Shareholders; according to the Dikke van Dale (well-known Dutch dictionary) this means ‘owners of one or more shares’. Kramers (another well-known Dutch dictionary) is slightly more expansive with a definition of the meaning. According to Kramers shareholders are ‘those who own proof of contribution to the capital of a company’. Factually both meanings are true of course but for CED, shareholders should mean much more.
Shareholders are interested parties which have put their trust in the company, who view the future of the company positively and who endorse the strategy. Shareholders, for all these reasons, are prepared to invest in a company. CED’s shareholders in particular commit to the company long-term to jointly realise CED’s international ambitions .
CED’s growth is formed by a combination of autonomous growth and acquisitions. Still to this day CED pursues an international ‘buy and build’ strategy. Until now CED was able to finance these investments completely from its own means. In the future too, shareholders must make it possible for the management to make investments and to be able to carry out its strategy.
Shareholders will show and continue their trust in a company after proof of success and development. We will therefore show growth and profit continuously. That is our responsibility for the trust shown and the investment made by our shareholders.
CED is professional and reliable and does not use populism to distinguish itself. Perhaps, as far as finances are concerned, we could be seen as conservative, but CED prefers to set money aside before making an investment and does not work too much from a position of loan and debt. Over the past years we have seen with our own eyes what debt can do to the economy and the influence it has on society. Because of this starting point, together with our four behaviour values : Reliable, Leading, Professional and Innovative, I feel that we manage to keep the trust of the shareholders and we can all continue to do our job with a lot of pleasure and passion, where the continuity is then best served.
No independence without trust, and precisely that independence is something that we really need to be able to carry out our international strategy successfully.
CED works on internationalisation by carrying out focussed acquisitions in a number of European markets and the increase of ‘operational excellence’ through process innovations and IT tools . It is our ambition to this way being able to offer our clients an optimum service as European claim experts with, in addition to that, healthy growth in turnover and profit; and so we can also show our shareholders that we are a good party in which to invest.
Wim van der Helm, financial director (member of the board of directors )