Peter Scott, Chairman
Peter is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Engine, having conceived and executed the WCRS buyout from Havas in 2004.
Peter has spent more than 25 years in the advertising industry. His formative years were with Ogilvy and Mather: he opened the Scottish operation in 1973. He was a co–founder of Wight Collins Rutherford Scott in 1979 and subsequently oversaw group development from flotation in 1983 through to re–positioning the company as Europe’s largest media buying group — Aegis. He remained Chairman and CEO until 1992. Prior to leading the buyout of WCRS from Havas, Peter pursued interests outside the media and marketing services sector: along with his wife Jan, he dedicated much of his time to fundraising for various children’s charities.
Debbie Klein, Chief Executive Officer
Debbie became Chief Executive Officer of Engine in the UK in June 2008. She was Chief Executive of WCRS from 2005–2008 and continues to be involved as Chairman of the advertising agency. She was a founding partner in the management buyout of WCRS in 2004 and prior to that Head of Planning at WCRS for five years.
Debbie started her career at AC Nielsen. In 1993 she joined Saatchi & Saatchi as a Strategic Planner. She was promoted to the Board of Saatchi & Saatchi in 1996. She joined WCRS in 1997 and was promoted to Head of Planning in 1999.
She is the author of Women in Advertising: 10 years on, a study commissioned by the IPA. Many of the recommendations made in her report have since been adopted by the advertising industry. She is a past president of WACL (Women in Advertising and Communications London), a network of senior women in the media, advertising and communications business.
Debbie was named one of the Sunday Times ‘Top 40 under 40 in Media’ in 2008.
Peter Harris, Group Finance Director
Peter is Finance Director of Engine having joined the company in March 2010. His responsibilities include Engine-wide financial reporting, corporate governance and mergers and acquisitions.
Peter qualified at Price Waterhouse before spending five years in the City with Lloyds Merchant Bank and NatWest Markets. He then joined Capital Radio's strategy team in 1994 before being promoted to Group Finance Director in 1996 where he helped expand the group from its London base into being a national broadcaster. He then joined Simon Fuller’s media and entertainment company, 19 Entertainment, in 2005 and helped develop the business in London and Los Angeles into a creator and exploiter of global content. 19’s portfolio of products included the TV brands, American Idol and So You Think You Can Dance, and the Group also managed the careers of David and Victoria Beckham and Andy Murray.
Peter is married with three children and is passionate about all sports, music and travel.
Martin Puris, CEO Engine USA
Mr. Puris was Co-founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Ammirati & Puris, one of America’s most revered advertising agencies. He was also Co-founder, Chairman and CEO of NTM Inc. (Not Traditional Media), a marketing and media advisory firm created in 2003 to work with clients and their agencies to develop strategies integrating nontraditional marketing solutions and new media models.
As Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Ammirati Puris Lintas, as the agency was called after a 1994 acquisition merger with The Interpublic group of Companies, Martin managed one of the 10 largest advertising networks in the world, with over 10 thousand employees, 172 offices in 54 countries and annual billings of $7.9 billion. And managed, as well, the strategic integration and tactical reformation of Lintas, which, during the early 90’s, had become a profoundly negative issue for the IPG Group. The restructuring touched every aspect of its business from lease negotiation on a global basis, commission restructuring and human resource issues that eventually required the replacement of several hundred people around the world.
Author, guest lecturer, contributor to various publications including the Harvard Business review, honored and awarded internationally on numerous occasions by industry peers, in 1988, Mr. Puris was named by Ad Week magazine, “one of the twenty most influential figures in advertising during the past 20 years.”
Mr. Puris served as Media Advisor to President George H. W. Bush in both presidential campaigns.
Simon Clift, Non-executive director
After university he joined Unilever in 1982 as a management trainee in marketing. Over the next nine years, he held various marketing positions in the UK, Portugal, Austria and Mexico.
