Evening Standard Business Awards: The contenders for business of the year and personality of the year

With just a week to go to the Evening Standard Business Awards, we turn our attention to the companies that are in the running for Business of the Year and have made their mark through outstanding performance, strategy or innovation.

We also take a look at the shortlisted business personalities of the year. The competition in this category is stiff, with four of the ablest chief executives in the UK competing for honours.

Business of the year

Melrose Industries: Melrose’s motto is “Buy it, improve it, sell it”, with struggling engineering businesses being its meat and drink. Since the start of 2012, Melrose shares have risen by nearly 250%, with an average annual return on investment of 26%.

Shareholder investment of £3.6 billion has been increased to £8.4 billion over the years, with about £4.3 billion in dividends and payments to shareholders along the way.

Melrose is now on the lookout for more deals and though its business model is not without risk, its track record of creating value is well-established. Melrose may not be a household name, but it has a winning formula.

Aviva: This firm is almost unrecognisable from the bedraggled insurer it was when Mark Wilson became chief executive in January 2013.

Since then, a textbook turnaround has been accomplished by the New Zealander, with underperforming businesses sold, the structure simplified and core businesses strengthened.

During the past 12 months, the results of that heavy lifting have started to emerge, with 2016 marking a fourth consecutive year of operating profits growth. Aviva is also looking to its future, investing heavily in all things digital because it believes big data could transform the way insurance is sold.

The insurer has a new spring in its step and looks set for further growth.

Facebook: Founder Mark Zuckerberg has changed perceptions entirely of what a media business is. The Californian giant, which also owns Instagram, WhatsApp and Oculus VR, still calls itself a platform and not a publisher, but it is listening to voices that are calling for change and has helped users identify “fake news”.

On the business front, Facebook is the consummate innovation machine. With 1.9 billion users around the world, a market value of more than $400 billion and a commanding share of the digital advertising market, Facebook is now waging war on its younger, cooler rival Snap, ruthlessly copying ideas. It has also made London the centre of its European business with a new headquarters to house its rapidly growing British-based staff.

Legal & General: Nigel Wilson, the firm’s chief executive since 2012, is now a familiar voice to current affairs junkies. The head of the insurer and asset management firm is not shy of plain speaking, whether arguing for green-belt land to be released for homebuilding or keeping up pressure on executive pay.

Legal & General has a plan to solve the country’s housing crisis by investing some of its £900 billion of assets under management in a portfolio of projects to produce 70,000 homes over the next five to 10 years. So far, the push into housing is also paying off — operating profits at the direct investment division rising 10% last year.

Personality of the year

Stephen Kelly (Sage): Kelly has been on a mission to get his company talked about, and it is working. Sage is the accounting software behemoth from the North-East that had previously hidden its light under a bushel. However, since Kelly joined in 2014, he has wisely positioned himself as the voice of the small businessmen and women who are the backbone of the UK economy. With 14,000 Twitter followers, Kelly is also one of the UK’s most watched chief executives.

Sage operates in 23 countries and employs 13,500 people. Last year, pre-tax profits rose 41% to £180 million.

He has also launched the Sage Foundation, a charity encouraging staff to pledge up to 2% of their working time to good causes, backed by donations of 2% free cashflow from the company.

Rupert Soames (Serco): Dubbed St Rupert in some quarters, Soames has been trying to turn around government outsourcer Serco since 2014, a feat some think miraculous.

Soames came to the company with a formidable reputation having propelled temporary power company Aggreko into the FTSE 100. But the challenge at Serco is even more daunting for Churchill’s grandson: the company was in both financial and reputational crisis, with too many contracts losing money. Soames is now just over halfway through a five-year turnaround plan.

However, this year some big contracts have been landed: first, a £600 million deal to clean Barts Hospital in London, and now its biggest contract win for five years — a £1.5 billion deal to build and operate an Australian prison.

Serco is not out of the woods yet, but if anyone can pull this off, it is Soames. What will his next rescue job be?

Alison Brittain (Whitbread): As one of just seven female chief executives in the FTSE 100, Brittain heads the UK’s largest hospitality company, owning Costa Coffee, Premier Inn, Beefeater and Brewers Fayre.

Brittain was one of the UK’s most powerful women in finance as head of retail banking at Lloyds Banking Group, but then left to take the helm at Whitbread, with its 50,000 employees.

Doubts about her ability to switch sectors were quickly laid to rest and she continues to make her mark. In particular, Brittain has championed the need for more women in executive-level positions and put time and effort into Whitbread initiatives designed to improve career development.

She has responded to a tougher consumer environment with a cost-cutting drive to ensure the chain succeeds.

Jayne-Anne Gadhia (Virgin Money): Boss of Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Money, Gadhia is one of the financial services industry’s most senior women, and among the best-known. She first stuck her head above the parapet of this male-dominated world during the financial crisis and the collapse of Northern Rock, which she persuaded Branson to try to rescue.

Gadhia and Branson failed in that endeavour but did not let it go, finally buying its good parts in 2011 for a bargain price. Virgin Money is now one of the UK’s main challenger banks, which she attributes to her “sheer bloody-mindedness”.

Two years ago, Gadhia led a government review of women in finance. This year, she lived up to her straight-talking reputation with her memoir The Virgin Banker. She wrote about her own mental health problems, her difficulties trying to conceive, and the old boys’ network at Royal Bank of Scotland under her former boss Fred Goodwin. Her candour has highlighted her achievements and brought her new fans.

The Evening Standard Business Awards, in association with HSBC and supported by Ballymore, will be held at Banqueting House, Whitehall, on June 29.

For more information visit: standard.co.uk/businessawards #ESBusinessAwards