Business Breakfast
Join us for a Business Breakfast
with Guest Speaker Daniel Gidney, chief executive of Ricoh Arena
Wednesday 14th March at The Holiday Inn, Kenilworth
£15.00 to include Full English Breakfast.
7.30am Registration
8.00am Daniel Gidney presents
9.00am VIP entry into the Kenilworth Business & Retail Fair
To book your place, please send a cheque for £15 payable to Kenilworth Chamber of Trade to:
Kenilworth Chamber of Trade
c/o De Marco Solicitors
Station House
12 Station Road
Kenilworth
CV8 1JJ
About Daniel Gidney
Daniel Gidney is chief executive of the multi-purpose Ricoh Arena in Coventry which has risen from a derelict contaminated gas works to an Olympic venue in under ten years.
The Ricoh Arena and its staff have won multiple awards including Daniel being named the Midlands Business Person of the Year 2011 while the venue was crowned West Midlands Business of the Year 2007 by the British Chambers of Commerce and was runner-up in the Venue of the Year category at the international Stadium Business Awards 2010, beating the O2, Twickenham and Dallas Cowboys.
Daniel, who was appointed chief executive in 2006, was key in securing the London Olympics 2012 football matches which will be staged at the City of Coventry Stadium - as the venue will be known for the duration of the Games - when 12 men‘s and women’s games will be staged during the world's largest sporting event.
The Ricoh's international profile will be further raised when it stages pool matches during the Rugby World Cup 2015.
There have been eight Government ministers visit the Ricoh Arena in 2011 including Prime Minister David Cameron and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg.
Daniel has led the way on innovation and technology, highlighted by the Ricoh becoming the first UK cashless stadia in 2008 when it introduced the cashless payment system at Coventry City matches.
He has taken the Ricoh from a £3.2m ebitda loss to £3m ebitda during that time by raising its profile in several sectors - Coventry was not listed in the top 20 of UK conference destinations before the Ricoh was built but it is now seventh and the Ricoh has an ever-expanding list of blue-chip clients including Boots, Whitbread, Argos, Tesco and Lloydspharmacy since it is one of the few UK venues which can host major business events for over 2,000 delegates.
In the last five years since he has been at the helm, the Ricoh has blazed a trail for hosting high-profile events including four European rugby semi-finals, two England under-21 internationals, Coventry City's FA Cup quarter-final against Chelsea, and a host of international stadium concerts including three sell-out nights of Take That on their 2009 Circus Circus tour which attracted around 114,000 fans.
He is chair of the Tourism taskforce and a board member of the Coventry and Warwickshire Local Enterprise Partnership and he is a governor at Foxford School in Coventry.
Previously, he ran Sodexho's Hospitals Division and, in four years, the division went from over £3m losses to over £3m profit by shifting the emphasis to focus on retail and treating patients as customers.
Prior to joining Sodexho, Daniel spent nearly seven years at Clear Channel (now Live Nation) in varying roles, including head of PFI and director of Ticketing where, through rationalisation, he saved £500,000 pa and later sold the division to Ticketmaster for £7 million.
Daniel has an MBA from Durham and is a former district councillor in Stratford-upon-Avon, when at 25 he was the youngest to ever be elected.