From 1997 to 2000 he was Managing Director of Unilever’s personal care business in Brazil and then Chairman of Unilever’s Latin American personal care category.
In January 2001 he was appointed President of Marketing of Unilever’s Home & Personal Care Division, and subsequently Group Vice-President for Personal Care where he was directly responsible for the worldwide strategy marketing, innovation and advertising of Unilever’s €12B personal care business.
In June 2008 he relinquished his category responsibilities to become Unilever’s first global Chief Marketing Officer, responsible for how Unilever develops and executes its core function of marketing across all categories – incorporating worldwide advertising agency policy, marketing research, media planning and buying, marketing capability and talent development. He is also responsible for the development of the Unilever company brand.
He is a non-executive director of BBC Worldwide, the commercial arm of the BBC.
He is interested in music – particularly of the Baroque period – and the arts in general and is a season ticket holder at Chelsea. He lives in London with a counterfeit Brazilian Dalmatian and, for part of the year at least, with his Brazilian foster son, but escapes more frequently than is decent to his home in Paraty, a fine colonial town on the coast in the state of Rio de Janeiro.
Matt Wreford, Non-executive director
Matt is a director of IPGL Limited, a private holding company in which Michael Spencer, CEO of ICAP plc, together with his wife and family trusts, are majority shareholders. Matt is responsible for IPGL's portfolio of investee companies, which includes Engine, and leads its new investments and exits from mature companies.
In addition to Engine, he is currently a director of Exotix Holdings Limited, the emerging market securities broker; Probability Plc, the AIM listed mobile gambling operator; and Insparo Asset Management, the specialist Africa & Middle East fund manager. Over the past 10 years he has been a board director of 9 businesses and a board observer for a further 4. Prior directorships include Origin Asset Management, the global equities fund manager; Ri3K, the paperless trading service for the insurance and reinsurance industry; and Neoss Limited, the developer of dental implant solutions. He is a qualified chartered accountant. Matt read Chemistry at Brasenose College, Oxford.
Richard Wyatt, Non-executive director
Richard has worked for the past 27 years in London’s financial markets; having trained as an investment analyst with James Capel & Co. He was one of the founders of the UK securities business of Schroders, which was sold to Citigroup as part of its purchase of Schroders investment banking business, upon this acquisition he became Head of European Equities for Citigroup. He retired from Citigroup to serve on the Regulatory Decisions Committee of the newly formed Financial Services Authority in London. In 2004 Richard joined the partnership of Lazard to purchase Panmure Gordon from WestLB, he chaired this business through its listing on AIM and early life as a public company.
Richard chairs the management companies of two publicly traded venture funds; Loudwater Trust is the leading publicly owned London crossover fund. He also chairs the management company of Low Carbon Accelerator plc an AIM listed cleantech venture firm.
Thomas Scriven, Non-executive director
Thomas Scriven is a Director with H.I.G. in London, covering growth equity, leveraged buy-out and distressed investments throughout Europe.
Previously, Thomas spent several years with Goldman Sachs Capital Partners ("GSCP") in London, pursuing global private equity opportunities.
Prior to GSCP, he worked for Parthenon Capital, an operationally focused mid-market private equity firm in the U.S., and as an analyst at Morgan Stanley in New York.
Thomas received a B.A. in Politics from Princeton University and a M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. He is a Swiss and British national and fluent in both English and German.
Matthias Allgaier, Non-executive director
Matthias Allgaier is Managing Director of HIG, has an MBA from Mannheim University and a DBA from Karl Franzens University.
Matthias, a German and Austrian national, has been working in the Private Equity Industry since 1994. Throughout his career, Dr. Allgaier focused on small cap buyouts and growth equity investments in the U.K. and Europe. Prior to joining H.I.G. Capital, Dr. Allgaier held senior positions with Internet Capital Group and Apax Partners in London. Prior to that, he worked at General Atlantic Partners in the US where he focused on European growth capital investments.
