Age 38
Position Chief executive, Daisy
Salary £1.1 million (2011)
Daisy Group is growing up. No longer is it intent on getting bigger by expediently buying up smaller or failed rivals by the dozen — something it has done with no small measure of success as it has grown into a £250 million company. Now it has launched a recruitment drive all of its own.
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The telecoms company that specialises in serving small and medium-sized businesses plans to add 130 workers at its base in Nelson, Lancashire, and in locations such as Peterborough, Newcastle and Southampton. With 1,500 staff already, it has become one of the largest employers in the North West in recent years as other businesses have fled the area.
Matthew Riley, its founder and chief executive, admits that the hiring spree represents a turning point for a concern that used to specialise in slashing the workforces of businesses it had acquired. “You can only grow if you’ve got good people,” he said. “There are a lot of people being made redundant. It’s nice to do something to buck that trend.”
Mr Riley sprang to fame in 2007 when he won a young entrepreneur award that led to a mentorship from Sir Philip Green, the retailing billionaire. He launched Daisy from his garage with only two colleagues after a stint with Deutsche Telekom and set off on an acquisition spree that eventually landed him with a listing, via a reverse takeover of Peter Dubens’ Freedom4 business. The deal netted him a reported £80 million fortune.
The outspoken entrepreneur, who appeared on the final episode of The Apprentice on Sunday, has also harked back to his own youth to launch Daisy’s first apprenticeship scheme. Mr Riley left school at 16 and spent two years fixing fax machines.
He will take on ten youngsters this year and twenty in 2013 and will move them around the business so that they can decide whether they want to work in engineering, customer services or sales. “Kids leaving school don’t know what to do. You need to move them around to find out what they’re good at and what they want to do,” he said.
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Mr Riley, an ardent supporter of Burnley Football Club, is a fan of kneeboarding, a type of water skiing, but broke his arm last year and has had to take a rest from extreme sports. He is married with three children.