Dana Dunne, AOL Europe’s chief executive since February 2007, grew up surrounded by technology.

His father worked for the US telecommunications giant AT&T and Mr Dunne can remember being fascinated by the endless stream of punched cards which programmed the computer in his office. Then, at school in the 1970s, he learned to cut code: “I didn’t realise it at the time, but it was revolutionary: a school with a computer at that time.”