2014 Voting Panel

Brian is co-chair of the Private Business Awards and a Partner in our London audit practice who specialises in working with private businesses, leading our London audit offering in this space.

He has extensive experience of the Technology and Media sectors and has supported a number of his clients through acquisitions and capital market transactions as they have grown and expanded, including AIM, Main Market and US IPOs.

Brian also leads PwC’s Fast Growth Companies programme for entrepreneurial businesses, a number of which are Venture Capital backed (www.pwc.co.uk/fastgrowth) and writes a regular SME Surgery column for the Times online.

Stuart joined finnCap in March 2012 and was appointed Head of Corporate Finance in July 2012.

Stuart originally qualified as an accountant with PwC before joining Beeson Gregory which was acquired by Evolution Group in 2002 where he worked until 2012. He has extensive experience of all aspects of public company work including fundraisings, Takeover Code work, the Listing Rules and AIM Rules. He is a member of the AIM Advisory Panel.

Mark Brown has 35 years experience within HSBC across a range of Retail and Corporate disciplines in London and SE of England.

He has led the Bank’s largest Corporate Banking team, based in London for 11 years, managing mid market/large/multi national corporates comprising quoted plc’s, large private concerns, charitable operations, professional firms including large Non Bank Financial Institutions, Leveraged and Trade portfolios including our Offshore business in the Channel Islands and Isle of Man.

Aged 53, married with 2 children, living in Dartford, Kent. Interests include golf, rugby, football, motor cycling, motor racing, computing.

Brought up near Saffron Walden in Essex, Charles Dunstone attended Uppingham School. He had intended to do a business degree at Liverpool University but enjoyed his job as a computer salesman for NEC during his year off too much, and his plans to go to university were abandoned.

When Dunstone transferred from selling computers to mobile phones, he realised that corporate clients got good deals and were well looked after, but no one was catering for small businesses, the self-employed and Joe Public - for whom mobile phones would be the most useful. In 1989, Dunstone set up Carphone Warehouse (CPW) with £6,000 of his savings and began selling mobile phones out of his flat in Marylebone.

Dunstone built the business on the premise that what the company stands for is more important than what it sells; in this case, a promise of great customer service and the ability to deliver independent and impartial advice in an ever-complex world of mobile phone purchasing. With endless choice in the handset and tablet market and millions of tariff combinations, Carphone Warehouse exists to demystify the complicated array of choices that confront customers and to inspire and guide in this connected world, making people’s lives better through technology.

With the same principles of impartial advice and unbeatable customer service, Carphone Warehouse has expanded beyond the UK into nine countries in Europe and today has over 2,400 stores across Europe, principally under the Phone House brand.

In July 2000 the company floated on the London Stock Exchange and based on an issue price of 200p, the company was valued at approximately £1.7 billion.

TalkTalk
In November 2002, Carphone Warehouse Group acquired Opal Telecom, a corporate fixed line, voice telecommunications network provider. The acquisition provided the opportunity to launch a cost effective residential fixed line service to compete with BT. The company’s landline service, TalkTalk was launched in February 2003 with the unique service proposition that all customers talk to each other for free, forever.

In April 2006, TalkTalk launched the UK’s first ever free broadband service changing the broadband market place forever. Through both acquisition (Tele2’s UK business and OneTel in 2005, AOL Broadband in 2006 and Tiscali UK in 2009) and organic growth, TalkTalk became the fastest growing telecoms business in the UK.

Today, TalkTalk Group has over 5 million customers and offers home phone, broadband and mobile to consumers with the introduction of the YouView TV platform, a partnership with BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Five, Arqiva and BT, scheduled for Spring 2012. It also provides telecoms services to 180,000 UK businesses.

Demerger
On March 29th, 2010 Carphone Warehouse and TalkTalk separated to form two new holding companies, TalkTalk (which will be the holding company for the fixed line voice and broadband telecommunications business) and Carphone Warehouse.

Dunstone became Chairman of both TalkTalk and Carphone Warehouse and remains actively involved in both businesses.

Knighthood
Dunstone remains passionate about his original aims; to put the customer first and to ensure that all employees share in the company’s success. He is also Chairman of The Prince’s Trust. In June 2012, he received a Knighthood for services to the telecommunications industry and his charitable work.

Interests
Sailing.

Trevor Fenwick is a major shareholder in and Executive Chairman of Euromonitor International, the leading provider of analytical market research and consumer data.

Euromonitor operates globally from 12 major research hubs developing data and research tools to meet the marketing information needs of companies doing business internationally. The information is distributed as an online database and in print to corporate, government and academic users worldwide.

Trevor joined Euromonitor in 1978 and has overseen the growth of the company from a UK printed reference publisher to global digital data and market analysis organisation.

