Michael is a highly experienced former CEO and CFO with significant experience in the Sports and Venue markets. As the CEO of Wembley National Stadium he was responsible for the transitioin to the new National Stadium and which was widely recognised as an outstanding success. A more detailed overview of his experience is summarised below.
He is an experienced General Manager with a financial background, who leads by creating clarity through clear planning and control. Core management abilities are leadership, strategy, commercial development and stakeholder management, which were mainly acquired in well managed blue chip FMCG organisations such as Unilever, Diageo (Guinness) and Coca-cola Schweppes. These skills have, more recently, been used to improve less well managed organisations in the sports and leisure sector and to lead the successful redevelopment of the new Wembley National Stadium. They are now being used to good effect across a number of, mainly non-executive, roles.
Previous Events and Venue experience includes:
Chief Operating Officer - Aston Villa Football Club
Created detailed commercial plans for AVFC that mapped out how to achieve a 40% increase in turnover and 100% increase in the number of Premium seats within the existing stadium at minimal capital cost. Also highlighted fundamental operating issues and initiated a programme of remedial work which should ensure that all events, in the future are properly and safely managed.
Chief Executive Officer – Wembley National Stadium Ltd (a wholly owned subsidiary of The FA)
Responsible for guiding Wembley National Stadium Ltd (WNSL) from a perilous financial position, with a very uncertain future, to become a commercial success with much public acclaim for the new National Stadium itself.
Achievements -
- Guiding WNSL from a position of £150m of negative equity to significant capital value.
- Re-engineering all aspects of the business to successfully secure £430m of commercial funding for re-building the stadium
- Successfully managing stakeholders – secured and maintained Government support for the project – this was critical to acquiring commercial funding
- Negotiating a fixed price construction contract, another critical element for the banks to agree to provide commercial funding
- Launching and managing one of the most successful sports marketing initiatives ever. Club Wembley box and seat sales have exceeded £500m, 20 (twenty) times greater than was achieved at the old Wembley Stadium
- Successfully developing the Wembley sponsorship programme, including high quality sponsors such as Microsoft
- Successfully developing the non-football side of the stadium’s commercial business including contracts with concert promoters, the NFL (American football) and motor racing (Race of Champions)
- Recruiting and developing a high quality team, ready to run the stadium c.120 full-time staff and around 5000 part-time workers
Finance Director – The Football Association
Including January – December 1999 as Joint Acting Chief Executive
During this period the popularity of football grew strongly and the various commercial properties owned by The FA became very valuable. The FA grew from being a £40m p.a. turnover business to £180m p.a. during this period.
Achievements
- Managing the acquisition of Wembley Stadium from Wembley PLC in March 1999 for £106m
- Introducing effective strategic planning to The FA
- Restructuring The FA to improve decision making and effectiveness
- Creating the Football Foundation, which, to date, has raised more than £500m for the development of grass roots football