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Mike Jones is managing director of Norwich-based Bennetts, which, with 400 staff and a turnover of more than £52m, is one of the top 10 electrical retailers in the country.
Mr Jones was previously deputy managing director of the business, but in March 2006 he led a six-strong team in a management buyout of the business from Richard Jackson, the former managing director and majority shareholder, for an undisclosed sum.
Bennetts can trace its history back to the famous BB Adams shop on Guildhall Hill, in Norwich, during the 1970s. However, it has grown rapidly over the past decade, and now has 13 retail stores. Eleven of these are in the eastern counties, with further outlets in Surrey and north Wales. Bennetts also has a strong business-to-business operation, and a rapidly growing online business.
Caroline Williams is a tireless champion of the local business community as chief executive of Norfolk Chamber of Commerce.
She was appointed in 2001, and has helped the Chamber thrive as an independent, self-financing organisation. Services for its 1,200 members range from HR and legal advice to debt collection and cheap electricity deals. Net-working breakfast events are highly popular, and its six-monthly business exhibitions at Norwich City Football Club draw 70 exhibitors and many hundreds of visitors. The Chamber runs Norwich Enterprise Agency Trust for young entrepreneurs, and its international trade section is thriving.
Meanwhile its New Wave initiative is introducing younger members. The Chamber ensures that the business community’s collective voice is heard at the highest level. It is taking a keen interest in urban development company First East’s plans for Yarmouth and Lowestoft, and voiced local business opinion on options for King’s Lynn’s new marina.
Mrs Williams trained as an executive secretary, but became senior merchandise manager for a worldwide group of department stores. She later held high-powered positions developing clothes made for American department stores. After a spell with Dereham furniture maker Jentique, she joined business support organisation Business Link in 1995, and was later a director of the Training and Enterprise Council.
Peter Lamble is chairman and joint managing director of Norwich-based children’s shoe specialist Start-rite. England’s oldest shoe business can trace its history to 1792, when James Smith had a workshop behind Norwich market place.
Mr Lamble is the grand-nephew of former chairman James Hanly, whose research during the 1940s led to the introduction of half-sizes, width fittings, a full fitting service – and Start-rite’s decision to specialise in children’s footwear. Mr Lamble and David Attwood became joint managing directors in 2005 when chief executive Jane Wilson joined rival Clarks. Mr Lamble was already chairman, and Mr Attwood was sales and marketing director.
Start-rite’s shoes are now made in India, Portugal and the Far East. However, the business still employs 110 staff at Broadland Business Park in areas such as sales and marketing, design and development, and finance.
Matthew Bullock has been chief executive of the Norwich and Peter-borough Building Society since 1999.
N&P is the UK’s 14th largest building society with more than 50 branches, 1,000 staff, and assets of £3.7bn. It recently announced record pre-tax profits of £20.2m for 2006, up 26pc from 2005. N&P’s financial services range from mortgages and savings to stockbroking and insurance. Recent profits have also been boosted by N&P’s qualification as an independent financial adviser.
Mr Bullock’s keen appreciation of environmental issues was illustrated in this January when N&P became the first UK first building society to go carbon-neutral. Mr Bullock began his career as personal assistant to the director-general of the CBI and secretary to the CBI financial policy committee.
In 1974 he embarked on a 25-year career with Barclays Bank, working at senior levels in investment banking, credit risk management, retail banking, savings and investments, and corporate and hi-tech banking.
Michael Fuller is the chairman of Yarmouth-based J&H Bunn, which blends and sells fertilisers to farmers and agricultural merchants across the UK. The business, which is owned by a small group of families, has several facilities in Yarmouth, as well as blending plants in King’s Lynn and in Gloucestershire. It employs about 150 people, and achieved turnover of £84m in the year ending March, 2006.
J & H Bunn was founded by James Bunn in 1816 as a horse-feed merchant and general agricultural merchanting company. Bunns became a limited company in 1936, with Wallace Bunn as chairman, and Stanley Fuller and Robert Tooley as co-directors. The Fuller and Tooley families remain closely involved more than 70 years later, with Ian Tooley currently joint managing director with David Harrod.
Bunns makes hundreds of different fertiliser formulations each year, and has a reputation for innovation. In 1996 it was awarded the prestigious Royal Warrant for supplying fertiliser to The Queen’s Sandringham estate.
Managing director Robert Hughes and his brother Jeremy, who is purchasing director, represent the third generation to run the popular Hughes Electrical empire.
