Region’s best celebrated at North West Business Masters
THE six winners of TheBusinessDesk.com’s first North West Business Masters awards were announced today.
At a high profile awards lunch at Lancashire County Cricket Club’s The Point, Neville Richardson, chief executive of Co-operative Financial Services was named North West Ambassador.
Mr Richardson, who was presented with his award by Jonathan Hurst, KPMG’s Northern chairman, saw off close competition from veteran campaigner Len Collinson and Brother UK’s Phil Jones to win the prestigious award. Other contenders were Clive Drinkwater of UK Trade and Investment and Stobart Group’s CEO Andrew Tinkler.
The boss of Crown Paints, Brian Davidson, who has led a dramatic turnaround at the Lancashire manufacturer under the ownership of Endless, took the North West Grit Award, which was sponsored by law firm Pannone.
Crown has returned to profit in the last year and has been put up for sale by Endless, and is expected to fetch more than £100m.
The North West Pride Award, which recognises outstanding philanthropy by a business or an individual, was awarded to Bruntwood, the Manchester-based property group.
Bruntwood’s director of special projects Colin Sinclair collected the award on behalf of chairman and founder Michael Oglesby from sponsor Rippleffect.
All the candidates in the Pride category were praised for their fantastic support for good causes and local communities. They included North West supermarket chain Booths, Rob Cotton, chief executive of the NCC Group, Oliver Valves and the Opal Foundation.
The close-fought contest for the North West Adviser crown was won by JMW Solicitors’ managing partner Bill Jones. The award recognised his outstanding leadership and refocusing of JMW over the last few years.
He saw off competition from Mark Hovell of George Davies, Tim Buckingham of DLA Piper, corporate dealmaker Paul Lupton of Deloitte and Cobbetts’ Kevin Jaquiss.
AIM-listed green energy pioneer VPhase, which has invented a device which can reduce household electricity costs by up to 10%, was named North West Innovator.
Chief executive Rick Smith was presented with the award by Michael Hartig, area director of Barclays Corporate in Manchester. VPhase narrowly pipped Preston company LInemark and gluten-free food pioneer Dr Schar for the award.
The North West Newcomer award – the first to be announced – was won by Laura Wolfe for her strategic marketing company Journey9UK which she launched last year.
Again in a closely-fought contest there was a handful of votes between Journey9 and exciting start-up MyParcelDelivery.com and Envestors, a private investor network launched by three entrepreneurs, Scott Fletcher, Imran Hakim and Mike Perls.
The other shortlisted companies in the category, sponsored by IFA firm Pareto Financial Planning, were business transformation specialist Insight with Passion and Smoking Gun PR.
