Guillaume Rose: "This work begins immediately. "

• How did this “MEB adventure” start for you?

I have known the MEB since it was set up (under the name CDE), when I was working as part of the management team at SBM. As a body responsible for bringing together Monegasque businesses and helping them to communicate and export, this was immediately very good news for an internationally-oriented company like SBM. Contact between us has been frequent and continued in my various posts, notably of course when I was head of the Tourism Authority which is a natural partner for the MEB.
 

• What are your projects in the short-term for the MEB?

My objectives fall into three areas:

- Reinforce the existing teams

- Listen closely to what present and future members have to say by compiling a survey, at the end of which we will be in a position to meet their expectations at an even higher level than we do now.

- Also, to develop international networks with the invaluable input of the ten offices representing ‘Destination Monaco’ round the world. They have already been briefed about working for MEB in addition to the Tourism Authority, and have started putting forward new activities, as well as the usual follow-up of all our actions in their region of expertise. This covers most of Western Europe, the United States and Canada, Russia and all of Asia and Oceania.
 

• What are the main focus areas for the organisation?

In general I intend to expand on our activities abroad by cultivating closer coordination between the business sector that we represent, the tourism sector, the cultural sector and the diplomatic sector. Not to mention sport, medicine and science which are also important vehicles for developing Monaco’s activities abroad. And finally, we must not of course forget the efforts made by the State to attract people who can make a significant contribution.

For the last three years, under the joint impetus of Henri Fissore and Michel Dotta, the MEB has already started down the road to coordinate the efforts of all those entities mentioned above.

It’s up to me to reinforce and institutionalise this coordination, so that from now on Monaco only ever speaks with one voice abroad. This work begins immediately.
 

• Is the current team ready and able to keep up with all these new areas of development?

The next few weeks will be crucial in determining if that is the case, but I must say that when I joined I was impressed with the quality of the people here. It is a team of very versatile and dynamic experts, and they are very interested in the new openings I am proposing. They already have lots of ideas and they know I’ll be listening to them. What’s more, the planned reinforcements will be introduced very gradually, so as not to destabilise a structure that Chairman Michel Dotta and his Steering Committee have guided with such a masterly hand and which works.
 

• Is the MEB a logical step in your career?

Since joining SBM in 1997, I have worked to reconcile the structure that is employing me with that of the Principality of Monaco in general. The MEB, which has found a perfect balance between Public and Private, was a natural opening for me. When the Minister of State wanted MEB to be the coordination base for Monaco’s future efforts abroad, and for me to lead it, I didn’t hesitate for a second. I think life can throw up rare opportunities. Refusing them is not in my philosophy.