The company was founded in Lowestoft in 1921 by their grandfather, Frank, an electrical engineer who rewound industrial electrical motors for the fishing industry. Now, in the digital age, Hughes Electrical is East Anglia’s leading independent electrical retailer with 33 stores – complemented by the Hughes Direct website – five service centres, and a 60,000 sq ft warehouse at Thetford. The Lowestoft-based business has a £40m turnover, and employs 450 people.
Frank Hughes bought his first shop in 1928, and branched out into the production and sale of radios. By the mid-1930s Hughes held main agencies for Philips, Bush, KB, RGD, Ekco, Cossor and Ultra. When Frank retired in 1946 his sons, Peter and Jim – the father of Rob and Jeremy – took over, supported by their sister, Phyllis.
In the 1950s Hughes began to sell and rent televisions, and gradually spread into Great Yarmouth (1962), Norwich (1972), Ipswich (1976) and Bury St Edmunds (1979). The business now extends into Essex and Cambridgeshire.
Keith Pearson was appointed chairman of the new East of England Strategic Health Authority when it was launched on July 1, 2006.
He was previously chairman of Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridge-shire Strategic Health Authority. This combined with the two SHAs that had previously covered Essex, and Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire, in a reorganisation that reduced the number of SHAs in England from 28 to 10. The new authority covers all six counties, and serves a population of 5.4 million people. Its role is to maintain a strategic overview of healthcare and to provide leadership to all National Health Service organisations.
Mr Pearson joined Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire SHA in April 2005. Before this he was a non-executive director of Peterborough and Stamford NHS Foundation Trust. Mr Pearson’s NHS career began in 1998, when he was appointed a lay member to the shadow board of South Somerset NHS Primary Care Group (PCG). He became chairman of the PCG in April 1999, and was chairman of South Somerset NHS Primary Care Trust from 2002 until 2004.
Peter Franzen has been editor of the EDP for 13 years, steering the newspaper to a number of awards.
In 2004 he was made an OBE for services to the newspaper industry, becoming the first editor of the EDP to be recognised with such an accolade. Under his stewardship the EDP has risen to become England’s best selling regional morning newspaper, winning the title of Regional Newspaper of the Year and many other accolades including Best Front Page of the Year and the Plain English Campaign media award.
In 1996 Mr Franzen led the EDP change in format from broadsheet to compact size, a move that has subsequently been followed by national broadsheet newspapers. In a career spanning more than 30 years with Archant, formerly Eastern Counties Newspapers, he has held a number of other senior roles including editor of the Yarmouth Mercury and executive editor of the EDP.
Mr Franzen is married to Kate and has two sons, Oliver and Sam. He also serves on the steering group for the Open Youth Venue at the former Barclays Bank, Norwich, is a member of the team establishing the Community Foundation under the guidance of the Bishop of Norwich. He is also a director of The Exchange, a government-funded organisation that helps introduce young people to the world of work.
Colin Hutchinson is chairman of family-owned Wisbech crop production specialist HL Hutchinson, which employs 160 people and has an annual turnover of about £60m.
He is also the father of David Hutchinson, who took over as managing director in 1992, and of horticultural director Mike Hutchinson.
The company was formed in Wisbech as an agrochemical business by Herbert Hutchinson in 1938. The operation increased in scale when Colin Hutchinson took over in the 1960s. It is still expanding, and has become a major agricultural and horticultural advice and supply company. Research during the 1970s resulted in a rapid increase in the range of crop protection products available for arable crops, and the company expanded into this sector.
The Hutchinson philosophy is to advise on every aspect of soil management and crop production.
Richard Dell became chief executive of The Stationery Office (TSO) last year, and remained at the helm when it was acquired in January by document processing company Williams Lea in a deal thought to be worth about £120m.
TSO employs 200 people in Norwich, and another 400 in London, Edinburgh, Belfast and Cardiff. It publishes 15,000 printed and electronic titles a year for a client list which includes government departments, Network Rail, and the British Retail Consortium. One of its most famous publications is Hansard, the official daily record of proceedings in Parliament. Mr Dell joined TSO in 1997 after 10 years with Ernst & Young, working in corporate finance.
He was appointed as financial controller to the TSO Publishing division, and became finance director of the main operating company in 1999. In 2001 he was appointed to the TSO board as chief financial officer, and became chief executive last year. TSO was privatised in 1996.