18 | PublicAffairsNews | July 2012

PROFILE – DIRK VENNIX

You could never accuse Dirk Vennix of shirking difficult chal-lenges: his last two jobs have in-volved lobbying for arguably two of the most ill-regarded industries

going. Having left the Tobacco Manufacturers’ Association last year, the veteran of over 20 years in public affairs now heads up the Association of British Bookmakers.

Vennix admits both indus-tries are “under sustained as-sault from campaigners”, but he insists on the importance of monitoring “critics and antago-nists” and engaging in balanced debate with them as often as possible. “You have to with-stand pressure on a number of fronts, and your leadership is really tested,” he says.

Vennix’s father, liberated by the British during World War II, was a keen admirer of Winston Churchill, and Vennix says he finds his inspiration in the wartime prime minister’s dogged tenacity, in particular his mantra: “You stick to your beliefs and you never give up”. He even does a mean im-pression of the great leader.

Instinctive rapportVennix entered the public affairs world after five years as a parliamentary journal-ist on a Dutch daily, which he credits for helping him develop an “instinctive rap-port” with the media.

“I’ve got a sort of combination of skills that are well-suited to corporate affairs, in terms of having the communication skills as well as the political antennae for build-ing the right sort of relationships.”

He spent three years at Liverpool John Moores University, as head of marketing and PR, before moving to Centrica – then British Gas – “where I really got the bug for public affairs”.

The big move eventu-ally came when he was re-cruited as director of com-munications at the Tobacco Manufacturers’ Associa-tion. A large part of the role involved trying to raise awareness of the tobacco black market, a “bad thing for both business and the Treasury” who were losing nearly £3bn a year. The real battle was trying “to make sure taxation wasn’t going to go up disproportionate-ly, because that would only lead to more people buying

from the black market or going overseas.” “It’s pretty fair to say I was quite proac-

tive in developing new relationship build-ing programmes with the media and par-liamentarians, and I doubled the number of contacts we had with them,” he says.

Like a glove After three years at the TMA, becoming chief executive at the Association of Brit-ish Bookmakers was a role that immedi-ately “fitted like a glove”. He says: “Both are highly pressurised, highly scrutinised, tightly regulated environments, and they have plenty of issues.”

Vennix says the move was simple: the two industries share many of the same contacts within government, and both have the same challenge - “facing a deluge of regulatory and taxation measures”.

Lobbying for tobacco and gambling

Association of British Bookmakers chief executive Dirk Vennix previously oversaw public affairs for the Tobacco Manufacturers’ Association. He tells Richard Welbirg what it’s like being under ‘sustained assault’

BORN: March 1962, Rotterdam

EDUCATION: Erasmus University, Rotterdam; MBA University of Bradford

LIVES: Buckinghamshire

HOBBIES: Running marathons, Arsenal

CV DATES

2011-2012 Chief Executive, Association of British Bookmakers

2008-2011 Communications Director, Tobacco Manufacturers’ Association

2006-2008 Director of Campaign Operations, Enterprise Insight

1996-2005 Corporate affairs roles, Centrica

1993-1996 Head of Marketing & PR, Liverpool John Moores University

DIRK VENNIX FACTFILE

Vennix says he finds his inspiration in Churchill’s dogged tenacity, in particular his mantra: ‘You stick to your beliefs and you never give up’.

July 2012 | PublicAffairsNews | 19

PROFILE – DIRK VENNIX

“It’s certainly not favourable when the Government comes up with a duty of 20%, which is meant to be fiscally neutral for the whole machine gaming community, but actually we worked out that the fiscal-ly neutral rate for the whole industry was 16% – so that’s a punitive tax hike, which isn’t favourable to us at all.”

And Vennix insists he will “never give up” trying to persuade Chloe Smith, the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, to reverse the changes. “This is going to cost jobs, will close businesses, across the ma-chine gaming sector,” he warns.

“The wider perspective is that all these sectors are part of a £200bn leisure indus-try sector, and it will lead to contraction of that sector, and in a time when this Govern-ment is desperately trying to protect jobs... you’d argue they should give us incentives to keep jobs and to grow the businesses, and this will do the exact opposite.”

He is not averse to plans for a register of lobbyists, and notes that the European reg-ister of interests works quite well: “They don’t have an issue with lobbying per se, they just want transparency, and I would favour that point of view, but I think it

does have to be across the board”. He includes eve-ryone who has an interest in engaging with Parlia-ment, from charities to trade unionists.

Divided loyalties? Vennix was born in the Netherlands and went to

school from a young age in Cyprus, before being taught by Anglicans in Jerusalem. He now lives in Buckinghamshire with his wife Cathy and daughter Evie, and wist-fully admits he has little time to relax un-der the demands of the job. He confesses to being a “passionate football fan”, and a season ticket holder at Arsenal:“I’ve had a few lean years,” he explains in his perfect British accent.

After 19 years in the UK, did he find himself with divided loyalties during the recent European Championships? He ini-tially backed his native country, but glum-ly, he admits to not having “much to shout about with regards the Oranje this time around”. He also threw his weight behind his wife’s Ireland.

Alas, both teams crashed out of the tournament in a thoroughly disappoint-ing fashion. But it could have been worse. Thankfully for Vennix, he had managed to restrain himself from betting on a Nether-lands-Ireland final. PAN

says it’s his role to go out to bat for them, pointing out the good they do and defend-ing them against criticism.

“I’m protecting the business interests of my members at all times, so what I do is highlight the good work they do, and then obviously combat the legislative, repu-tational and regulatory threats... making sure that we’re the voice of the industry when you know that we’ll face hostility in some parts of the media and the political world.”

He reels off the statistics that “people of-ten forget”: that the bookmakers are a £3bn industry supporting 100,000 jobs in the UK; that a third of employees are 18-25 and half are women – “two groups the Government are focusing on getting into work”.

Vennix is happy with the ease of com-municating with the current government, but rather less impressed by their policies. He is critical of the number of public con-sultations – “about 25 in the last twelve months” – including the machine gaming review, the horseracing levy, and Mary Portas’ high streets review, which he warns are bringing “death by a thousand cuts” to the industry.

He also hopes for some form of cross-departmental forum, and argues that gov-ernment departments are “not always on the same page” as each other. But, pre-dictably, the big issue is taxation: machine gaming duty in particular:

Former colleagues tell how Vennix rises to the challenge when his back against the wall. Christopher Ogden, who retired last year as chief executive at the TMA, says: “Dirk did a great job. He handles a tough brief well and both TMA and now ABB have given him plenty of challenges. He has a bold approach and is particularly adept at establishing contact with politi-cians and the media to get his messages heard in the face of hostile opposition. His sense of humour serves him well as does being an avid football fan.”

Vince Keddie, a former contact at the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills describes Vennix as “very bright and engaging, serious about his job but able to maintain good relations with his col-leagues”.

Unintended consequencesVennix certainly gives the impression of being fully committed to the cause. He says many of the measures imposed on both the tobacco and gambling industries are “disproportionate and unwarranted”, and prone to suffer from “the law of unin-tended negative consequences”.

After a “hectic” year of regular 70-hour weeks, the ABB has a “lean and mean op-eration”. Their team of six represents four out of five of the 8,500 high street betting shops in the UK. He pays tribute to its “active and engaged membership”, and

Vennix says gambling like tobacco, is a “highly scrutinised, tightly regulated” industry

I protect the interests of my members, I know we’ll face hostility in parts of the media and political world.