The group communications director of 3i brings a mathematical diligence to the role – and still finds the time to immerse himself in charitable concerns. Neil Gibbons reports

Patrick Dunne is a busy man, a very busy man. And he likes it that way.

As group communications director for multinational private equity, infrastructure and debt management company 3i, he is responsible for communicating on behalf of a group with £12.7 billion assets under management and approximately 470 staff, including 160 investment professionals.

It’s a tall order. And just as the focus of 3i is spread over a portfolio of 116 different concerns, Patrick’s personal remit encompasses a wide variety of competing functions.

As the firm’s communications and marketing director, Patrick’s brief includes every aspect of 3i’s comms output: investor relations, public relations, internal comms, a large chunk of its CSR responsibility, its community and charity activities, and government relations – and that’s to say nothing of the marketing function he also oversees.

“It’s a lovely mix of stuff with a high degree of variety,” he says. “My biggest challenge is deciding what to prioritise and what needs my attention.”

As if this role wasn’t broad enough, Patrick is also the chair of 3i’s operational risk forum. “It’s an unusual thing for a comms director to be doing,” he admits, “but I came up through the investment stream of the company, so I have a grounding there.”

Indeed, Patrick’s route into such a senior comms role is slightly unorthodox, unlike the usual production line that creates dedicated communications specialists.

Born in Toxteth in Liverpool, Patrick was “lucky enough to be okay at maths” and won a place at the University of Warwick. After graduating, he joined chemical company Air Products, working in ‘operations research’: “It was essentially using maths for problem solving. So I’d look at where to build plants, how many trucks we needed, that kind of thing. It was good, solid business maths.”

But Patrick was nothing if not ambitious. “I quickly realised that most of the top people in the company had an MBA. So I signed up to do one myself at Cranfield School of Management.”

It was at Cranfield that Patrick first heard about 3i. The company had only recently become Investors in Industry (more commonly known as 3i) after a rebrand in 1983.

Patrick joined in October 1985 and quickly relished the opportunity to make decisions himself, rather than simply offering advice as he had in his previous role. “Straight away, I knew it’d be great, working with CEOs, making investment decisions.”

He was initially based in Leeds working largely with family companies and found himself drawn to the more challenging investments. “I realised I most enjoyed working with the ones in difficulty. I suppose that came back to my love of problem solving.”

In 1989, he was promoted to a role in London, where he looked after a portfolio of challenging investments. “It worked well. And I took over an activity that 3i had recently started: putting in the right boards for struggling businesses.”

Board dynamics remains a particular passion of his, and he has written three books on the subject: ‘Running Board Meetings’, ‘Directors’ Dilemmas’ and his bestseller ‘The Non-Executive Director’s Handbook’, which he describes as “a useful manual rather than a gripping read”.

The leap into comms arrived in 1997, when he was asked if he’d lead a change programme in 3i’s marketing function.

“It felt a bit odd, given my maths background,” he concedes. “I’m not sure why they opted for me but it was probably because I understood the investment business. I probably also had a reputation for being mean on costs. I always believe in getting value for money.”

So he set about internationalising the function and ensuring that marketing joined up with the investment stream. He learnt a lot. “I spent time with other marketing directors, and learned what they thought.”

Come 2003, the tech bubble had burst, and with 3i’s portfolio hit hard, Patrick was asked by then CEO Baroness Hogg to build a new comms function that better combined IR and PR.

“It was tough initially,” he admits, “but I think they thought, ‘Alright, he’s not an IR professional but he really understands the business.’”

Having been asked to take on the role by virtue of his grasp of the business, Patrick has never felt handicapped by a lack of grounding in corporate comms.

“For me, the biggest thing that has helped is that I always start by assuming I’m ignorant. I assume that any specialist I’m dealing with has a lot to offer and a lot to add. That means I’m genuinely interested in what they have to say. I don’t come with pre-conceived ideas of how things should be done. There’s a value in knowing what you’re ignorant about.”

Besides, he says, “if you have an investment mindset and have been an investor yourself, you probably can better understand the IR business. You can put yourself in the investors’ position. So although I had tons to learn technically in the new job, at least I understood what my audience thought.”

More than most professions, comms is a discipline in which people are judged on the here-and-now, rather than what’s written on their CV. “Whether you have a comms background or business specific background, you’re ultimately judged on performance. The difference between someone with a comms background and someone without is forgotten within a year. I don’t think one model is any better than the other.”

Those who have worked closely with Patrick are impressed. Philip Gawith is a managing partner of new strategic communications agency Stockwell but knows Patrick from his time as CEO of Maitland Consultancy. “Patrick is exceptionally loyal, very knowledgeable and hugely hard-working. He also has unusual breadth of professional experience for someone in and IR and communications function given work he has done in other areas such as non-executive director programmes and board leadership.”

Such a skillset is important at 3i. With offices in 13 different countries and counting, the company is a distinctly international operation, and its geographic spread understandably flavours Patrick’s role – from longer hours and plenty of travel (at the time of our interview he was preparing to leave for South Africa) to a set of demands that vary wildly in different territories.

Day to day, these priorities extend from the proactive – and the overarching need to promote 3i – to the reactive, and responding to the issues that a business of its size inevitably faces.

