North-East Business Executive of the Year
Winner: Sir Michael Darrington, managing director, Greggs plc, Newcastle.
 When your customers' purchases on average are less than £2 a call, your shops have to show mighty market pull indeed to be enjoying a turnover of half a billion pounds - and the prospect of doubling that to the straight £1bn within five years. But that's the outstanding performance of Greggs plc, the UK's biggest bakery chain, and one of many reasons why Sir Michael Darrington, its managing director, has been acclaimed the North-East Business Executive of the Year. He is the bakery Midas headhunted 22 years ago to lead Greggs, then a modest and largely North-East operation, to a memorably successful stock exchange flotation - and on to a market capitalisation beyond half a billion pounds, a nationwide supremacy and almost unbroken growth in share value throughout. In the year to last April alone, the share price rose 28%. And since that golden flotation in mid-1984, the price has climbed from £1.35p to as high as £49.50. No surprise, then, that City analysts and investors look respectfully now at the pasties, sausage rolls, wraps and drinks accompanying that attract up to five million customers a week into the instantly recognizable Greggs and Bakers Oven outlets, as they spread from Britain's shores over to mainland Europe. Where else do you get a satisfying lunch-on-the-hoof for less than £2? That's what the takeaway buyers - shoppers and office workers alike - often ask, as they come back for more, swelling profits to a record £15.6m in this year's first half alone. Sir Ian Wrigglesworth, chairman of the independent panel of judges who picked Mike from 90 contenders for the North-East title, says: "Two of Sir Michael's great achievements, the judges feel, are the firm's expansion onto mainland Europe, and the way Greggs's share performance has convinced the City to look more favourably at turnover levels of North-East quoted firms." Mike's record, year upon year, is outstanding, they agree - "exemplary" even, says a top analyst - as the business has been focused on a clear path, unafraid to close outlets in fading locations in favour of openings elsewhere. Also impressive, in their view, is his promotion of the entire region, along with providing Greggs's breakfast clubs for schoolchildren and anti-cancer fundraising. The European move, Belgium initially, is encouraging with like-for-like sales up 30% in the first half of this year. The plan is to double the four outlets there and perfect a European formula over 12 months, before spreading to other countries. Mike, as enthusiastic as the first day he stepped into Greggs, says: "I want Greggs to be Europe's finest bakery-related retailer, achieving ambitious growth targets through world-class standards in everything it tackles." If it succeeds it will be through Mike's policy of finding out what customers in a community want, then providing it to the best standard possible. He has been sampling the goods for a score and more years now with no signs yet of running to fat. Though the firm had only about a fifth as many of the outlets run now at flotation, the initial shares were more than 100 times over-subscribed. Since then the business has grown both organically and by shrewd acquisition, and a new £13m savouries plant and technical centre at Longbenton is the latest enlargement. At one time 40% of business lay in traditional bakery sales of bread and rolls. Supermarket rivalry slashed that to 8%. But that has been more than offset, Mike says, because of the part Greggs's bakery heritage played crucially in repositioning the business in a changing market: "The bread is almost as important as the filling in a sandwich. Being a bakery has given us an edge." And what's his formula for a management with more than 18,200 employees to motivate? "Treat staff as we'd like to be treated ourselves." Before Greggs, he grew in management with 17 years at United Biscuits. Knighted in 2004, he maintains: "You don't have to be a hard and selfish business to succeed - you can have values." There's more to selling sandwiches than tasty fillings, though, and Mike, a qualified chartered accountant, won a scholarship to Cambridge and gathered valuable business expertise at Harvard Business School along the way. Raised in Kent and Sussex, he golfs and sails and lives today at Slaley in Northumberland with his wife Paula. His title follows that of Ian Gregg, the first winner of the award in 1983 - the year when, as chairman, he brought Mike in. It is only the second time in the award's 22-year history that it has been won by two people from the same company. Newcastle software company Sage's then chairman David Goldman won in 1992 and its chief executive Paul Walker scooped the title last year. Mike plans to stay at Greggs until 2010 when he will be 68, and hopefully seeing that magic £1bn turnover through more than 1,700 outlets. ********* Past winners of the North-East Business Executive of the Year title (initially known as North-East Businessman of the Year Award) include: 1983: Ian Gregg, Greggs
2001: Mike Browne, ScS Upholstery
2002: John Sands, Pubmaster
2003: John Cuthbert, Northumbrian Water | 
