Global operator AC Nielsen's Mario Leeser is uniquely qualified to transcend international barriers. Kit Davies met him Mario Leeser was brought up in Peru, but educated in the United States, he has three passports ­ Peru, Germany, and Argentina ­ and when asked where home is, ACNielsen's group executive for Central Europe shrugs cheerfully: "The world is my home. I feel comfortable in most places." Even today he seems permanently on the move, with only two or three days in England, at ACNielsen's headquarters in Oxford, and with the family at Gerrards Cross, and the rest travelling, mostly around the continent. It's obvious, with this heritage, why Leeser's vision of business growth automatically transcends national boundaries and why he is passionate about Europeanising ­ nay, globalising ACNielsen, pioneering international services that overcome the many differences between the ways countries present their facts. Leeser is far more than a researcher, a figures man. There is nothing academic about him. He's a businessman in the hardest sense. You would assume, if you knew no better, that he was a US passport holder alone. He exudes the mix of cheerful extroversion and hunger for work that would sit comfortably high up in, say, Wal-Mart. His business hero is Jack Welch, CEO of General Electric, the largest conglomerate in the world, who has taken every division and made it either number one or number two in terms of market share. Leeser joined ACNielsen in 1993 and in 1997 became md of the UK and Ireland, taking up his current role in 1998. In that time he has built up the UK operation from fourth most successful in Europe to the first. He loves selling things, in this case ACNielsen's myriad services. And not just selling them, exporting them, too ­ to the whole world. And he's determined to make that sales growth easier. "Take a soft drink can, being sold across Europe. We have 18 countries in the EU and at present each one presents data about the sales of that can in different ways ­ from the definition of what a can is, to when the start of the week is, to the financial year, and so on and so on. We are investing to harmonise this data so we can provide a far better service to multinationals." He beams: "We have created a global dictionary, so that we can standardise the data, and reveal the marketing implications across borders." The IT has to be substantially shaken up for this, of course, in some cases rebuilt from scratch so it can cope with multi-country requirements, from languages to currencies. But the depth of understanding is as crucial as the width, Leeser stresses. "Take Sweden which is very keen on factors such as whether a product is environmentally friendly. The system must get right down to the lowest common denominator so it can reflect those sorts of things." But there's more to barriers than just different ways of presenting data. Take ACNielsen's work to generate store level key account data ­ store by store breakdowns of sales. Here, he's been helped by what he praises as British food retailing's open culture. He'll have to overcome the less open approach of continental retailers if a store-by-store service to suppliers ­ enabling them to develop value added products and micromarketing ­ can really be developed in the mainland EU. "UK retailers are the most advanced in Europe in sharing information, the most open. Sainsbury only started last year, but Somerfield, Safeway, and Asda have been doing it for a number of years. But this isn't happening in the rest of Europe. Developing this there will depend on how open the retailers are prepared to be. Getting Ahold, Metro, Carrefour to release store by store data is a very slow process. We are trying to persuade them. I think Britain has proven this is a win-win scenario. It's a growth business for the whole marketplace." Work has also begun on such harmonisation in North America, where suppliers want to see convergence between Canada and the US ­ although with just two countries as opposed to the horrendous variety of the EU, "it's a project of much lower complexity". With all this experience in harmonisation, it is not surprising that ACNielsen is involved in developing the internet trading exchanges. "If a can of Coke is coded differently from retailer to retailer how can they collaborate in these exchanges?" says Leeser. "We have been working on agreeing data parameters for product categories with them. These are big projects but, as they say, the devil is in the detail!" But the detail in the store data is not enough. Leeser claims ACNielsen has a unique selling point as a service by having the largest number of households monitored on a global basis ­ 10,500 in the UK alone, with shoppers scanning their goods and sending the data in via modem. Again, he is anxious to export the integration of household with store data, revealing factors such as household loyalty. Leeser is also ambitious about ACNielsen keeping ahead in watching e-shopping following the creation of ACNielsen e-Ratings and the joint venture with NetRatings last year. It now monitors internet behaviour across 200,000 households globally, and some 8,000 in the UK. "It's the suppliers and retailers who are most interested in our conventional marketing data," he says. "But with the internet data, everybody is interested ­ anyone who has anything to do with the net and e-commerce, even bankers and brokers. As a service it is growing very nicely. The UK has been the first in Europe to launch such a service." Leeser admits he sees little future for the e-shopping start-ups. "I have thought long and hard about their business model and I do not see any way that they will be profitable. Take Webvan. It is run by the former chairman of Andersen Consulting, they have experience from FedEx, they know the challenges, and yet they're struggling." He has almost always been a globetrotter: "I got to know the world through my business career." After gaining an MBA at Boston University he started work for Dun & Bradstreet, credit rating provider to the credit and finance industries. "That's when all my travel actually started. I started as an international management trainee and progressed through the ranks." He eventually moved back "home" to Peru as Dun & Bradstreet's local general manager ­ but only for two years. It was a dangerous country to live in. "The Shining Path terrorist group was very active at the time." As the head of a large company in Lima, Leeser was an obvious target. "It's the only job where I'd been paid danger pay," he laughs. When his wife Ruth became pregnant with their first son, Leeser decided enough was enough and moved to New York. "Believe me," he says. "Even New York was much safer than Peru at that time." And then from New York he spent time with Dun & Bradstreet in Austria, Germany and then Australia, where he looked after business in the South Pacific, before starting with ACNielsen in Germany. Meanwhile ACNielsen is getting used to its new parentage ­ since mid-February the company has been part of the VNU Corporation. "We're having an exciting time talking to our new owners, and going from being a publically traded US owned company to a division of a European organisation. "Before we were very much driven by monthly and quarterly results in order to meet the expectations of Wall Street analysts. The culture is different in the Netherlands. I'm not sure what it is going to feel like." He admits to loving his job, and says he has never wanted to do anything else. "My forte is running businesses. I enjoy running them in an international environment." With the stress on international: "ACNielsen used to be so UK focused. But last year we exported 36 employees to other countries. That is something that just would not have happened 10 years ago. It's a real transformation. "When I joined the UK was a net importer of talent. Now we are a net exporter. We're spreading some of the best practices of the UK across other countries." Leeser tries to spend as many weekends as he can in Britain with his family. His wife Ruth is Mexican ­ "I have a wife who can adapt easily to different countries, which is just as well!"­ and he has two sons, Andrew, 17, and Alan, nine, who are both talented ice hockey players. Andrew played last year in the Under-20 World Championships for Mexico, while Alan is captain of the under-10 ice hockey team in Slough. Most of Mario's free time is spent watching ice hockey. He doesn't play himself. "Hey, I come from Peru, where I never even saw snow." The affection for hot countries endures. The UK is his second favourite country, and the first? Australia. He says he adores the quality of life, the people, the natural world, and the safety. But doesn't he find England cold? "Well, I went to school in Vermont which is much colder. And I spent three years in Austria!" All the global extremes covered, then. {{PROFILE }}