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Mark Throdahl is the American chief executive of King’s Lynn-based medical devices company Bespak, which employs about 560 people in the town.
Mr Throdahl has stated his intention to double profits through organic growth and acquisition over the next five years, and the business issued excellent results for the six months to October 2006, with revenue up 61pc to £62.1m, and pre-tax profits up 39pc to £8.5m.
He joined Bespak in June 2001, after spending 13 years with Becton Dickinson, an American healthcare, devices, systems and services company. During this time he held various roles including president of Nippon Becton Dickinson, in Tokyo; sector president of drug delivery; and, finally, senior vice-president.
Prior to this, Mr Throdahl was with Mallinckrodt, Inc, a medical devices and diagnostic products supplier. Bespak helped develop the first asthma inhalers more than 40 years ago. More recently it has worked with pharmaceutical giant Pfizer to launch Exubera, the world’s first inhalable insulin treatment for diabetics.
Mike Britch is managing director of NPS Property Consultants, which is owned by Norfolk County Council, and provides property services for the public and private sectors. The company is based at St Andrew’s Business Park, and has a turnover of around £50m, and more than 1,000 staff working out of 19 offices in the UK.
Mr Britch has spent 30 years in the construction industry, and also performs a corporate property role for the county council. He is a board member for the Local Government Task Force and regional champion for Rethinking Construction for the Eastern Region.
Before joining NPS in 1993 he spent 13 years with Taylor Woodrow, where he became regional manager. NPS sealed its fifth partnership arrangement in April when it announced a 15-year contract with Devon County Council to provide property services in the south-west. Similar partnerships are in place in Waltham Forest, Wigan, Wakefield and Stockport. NPS completed its first commercial acquisition last December with the purchase of John Packer Associates, an East Sussex-based specialist in sustainable design and building services.
Civil engineer Richard Higham is chief executive of offshore services group Acteon, whose 11 specialist engineering businesses operate in the global oil and gas industry.
Acteon – formerly UWG Group – is one of Norfolk’s fastest-growing businesses, and employs about 600 people. US private equity company First Reserve completed a £70m deal for a majority stake in Acteon in October 2006. At that time Mr Higham – who has been with the business for more than 15 years – said Acteon would continue to grow both organically, and through acquisition.
The business started in 1989, and provides a comprehensive range of services linking “seabed to surface”. Its four main business areas cover the foundation and mooring of rigs; conductor systems linking wells to the surface; riser pipes that carry fluids to and from wells; and the decommissioning of wells. The group comprises Menck, InterMoor, UWG, Claxton, 2H Offshore, WellCut, CIS, Team Energy, Trident Offshore, Aquatic Engineering and Construction, and Mirage Machines. Mr Higham’s career previously included six years as a drilling/petroleum engineer with Amoco, and six years as a chief petroleum engineer with Amerada Hess.
Mike Colley is chief executive of Thetford based household products firm the Jeyes Group and has been with the company for 20 years.
Jeyes was established in 1877 by a chemist called John Jeyes who created the first patented disinfectant known as Jeyes Fluid, which is still a best-seller today. Jeyes was awarded the Royal Warrant in 1897 and has become widely recognised as a world leading expert in household and professional hygiene with brands such as Bloo, Parozone and Wet Ones refreshing wipes.
Mr Colley joined the company in 1987, became managing director in 1994 and chief executive in 1998. Mr Colley and a close management team completed a management buyout in 2002 and they commenced a transformation which has seen the business expand with 50pc of its sales now in overseas markets in Europe, the US and Asia.
Today Jeyes employs 1,500 people at its manufacturing sites across the world, which includes Mexico, China, Germany, Czech Republic and the UK, including its headquarters in Thetford.
Mark Jeffries this year succeeded Jonathan Barclay as senior partner of law firm Mills & Reeve.
He had previously been the firm’s managing partner since 2001. Mills & Reeve has offices in Norwich, Birmingham, Cambridge and London. In 2006 turnover grew by 22 per cent to £49.7m – a fourth year of double digit growth. The firm has 740 staff, and is listed by the Sunday Times as one of the best 100 companies to work for.
Mr Jeffries read law at St John’s College, Cambridge and attended law school in Guildford. He joined Mills & Reeve in 1979, and became a partner in 1985. After managing the Norwich office from 1990-1996 he became responsible for the firm’s lawyers who deliver services to corporate clients. In 1998 he assumed responsibility for the firm’s newly-established Birmingham office and in 2001 was elected managing partner.
Mr Jeffries’ background is in transactional work for businesses. He has also specialised in commercial work for other professional practices and their partners. Mr Jeffries is a former governor of Town Close House School, Norwich, and is company secretary and former trustee of the Norfolk Education, Industry and Commerce Group. He sits on the Eastern Region Council of the CBI, and became a trustee of the Norfolk Community Foundation in 2005. Leisure interests include cycling, skiing and cars.
