifies individual sub-headings:
The spectrum of CG&C’s interventions/value proposition (a full description of its components can be found on the Services page) essentially parallels this division.
Each service or group of services is the specific responsibility of one of CG&C’s six Partners, who manages his own client relationships and ensures the delivery of advice and solutions within his own field of expertise. Of course, each Partner, when appropriate, calls freely on the firm’s extensive collective in-house competence and experience, thus increasing his own “fire-power”.
In view of the type of concerns they deal with, CG&C Partners mostly interface, individually, with chairmen, CEOs and CFOs with whom they establish a high level of intuitu personae. This privileged relationship, based on mutual trust and respect, allows the firm’s Partners, in their role as trusted advisers, to make non-judgmental, yet critically constructive, recommendations, in the implementation of which they are often asked to assist.
Over the past fourteen years, CG&C has brought - and helped in the implementation of - concrete and apposite solutions to businesses as diverse as oil (exploration to refining), pharmaceuticals, shipping, banking and finance (including private banking, insurance and rating agencies), telecommunications, law firms, healthcare/health delivery, international press and advertising, and luxury goods. Its clients range from SMEs to large corporations - listed or not - in a significant number of countries in Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and Asia, as well as in the United States.
As well as abiding with a strictest code of ethics and discretion at all times, CG&C is also acutely aware of the potential for conflicts of interests and takes all appropriate steps to avoid such situations in its relations with clients.