He is Chair of the Data Publishers Committee and a Board member of the PPA, past chair of the DPA and the EADP. He has been actively involved with UK and European government in advising on issues surrounding intellectual property is a past member of the Advisory Panel on Public Sector information and the Legal Deposit Advisory Panel and co-edited “Copyright in the Digital Age: Industry Issues and Impacts”.

Euromonitor won a Queen’s Award for Enterprise 2014 for International Trade and the Private Business of the Year 2013 Award (PwC/HSBC).

Trevor is now investing in angel and start-up companies in the UK and the USA. He has a strong personal commitment to vocational training, and mentoring students and apprentices in digital and data publishing through donations to the Stationers’ Foundation and Ravensbourne and is a Governor of the Stationers’ Crown Woods Academy.

Mark is Director General of the Institute for Family Business (IFB), the UK’s largest and leading organisation representing and promoting the interests of Britain’s family business sector – which generates a quarter of UK GDP and provides over nine million jobs.

He is a strategic communications and public affairs professional, with a track record of leading and delivering high profile agenda-setting public policy, media and stakeholder programmes that have significantly enhanced the reputation and results of organisations.

Before joining the IFB he spent ten years as director of communications of The British Beer & Pub Association and five years as head of policy for the Institute of Management.

Prior to this, Mark spent ten years in management consultancy focusing on the delivery of public policy and communications counsel for senior management in a range of blue chip companies. He has an MSc in European Political Economy from the London School of Economics and a B Soc Sc in Political Science from Birmingham University. He is married with two children, Jemima (13) and Tom (11).

Baroness Neville-Rolfe was appointed Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Intellectual Property at the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills in July 2014. She has been a Conservative member of the House of Lords since 2013.

Baroness Neville-Rolfe is the Minster responsible for UK national intellectual property strategy and for the Intellectual Property Office (IPO).

In addition to IP, Baroness Neville-Rolfe is responsible for the work of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills in the House of Lords. She also has responsibility for coordinating EU engagement across all policy areas of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, and is co-chair of the Professional and Business Services (PBS) Council.

Baroness Neville-Rolfe has been honoured by the Queen for her service on the Foreign and Commonwealth Board (CMG, 2005) and for services to industry and the voluntary sector (DBE, 2012).

Baroness Neville-Rolfe held senior management positions at Tesco plc from 1997 to 2013. She was Company Secretary from 2004–2006 and was an executive director on the main Board from 2006–2013.

James Reed is Chairman of REED, the recruitment, HR and training specialist. He became Operations Director of Reed Employment in 1994, and was appointed Chief Executive in 1997.

The company now spans Europe, the Middle East and Asia Pacific and delivers recruitment services across 30 different specialisms. REED also runs reed.co.uk, Europe's biggest private sector job site and delivers Welfare to Work services through Reed in Partnership, placing over 125,000 people who had been unemployed back into work.

Before joining REED, James worked for the Body Shop, Saatchi and Saatchi, Afghanaid, Help the Aged, and latterly as a producer of documentaries and factual programmes for BBC TV. James graduated from Christ Church, Oxford in 1984 with a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) and he subsequently gained an MBA from Harvard Business School. Put Your Mindset to Work, a book co-authored by James Reed and Paul G. Stoltz, was published in May 2011.

Steve Rigby is Chief Operating Officer for Rigby Group PLC. The group founded by Sir Peter Rigby in 1975 has transitioned into a substantial family concern with net assets in excess of £300m.

He joined the business in 1989 and assisted in the creation of Byte Computer Superstore where he operated as Managing Director from 1996 – 1998. This business was subsequently sold to Dixons Stores Group and integrated in their PC World brand.

From 1998 – 2001 he managed and led the group’s distribution businesses, which doubled in size and tripled in profitability during this term. He later went on the transform SCC, the groups IT services business, running the UK operations and latterly the Dutch, Italian, German and Spanish business.

In 2006 Rigby & Rigby was launched and quickly became a top three developer of prime London residential property working in the super prime markets of Knightsbridge and Mayfair.

Through recent years he has led a substantial change in the nature of the group by selling a number of loss making subsidiaries, acquiring a series of businesses and most latterly in November 2012 successfully selling a £1.2bn pa division SDG for £220m.

Today Rigby Group PLC has a number of diversified assets ranging from IT to Property, Aviation to Hotels and Investments to Private Equity.

He operates the family private office dealing with all investments, finance and tax affairs and is driving a change management programme to deliver a high yielding, diverse and secure family business.

Steve lives near Banbury and is married to Jenny and he has three children aged 14, 8 and 6. Steve is an obsessive polo player and has spent many years racing cars.