Revealed: the new management team at Nottingham Forest

The new owner of Nottingham Forest, Evangelos Marinakis, vowed to bring back the “glory days” to the City Ground when the deal to buy the Club went through yesterday (18 May).

Marinakis heads up a consortium who, he hopes, will help lift Forest back to the Premier League. But who are these people. Today, TheBusinessDesk.com can reveal the team Marinakis has put together.

Owners

Evangelos Marinakis

Evangelos Marinakis is the founder and chairman of Capital Maritime & Trading Corp. Marinakis is named in the Lloyd’s List “One Hundred Most Influential People in the Shipping Industry”.

Since August 2010 he became the majority owner and president of Olympiacos FC. He is also experienced in the governance of football in his role as Vice President of the Hellenic Football Federation and President of Superleague Greece. Marinakis calls himself “a passionate football fan” and “a believer in how important a role the sport, and especially a club, can have as a force for good in the community”. Marinakis has also been active in local politics and was elected as member of the Piraeus City Council.

Sokratis Kominakis has been one of the most successful managers serving at top managerial positions in renowned multinational companies like Procter & Gamble, Kraft, Vodafone, and TIM. He became chief executive of TIM Hellas in 2004 at the age of 36 (the youngest CEO in a major telecoms company at the time according to FT).

After successfully leading the sale of TIM Hellas from Telecom Italia to a group of private equity investors and two and half years later to Weather Investments, he resigned from his position at the end of 2008 and he set up an investment consulting firm, Milos Advisors, which advised big international private equity funds on their investments in Greece and the Balkans region. He is an active investor himself in many sectors but primarily shipping and real estate. He was vice president of Olympiacos between July 2010 and May 2011.

Senior Team

Nicholas Randall

Nicholas Randall QC was called to the bar in 1990 and was appointed as Queen’s Counsel in 2013. He is recognized as a leading sports lawyer in the independent legal directories. He is a member of the Premier League Disputes Panel and sits regularly as an arbitrator. He is described as the “go to” silk for football related cases. His past clients have included Sir Bobby Robson, Kevin Keegan, Roy Keane, George Graham, David O’Leary, the LMA, the PFA as well as numerous clubs, players and agents.

Ioannis Vrentzos has extensive senior level experience across the investment banking, finance and football sectors. He has been managing director of Olympiacos since 2010 and has overseen the restructuring of the club.

As CEO of Nottingham Forest he will be moving to Nottingham to run the club.

Samantha Gordon spent seven years with Norwich City, including managing their transition from the

Samantha Gordon

Championship to the Premier League. She has a proven track record of financial turnaround of a football club, having cleared £21m of external debt whilst simultaneously achieving promotion from League One to the Premier League. Her job will be to help Forest to achieve comply with financial fair play regulations.

David Cook will join the club as chief commercial officer. Cook is a sports marketing specialist with experience concluding some of the biggest commercial deals in the sports sector.

Since September 2012, Cook has held the position of senior sponsorship manager at Etihad Airways. He will have responsibility for devising the company’s global sponsorship strategy and negotiating all commercial partnerships for the airline. He has concluded multi-million dollar sponsorship agreements around the world and in football, cricket, motorsport and fashion.

Previous to his role with Etihad Airways, Cook was head of business development at Celtic where he delivered substantial revenue growth for the club. He also held the position of international business development manager at Everton.

Marinakis says Nottingham Forest FC will seek to become “the model club” in England for fan and community participation. The Club’s new board and management will launch two initiatives this summer.

Fan representatives and delegates of the tertiary institutions will be invited to form an Advisory Council. The chair of the Council will participate regularly in board meetings as an observer and offer hands-on input and advice gathered through the Advisory Council meetings.

Forest will also launch the Nottingham Forest Youth Council, whose chair will be representing the views and aspirations of Nottingham’s youth to the Nottingham Forest board.

Club chairman Nicholas Randall, QC will be in charge of both initiatives and will outline the details well before the beginning of the 2017-18 season.

Marinakis said “Nottingham Forest’s supporters have been magnificent in a difficult season and now my Management Team want their voices to be heard and include their input in our decision-making. These forums will make that possible for the first time and in a meaningful way.”