“There’s always a brand building job to do,” says Patrick. “I think that’s true of every brand. We are lucky to have a very strong brand, and we repeatedly test that. But it does depend on the location. Internationally, we’re actively trying to develop our brand in new territories – for example, we’ve just launched in Brazil – whereas we’ve been established in continental Europe for 30 years.”

Despite its sprawling geographic reach and its broad portfolio of businesses, Patrick has a solid grasp of how to prevent the company’s communications splintering into different or conflicting voices.

“We’re a reasonably sized company financially, but there are only 470 people,” he says. “I find that it’s easy to have a clear means of communication if you have a focal point and shared philosophy. And we do have a strong culture at 3i.”

All of which means that the internal comms part of his role is relatively straightforward. “It’s interesting. We’ve a small number of people but they’re a relatively PR savvy bunch. And a lot of them are on the boards of our portfolio companies, so there are lot of opinions. My job is to make sure people are well informed and feel part of a strong culture.”

Of course, with a broad portfolio of investments to oversee, Patrick’s day-to-day in-tray is heaving. “There’s always lots going on. One company might be acquiring, another might be selling, another might be having a wobble. You need to keep on top of it.”

That diversity of interests begs an interesting question: how is 3i’s comms approach embodied within the brands under investment? The company currently invests in business as diverse as Agent Provocateur, NCP and Bestinvest. How does a uniform voice percolate down?

The answer is that 3i does its best to be respectful of the individual personalities and stakeholder bases of the brands under ownership.

“We have varying degrees of equity stake in portfolio companies,” he points out. “One of things 3i is famous for is adopting a ‘partner approach’, not a ‘boss approach’. So before investing, we look at the strategy of the business, including its comms strategy, as part of our due diligence. We make sure we understand it and can work with it. But we always respect our position.”

Once 3i has invested in a business, Patrick helps to make an action plan to raise its profile, choose PR help and help them get good value from suppliers. He cites the example of Chinese investment Little Sheep. “They really appreciated the support we gave in terms of building the brand.”

In today’s challenging climate there’s plenty to keep on top of. Patrick admits that like many companies at the moment, the turmoil in the financial markets has affected 3i.

As recently as July, 3i shareholders voiced disapproval at the plans of chief executive Michael Queen to reinvest capital in the business rather than buy back shares.As communications director, Patrick’s response was to tell the company’s story clearly.

“It’s not an easy backdrop and we’ve got some challenges to face,” he says. “But we always adopt a transparent approach. That’s essential.”

Away from the 3i coalface, Patrick has taken on several roles that, although demanding, give him a valuably different perspective. He takes a keen interest in his alma maters: as well as being a visiting professor at Cranfield School of Management, he has been a member of the General Council of the University of Warwick since 2006. And as a board member for a body with a £400 million income and 20,000 students, it means Patrick is faced with a broad range of issues. “It really adds a lot to my day job at 3i.”

The university’s vice chancellor Nigel Thrift speaks highly of him. “Patrick has many excellent qualities,” he says. “First, he is always positive and enthusiastic – which also makes him very likeable. His ability to motivate people, as a result, is quite remarkable. Second, he is astute. He knows whereof he speaks. Third, he has massive reserves of stamina. He always seems to be ‘on’, wherever and whenever he is. I send him emails at all times and I have never caught him out with not replying all but instantly. And last but certainly not least, he is a genuinely kind person.”

The university will be 50 years old in 2015, by which time it could have entered the top 50 global universities, but Patrick provides more than assistance as a director. “I take a big interest in its charitable work and helped to set up Warwick in Africa, which helps to develop maths teaching in Africa. We’ve helped more than 90,000 kids since 2006.’

In fact, Patrick’s charitable work takes up a significant portion of his free time. He is chairman of the UK-based charity LEAP – Confronting Conflict, an initiative aimed at providing stability in young lives.

“I do it because of where I grew up. I’ve seen the effect of street violence on kids in Toxteth and I can see what difference a bit of guidance can make. Giving young people responsibility can change what they do.”

LEAP won charity of year at the Charity Awards 2009, and again Patrick sees useful symbiosis between this work and his role at 3i. “There’s something very instructive about the link between adolescent behaviour and behaviour in business. In business, and even more so given my maths background, we tend to believe in the god of rational logic. But humans are involved so it doesn’t work like that.”

Heading up comms and marketing at 3i, on the board of Warwick University, and chairing LEAP: Patrick’s seems to be a quite eye-watering workload. How does he fit it all in?

“I just get up early and work hard,” he says. “As long as you’re clear about what you spend time on, it works. In the world we live in, you’re generally forced to focus on one thing, rather than being able to lead a polymath existence. To have three things you love doing is great.” 

Curriculum Vitae: Patrick Dunne

1980: Air Products European Operations Research team

1980 – 1984 MBA, Cranfield School of Management

1985 – present: 3i Group plc

(Various jobs: investing, running management buy-in activity, building up 3i’s business leaders network internationally)

2003 – present: Marketing and Communications Director and member of operating committee, 3i Group plc

Education: BSc Maths and Stats, University of Warwick

MBA, Cranfield School of Management

Interests: Charity, family (he has three sons), football