12/02/2024
Ten years ago this week Philip and I were in Dublin sharing a few pints of Guinness and thinking about our future employment options, having departed Aon at the end of 2013. As the Guinness begun to work its magic, we rather rashly agreed to set up our own independent firm, with the aim of helping Trustees and Sponsors to manage their pension schemes more effectively. This idea pretty quickly turned into Cosan Consulting, which rather appropriately is a Gaelic word meaning guide or path….This seemed particularly apt for the kind of work we were hoping to do !
We also made a commitment at that time to follow a simple business philosophy of treating our colleagues, clients and business partners in a way that we would want be treated ourselves. This means respect, empathy, partnership, openness and striving for excellence. This has stood us in good stead over the last 10 years and remains central to the way in which we operate day to day.
It’s fair to say, that we learnt an awful lot in that first year, and remarkably during that summer Emma and Marekha left their safe and well paid corporate jobs to join us. Happily, they are both still with us today, along with a team of incredibly talented and committed people who share our excitement about what we do and are unafraid of getting their hands dirty. I am sure that we have all heard it said many times over the years that “our employees are our number one asset” but we can categorically confirm that for a small, close knit firm like us, this is 100% the case !
Ten years on, we still enjoy the odd Guinness or two and no doubt we will be celebrating our first decade with a couple of libations over the next few weeks. We will also be hoping to formally mark the occasion with clients and friends across the industry later this year, as well as at our (now famous) annual Charity Sailing Regatta in Lymington in September. So please do watch this space !
Finally, a big thankyou to everyone who has supported us along the way. You know who you are and we hugely appreciate your trust and belief in Cosan. As you can see, we’ve attached a few (hopefully) humorous pictures of certain moments over the last ten years. Whilst it’s clear the years haven’t necessarily been kind to either of us, its fair to say we have had an awful lot of fun along the way !!
