Excellence celebrated at inaugural North West Business Masters

THE boss of Co-operative Financial Services, Neville Richardson, put his success at TheBusinessDesk.com’s North West Business Masters awards down to the Co-op’s values.

Mr Richardson was named North West Ambassador, a category sponsored by KPMG, at yesterday’s lunch at Lancashire County Cricket Club’s The Point.

He said: “I’m very proud, I’m a North West person. I was born within 10 miles of here and I’ve always lived around here. To be picked as an ambassador is very flattering.
 
“It reflects our business, we’re owned by our customers, we’re clear about our values and we’re here in the North West and we’ve continued to do business with North West people throughout the recession which many banks have not done.”

Mr Richardson, pictured , 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.

Around 250 people attended the event where business people were recognised in five other categories: Grit, Pride, Adviser, Innovator, and Newcomer.

The boss of Crown Paints, Brian Davidson, who has led a dramatic turnaround at the Lancashire manufacturer under the ownership of Endless, took the 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.

Mr Davidson, pictured second left, said: “Crown is phenomenal business and a phenomenal brand, the brand equity is amazing. When you have a good brand and good people it makes it a lot easier. We’ve focused on controlling the costs of overheads and materials as well as expanding our market share. We’ve taken an extra 2% of the UK market and grown margins by 10%.”

The other contenders were Carolyn Mellor of Homes4U; Geoffrey and Mark Halstead of James Halstead plc; Norman Tenray of OBAS UK and James Waddington of Winterhill Leisure.

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.

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Mr Sinclair, pictured, said: “The outstanding characteristic about Mike Oglesby is his unbelievable energy, he’s completely tireless. He’s older than me but you would never guess that, he works tirelessly. His energy and passion is what made Bruntwood a successful family business in the first place. He would want this award to be on behalf of all the staff and customers. We put 10% of profits into the arts and the amount the staff raise on top of that is incredible.”

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.

Mr Jones, pictured left, said: “We just have fun and we obviously give good advice. Following the introduction of the Legal Services Act we decided to expand into non-legal areas as well. We like to do things differently. We do things in an innovative way and I’ve got a great team behind me.”

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. The other contenders were Preston company Linemark, gluten-free food pioneer Dr Schar, Elite Telecom and Premex.

Mr Smith, pictured right, said: “This is an excellent endorsement of what we believe is a fantastic product. The more we can win awards like this, the more people hear about us, the easier it is to get commercial traction.”

The North West Newcomer award – the first to be announced – was won by Laura Wolfe, pictured below, for her strategic marketing company Journey9UK which she launched last year.

She said: “We’re absolutely delighted, it’s a complete team effort. We’ve had an amazing first year. It’s lovely to get this accolade but we have to follow it up with hard work. We’ve got great clients and people have been very supportive of us.”

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.

Click here to see a picture gallery of the event.