UK Government drops asylum hotel provider over concerns of company's 'behaviour'
THE Home Office is ending a company's contract to provide accommodation for asylum seekers.
Stay Belvedere Hotels (SBHL) houses people waiting for asylum decisions in 51 hotels in England and Wales, as well as the Napier Barracks in Folkestone, Kent, which is due to close and be returned to the Ministry of Defence in September.
A statement from the Home Office said the contract, which was awarded in 2019, will end at the earliest opportunity in September 2026 after a review of all contracts to provide asylum accommodation.
READ MORE: Donald Trump and Elon Musk mock American magazine over war text leak
The review raised concerns about the company's performance and behaviour, according to the statement, which said the safety and security of people staying and working in temporary accommodation was a government priority, as well as ensuring value for money.
Minister for border security and asylum Angela Eagle said: 'Since July, we have improved contract management and added more oversight of our suppliers of asylum accommodation.
'We have made the decision to remove Stay Belvedere Hotels from the Home Office supply chain and will not hesitate to take further action to ensure Home Office contracts deliver for the UK.'
The Home Office, which is committed to ending the use of asylum hotels, said it was working to 'put robust plans in place' to minimise disruption.
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Europe's most valuable boss? How Christian Klein went from a 15-year-old intern to SAP's savior
May has been quite a month for Christian Klein, the baby-faced boss of Europe's most valuable company, SAP. He has just finished off his opening keynote at SAP's Sapphire event in Madrid, a summit attended by more than 6,000 people, when he finds time to squeeze in a putt-off on the main stage with Team Europe's 2014 Ryder Cup captain, Paul McGinley. A hole in one (on his second attempt) seems a fitting celebration. The false start nature of his foray on the putting green is reflective of his time at the helm of SAP, with his latest landmark the culmination of a tumultuous introduction, several false starts, and an overhaul of the company's organizational structure. Boasting a market value of $350 billion as of the end of May, SAP outpaced a struggling Novo Nordisk and a stunted luxury retail sector in March to confirm the unusual sighting of a German tech group atop Europe's public markets. Novo Nordisk reclaimed the mantle on the morning of June 13. The feat tops off a remarkable rise for the enterprise resource planning group, which is toasting record revenues and profits after a bet on cloud computing coincided with a global AI pivot that has seen demand for the company's business processes suite skyrocket. Fortune spoke with members of SAP's C-suite and leadership team to understand how Klein approached the mammoth task of turning a disparate SAP into Europe's most valuable company. Klein, just 45 years old, knows SAP better than most of the 120,000 people working at the company today. He first joined as a 15-year-old summer intern, ferrying clunky monitors around SAP's Walldorf headquarters with one eye on a professional football career. 'I can still remember, I tested them all, and one out of 10 didn't work,' Klein told Fortune in Madrid. 'In our area, SAP is a logical choice,' Klein says of the fateful application to the company he would run decades later. Indeed, former classmates of his continue to work at the company, though he's not as close to them as he was then. SAP offers software packages that help businesses deal with all sorts of admin, like HR, supply-chain management, and procurement, also known as enterprise resource planning (ERP). Klein throws his head back with laughter as this reporter suggests it's not the most exciting subject matter for the layperson to try to care about. His time at the helm of the company, though, has betrayed the dull, bureaucratic principles on which SAP has made its billions. Following the departure of its previous boss, ServiceNow's American CEO, Bill McDermott, the software as a service (SaaS) provider faced criticism that it was a bloated amalgam of various acquisitions with no obvious plans to align them. McDermott and SAP got it in the neck on more than one occasion from executives at one of its main competitors, Oracle. The late former Oracle co-CEO, Mark Hurd, was critical of the company's acquisition strategy in 2019 after SAP's $8 billion move for experience management platform Qualtrics. 'We're not buying somebody to just buy them. We're buying companies that fit into our portfolio,' Hurd said at the time. It was under this cloud of uncertainty that Klein took on the role of co-CEO alongside Jennifer Morgan in 2019. In April 2020, Klein assumed the mantle of CEO alone, a month into global lockdowns, after Morgan abruptly stepped down. Sebastian Steinhaeuser, SAP's chief operating officer, first worked with Klein in 2020 as a consultant at Boston Consulting Group, ironing out a presidency-style plan for Klein's first 100 days in charge. Something about that time with Klein persuaded Steinhaeuser to jump on board, even if it raised eyebrows among his confidants. 'I think the general perception when I joined SAP, many friends and colleagues looked at me like, 'What are you doing? Like, are you sure?'' said Steinhaeuser. 'I think there was a time where instead of executing, [SAP] just defined a new strategy every two years. Every year, customers would sit here at Sapphire, we talked about the year before, if we had delivered it or not delivered it, and just pulled a new rabbit out of the hat.' Within a few months of taking sole charge of the company, Klein had to abandon a medium-term profitability forecast as the worst economic effects of the coronavirus kicked in. 'I think the stock got a hit of 20% or 25%, and everybody thought, 'It's crazy. Why would you do that?'' recalls Jan Gilg, SAP's chief revenue officer, of reactions to the guidance call. 'But then, in retrospect, you see that it was the only option he had.' Some of Klein's other big calls have been met with frustration from within his own ranks. SAP announced plans for a 10,000-strong headcount reduction in January last year. 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Examples of long-running CEOs at Fortune 500 companies are rare. Burnout, a lack of experience, or boardroom preference for an outsider mean the onetime graduate rarely progresses to the boardroom. BMW's Oliver Zipse and General Motors' Mary Barra are two rare examples of CEOs who have worked at the same company for their entire careers. When that happens, Klein, unsurprisingly, sees it as an advantage. 'In the early days of becoming a CEO, it was of extreme value to understand who my stakeholders are. Because the transformation is not only about, 'Oh, we are now developing all software in the cloud,' it's a transformation for everyone. Everything is changing. And that's why I would say, in this situation, it was definitely a big plus,' Klein says on the advantages of being a lifer at SAP. 'I had to make sure that I communicated extremely often. All hands, investor meetings, customer meetings, because you have to explain more than once why this change is needed.' 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Column: Will Tesla suffer if Musk alienates both political wings?
Donald Trump and Elon Musk — two epic disrupters of U.S. politics and the automotive industry, respectively and vice versa. Over the past year, they united over the election and efforts to cut government spending. They parted ways amicably … and then started trashing each other. It escalated quickly with Musk suggesting that the president be impeached and that he is implicated in the Jeffrey Epstein child-prostitution scandal. Musk later reportedly called the president before posting that he regretted some of his words: 'They went too far.' It was a remarkable breakup — incredible drama between the world's most powerful man and the world's richest man, who had been the closest of allies for hundreds of days of campaigning and governing. To the extent that it was a reality TV train wreck, I'd just as soon leave it be. But since the primary business in Musk's remarkable portfolio is nominally an automaker, it actually matters in this industry we cover. 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Michiganders, for instance, often assume that Americans prefer to buy American cars made by American (union) workers. But I've been to America, and most of them don't care. They want the best car for their money, whether it's American, German, Japanese or Korean. Some are clamoring for cheap Chinese cars: If Xi Jinping wants to pay for half of their EV, they ask, why not let him? So maybe they won't care about Elon's politics. Tesla sales are down a little this year, but some of that might be attributable to production hiccups. If the Model Y — the bestselling model in the world last year — provides a great value, they'll probably buy it regardless of what they think of the CEO. And now we get to find out. Have an opinion about this story? Tell us about it and we may publish it in print. Click here to submit a letter to the editor. Sign in to access your portfolio
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GM to invest US$4 billion to increase US output
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