Values

Cooperation principles

Working together is a key success factor of ESN

The "ESN Partnership" is based on the concept of "territoriality" and "exclusivity" meaning that each Member has full responsibility for the country where it operates. Therefore, two Members cannot coexist in the same country.
Differently from other networks, partnerships or commercial alliances amongst brokers, ESN Members are real "partners" who, together, produce research and other business activities. Therefore, the ESN Members do not simply exchange research with each other, they work closely together to produce it.

Cooperation philosophy of the ESN people community

ESN's evolution has witnessed the strengthening of the partnership, initially through the development of research, sales and execution capabilities over the last 10 years. This cooperation has been enlarged to other business areas including Corporate Finance, Equity Capital Market, M&A, Debt Capital Market and Secondary Bond Market activity. Every day, colleagues from each of the Member firms are building services offered by ESN. Members are constantly searching for new investment opportunities and successfully collaborating to compete on the markets.
The ability to communicate effectively and build strong relationships with clients and colleagues from a diversity of cultures, backgrounds and experiences is a critical aspect of ESN. Personal relationships are crucial in a partnership like ESN. Working in ESN means building relationships with people of different cultures and varied backgrounds. Working with cultural diversity - in the widest sense of the phrase - is an essential part of ESN's business, which has a strongly international character. Long weekends ("ESN off-site") are organised for ESN people to improve "team building," share ideas, help brainstorming and gather clever suggestions. These internal events usually consist of both a "working session" and a "leisure session" to help bi-lateral personal relations amongst the Members.
Another initiative to improve cooperation amongst the Members is the possibility to temporarily exchange analysts amongst them. At the same time Sector Coordinators are requested to organise at least one physical meeting per year with all the members of their sector teams.

ESN Website platform as a unique communication system

As a multi-local partnership, ESN is not merely a collection of firms; it is a "community" of colleagues across Europe who interact consistently to deliver a unique service to their clients. To facilitate communication (inside ESN) an "intra-ESN" Website platform has been developed.

Strict Cooperation Rules and KPIs are at the basis of the ESN Partnership

Strict rules on cooperation have been and are critical elements to enable ESN to survive and successfully compete. Some common Key Performance Indicators ("KPIs") have been defined for analysts and salespeople to set minimum standards in terms of cooperation, research and sales quality, business performance, etc. Those KPIs are regularly checked and reviewed by the management of ESN and the Country Managers.
All ESN Member firms are requested to embrace ESN's business model; respect "ESN's LLP Agreement", which are its bylaws, and implement the "ESN Operating Rules" locally in each organization. The above is pointless without the high level commitment of each Member's senior management. Such commitment is continuously transferred to and shown by all of the people in each Member firm who are involved in ESN's activities (i.e.: Analysts, Salespeople, Traders, Marketing people, IT & Operations people, other local people, etc.).

Equity Research Product rules

The Members of ESN are able to present to their clients a credible pan-European multi-local equity research product due to the fact that they respect the same rules (minimum number of analysts and companies covered, etc.) and follow the same common standardised research approach. Such approach is constantly reviewed and fine-tuned. The Members' harmonisation process within ESN has been an important achievement which required a significant investment of time over several years and in-depth discussions amongst the Members. This is one of the "barriers to entry" for others to attempt to duplicate the ESN business model.

Examples of research standards adopted by all the Members of ESN

• Templates for both ESN common research and local research documents;
• Colours, layout and formats of written research report;
• Financial definitions, valuation methodologies and financial parameters;
• Analysts' input and output models;
• Automated data entry into models and notes;
• Centralized quality check process for "human error" and inconsistencies or coherences of input data;

The goal shared by all ESN's Members is to provide to their aggregate institutional client base a customized bespoken equity research. Therefore, the philosophy is to avoid, as much as possible, maintenance research or public information repackaging, often considered useless by clients, but rather to focus and leverage on an in-depth proprietary research database, strong local knowledge and superior relationships with local companies.

ESN Top Management

Chairmen of ESN LLP

Period	Name	Member firm
2003 (first Chairman)	Carel van der Spek	F.van Lanschot (NL)
2004-2005	Conor O'Kelly	NCB Stockbrokers (IE)
2006-2007	Eric le Boulch	CM-CIC Securities (FR)
2008-2009	Marco Turrina	Banca Akros (IT)
2010-2011	Luis Gabarda	Bankia Bolsa (SP)
2012-2013	Gautier Bataille	Bank Degroof (BE)
2013-2015	Ana Santos Martins	Caixa-Banco de Investimento (PT)
2016-2018	Lutz Weiler	equinet Bank (GE)
2019-2019	Guillaume Angué	CIC Market Solutions (FR)
2019-2021	Marco Turrina	Banca Akros (IT)
2021-2023	Guillaume Angué	CIC Market Solutions (FR)

Member Representatives

Country Managers