Dirk is a Dutch American (though he renounced his American citizenship about ten years ago) who has lived in the UK for 34 years. Having got a BA in Economics and an MBA in Finance in the US he joined Bankers Trust and worked for Banque Indosuez later. While enjoying banking he decided his future lay at the other side of the table and in 1985 he joined TIP Trailer Rental as European Credit Manager. This started a whirlwind of financial experience crunched into a short period of time. 

In 1986 TIP did a management buyout where Dirk was the youngest person allowed to participate. Five days after the MBO the company broke its banking covenants and Dirk was pulled in as the only person with banking experience. It was a technical breach, and the bank leading consortium was Bankers Trust, so the issue was quickly resolved.  TIP floated on the London and Amsterdam stock exchanges in 1988 (first company ever to do this) with Dirk leading the due diligence, floatation, and funding functions.  

TIP got Dirk promoted to Treasurer and Company Secretary and in the next two years he dealt with five acquisitions and share issues, expanding the debt portfolio from £40m to £200m and helped the fleet expand from 10,000 trailers to 22,000 trailers operating in nine countries and currencies.  

In 1990 Dirk was asked to take Willhire, an East Anglia based rental company with 15 locations, out of receivership for Brown Shipley. In 1995 he led an MBO of Willhire selling it to Arriva in 1998. Subsequently he was appointed CEO of ACIS, the then leading but troubled UK supplier of real time information systems for buses, by the venture capital firm which owned it. ACIS was sold 5 years later for £25 million. This was followed by the turnaround of City Car Club, the UK’s first commercial car club, which is where he met Ismael. 

Various other companies followed including ten years running a charitable care home where Dirk learned about compliance and managed the transition to GDPR. In 2019 Dirk retired until Ismael asked him to come help with the EOT/MBO of Liquid Fleet in 2022.