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CBI ENTREPRENEURS' SUMMIT TO BOOST UK ENTERPRISE


4th April 2007


Leading entrepreneurs including Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou and Luke Johnson will gather this month for a CBI summit to examine how the UK can build more billion-pound businesses.


Sir Stelios, the founder of easyGroup, and Mr Johnson, who built the Pizza Express chain and chairs Channel 4, will join CBI Director-General Richard Lambert for a series of speeches, panel debates and question & answer sessions on enterprise and entrepreneurialism.


The one-day summit, sponsored by Bank of Scotland Corporate and hosted by Sky News political editor Adam Boulton, will take place at the Dorchester hotel in London on April 17. Highlights will include:


  • Sir Tom Hunter, founder of West Coast Capital private equity partnership, talking about " What billion-pound businesses are for: the real purpose of wealth-creation"; and Sir Stelios examining " The risks and rewards of brand extension."
  • Question Time with Luke Johnson, founder of Risk Capital Partners and chairman of Channel 4, Brent Hoberman, co-founder of lastminute.com, and Gerry Ford, chairman and chief executive of Caffe Nero, chaired by Adam Boulton.
  • Panel debates on "Where will new business empires be built" and "Entrepreneurs in action."
  • Interviews by Adam Boulton with Sir Peter Rigby, founder, chairman & chief executive, Specialist Computer Holdings (SCH) and Sir Robin Saxby, founder and chairman emeritus, ARM Holdings, on building a billion-pound privately owned business.

Mr Lambert said: "In today's rapidly changing economic world order, we must create more global enterprises if we want the UK to remain in the top tier of world economies. Yet in the past 20 years the number we have built from scratch has been low.


"The Entrepreneurs' Summit is designed to spark a debate about why this is and how we can tackle the problem. Do too many entrepreneurs settle for scaling the the foot-hills of success rather than climb to the peak, for example? What does it take to build a billion-pound business from scratch, and do we have the right environment for them to flourish?"


"The summit is also aimed at inspiring both entrepreneurs and professional managers to be bolder in their vision and more global in their reach. Their success plays a vital role in the UK's future prosperity and competitiveness and I hope the summit will provide a clarion call for the country's businessmen and women."