Midlands business figures recognised in New Year’s Honours
LEADING figures from the West Midland business community have been recognised in the New Year’s Honours.
Christine Braddock, principal of Birmingham Metropolitan College, heads the list, becoming a Dame.
Dame Christine has 20 years’ experience in senior leadership of further education colleges and has recently overseen the merger between her college and Stourbridge College. The merger – which is subject to formal consultation and due diligence – will create one of the largest and most significant further education providers in the country.
She is well respected in the business community having been a former president of the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce Group as well as a member of the West Midlands CBI.
She is also the sole female on the board of the Greater Birmingham and Solihull Local Enterprise Partnership.
She is recognised for her services to further education.
Entrepreneur Denys Shortt, a former England hockey international who just missed the cut for the Seoul Olympics squad, receives an OBE for services to the economy of the West Midlands.
Shortt, left, who stepped down from the chairmanship of the Coventry and Warwickshire LEP earlier this year, grew up as part of a family of British expatriates working in the tea industry in India.
He has built up his Stratford-on-Avon DCS Europe health and beauty products business from scratch over 18 years and is now confidently predicting it will reach £200m in annual sales by 2015.
The company has just signed a lease for a 75,000 sq ft warehouse at St. Modwen’s Long Marston Business Park in Stratford.
Shortt said: “I am absolutely delighted and proud to receive this honour. Britain is a great place to build a business and I am delighted that entrepreneurship is recognised within the Queen’s New Year’s Honours list.”
Also receiving the OBE is David Bucknall, right, who stepped down from his position as chairman of Birmingham-based property and construction practice Rider Levett Bucknall earlier this year.
He is currently chairing the quantity surveyor professional group in the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. He is also chair of the Birmingham and Black Country Community Foundation.
He is honoured for services to the construction industry.
Rodney Melville, whose Leamington Spa architects practice is responsible for work on some of the most prestigious buildings in the region, is another to receive the OBE.
Formerly Secretary of the Chequers Trust, he is recognised for services to architecture.
A director of Women in Rural Enterprise, Shropshire-based Polly Gibb receives the OBE for services to rural enterprise.
Professor Richard Parker, director of Research and Technology for Rolls-Royce Group, receives the CBE for services to engineering.
Simona Carol Novelli, operations director at Solihull-based exhibitions company Cox Exhibitions Consultants, receives the MBE for services to international trade.
There are many awards to teachers and headteachers in the region’s academic community for helping to improve education standards while in the political sector there is a Knighthood for long-serving Aldridge-Brownhills MP Richard Shepherd.
He is a former director of the retail food businesses Partridges and Shepherd Foods in London. He then went on to be an underwriter at Lloyds of London from 1974-94.
West Midlands MEPs Michael Cashman and Malcolm Harbour receive CBEs for public and political service and services to the UK economy respectively.