Brian Carlton is one of the senior figures at the UK’s fastest growing food businesses, Premier Foods.
Although the company’s headquarters is in Hertfordshire, the company has a number of operating sites in East Anglia, at Long Sutton, Wisbech, King’s Lynn, Methwold and Bury St Edmunds. Premier manufactures a host of leading brands, including Batchelor soups, Loyd Grossman sauces, Branston pickle and baked beans and the Quorn meat-free range.
In 2007 it acquired RHM, which owns brands such as Mr Kipling cakes and Hovis bread and now has sales of more than £1bn. Mr Carlton, Premier’s HR director, divides his time between houses in Norfolk and Hertfordshire.
He joined Premier Foods in 1994 as head of personnel for the canned foods division, which is based at Long Sutton. His responsibilities have since been extended to embrace all HR activities across the group. He was appointed to the operations board in October, 2006.
Prior to joining Premier, Brian held HR and operational roles in Chrysler UK, K Shoes, Metal Box and Smurfit Packaging.
Lord Edward Iveagh has been chairman of Elveden Farms since 1992, and has transformed the 22,500 acre Suffolk estate into a diverse and profitable business.
A member of the brewery-founding Guinness dynasty, Lord Iveagh, 37, topped a richest ‘under-30’ list during the late 1990s, with wealth estimated at £2bn. Lifestyle, cookware and garden shops recently opened at Elveden to complement the new estate shop and café restaurant.
The estate’s interests also include farming, food and produce, a hedge retail service, a four-mile horse course, Christmas trees, Christmas experiences, holiday cottages, and property.
Lord Iveagh became a board member of the East of England Development Agency in 2007. He is a non-executive director of golf course operator Burhill Estates, and high-wire forest adventure operator Adventure Forest. He is chairman of the Brecks Tourism Partnership, and charitable roles have included chairman of Chadacre Agricultural Trust, patron of the West Suffolk Macmillan Cancer Appeal, and chairman of East Anglian Air Ambulance’s investment committee.
Dick Palmer is principal of City College Norwich, one of the largest colleges of further and higher education in the country.
City College Norwich has about 16,000 students, a staff of more than 1,000, and turnover of almost £40m a year. More than 5,500 young people aged 14-19 are expected to attend from September this year. The college has three Centres of Vocational Excellence (CoVEs), and is one of the country’s first National Skills Academies (NSAs), in financial services.
Mr Palmer arrived in 2003, and has seen student success rates rise by more than 10pc. He was previously deputy principal at Lewisham College, and has also taught at colleges in Leeds, Selby, York, South London, and Lambeth. His teaching domain includes ICT, students with learning difficulties and disabilities, and teaching teachers.
Prior to his 20-year teaching career he held various positions, including running his own business.
Andre Serruys is head of the SPC Group, which in May, 2007 sold its Norfolk-based metal recycling business Easco in a multi-million-pound deal. The business was acquired by waste management company Sita UK – part of French industrial and services group Suez – for an undisclosed sum.
Easco was launched in Watton in 1984 before moving to Lenwade in 1995. It employs about 300 people, and has 13 recycling sites in the UK. Huge growth has been fuelled by strong metal demand from India and China. Last year it handled 512,000 tonnes of ferrous and non-ferrous metals, and its own acquisitions have included Norwich-based Peruzzi’s Metals.
Mr Serruys – son of the late Harry Serruys – was named in joint 55th place in this year’s Management Today list of Britain’s top 100 entrepreneurs. SPC was rated 90th in this year’s Sunday Times Profit Track 100 guide to Britain’s private firms with the fastest growing profits – up by an average of 46pc a year from £3m in 2003 to £9.4m in 2006. The guide highlights SPC’s £100m residential development and commercial property portfolio, and its interests in the automotive and aerospace component industries. SPC still owns Oasis Sports and Leisure Club, in Norwich.
Tom Harrison is the chief executive of fast-growing Norfolk based property business Morston Assets.
Based in Holt, Morston Assets was established in the early 1990s by Mr Harrison and former Kwik-Fit founder Sir Tom Farmer.
Its sites stretch from Inverness to Weston-super-Mare, with a potential development pipeline of £1billion.
Morston is the developer of the millennium community project which
will be building 900 new homes at King’s Lynn.
It is also the owner of the Willows Business Park in King’s Lynn, which is getting a £20m makeover as part of a scheme to build a £330m paper mill.
Other Morston sites include the former rollmakers foundry of 26 acres in Coatbridge, Scotland and 250 acres at Linlithgow also in Scotland.
The company reported a pre-tax profit of £20.4m on a turnover of £87m in the year to the end of March 2006.
In May Mr Harrison agreed a deal which saw Bank of Scotland Corporate take a 20pc stake in the business..