Mike Luckwell was educated at St. Paul's school. He entered the feature film and television production industry after starting work as a junior dealer on the London Stock Exchange. In 1970, he set up The Moving Picture Company of which he was Managing Director from it's inception. In a series of technical and commercial innovations, he took the company successively into television commercial production, broadcast video facilities, special effects, computer graphics and digital electronics manufacturing for the television sector. Mike also took the company into producing television programmes and feature film production. In 1983, he reversed The Moving Picture Company into Carlton Communications Plc for a mixture of cash and shares. In so doing, he became Carlton's Managing Director and largest individual shareholder. Before ML joined, Carlton had a market capitalisation of £16m. When consolidated with Moving Pictures this jumped to £40m and by the time he left, following a series of acquisitions, Carlton's market capitalisation was close to £300 million. In 1986, Mike resigned from Carlton and sold his shareholding for £25 million. Carlton and Granada subsequently merged to become ITV Plc. In 1986, he set up Parallel Media Group Plc and took an active role as Chairman. ML built it into one of the leading international sponsorship, television production and sports programming distribution companies. He resigned from Parallel and sold his shareholding in February 1990. In the late 80's he became the biggest shareholder in WPP. WPP became the world's second largest marketing services group (owners of J. Walter Thompson and Ogilvy), he sold his remaining shareholding in October 1997. In April 1988, he purchased a 5% stake in TV-am: UK breakfast television. He disposed of his shareholding in July 1990, prior to their losing their television franchise, selling at the all time share price high. For six months in 1995 ML was Chief Executive of Riverside Plc, in which he was a substantial shareholder. The group owned the Riverside and Espree chains of tennis, health & fitness centres. In May 1997 Riverside Plc was sold to First Leisure Plc. (Esporta) for £61m. ML was a director of, and shareholder in, Xtreme Register Ltd, a private company which digitises and stores still and live action advertising images and provides data to the advertising industry internationally. In September 2001 Xtreme was sold for a sum c. £40m. In 1991 ML invested in, and became a director of, HIT Entertainment Plc, a small private company selling children's television programmes around the world and subsequently owning copyright in many of these children's characters, such as Bob The Builder and Barney. HIT went public in 1996 and grew with both US and UK acquisitions. For some time ML was HIT's largest shareholder. In June 2005 HIT was sold to Apax for £489m yielding ML £33m for his shareholding. ML is Chairman of The Listening Company in which he is the largest share holder. In April 2008 TLC acquired Essentia and recently became the UK's 3rd largest Contact Centre and CRM company. TLC provides specialist services to media companies, and to other sectors such as Financial and Automotive, and Sky is currently its biggest client. It was the first to introduce integrated Telephony/E Mail+Chat/Video support systems. ML currently has an active involvement in Simply Media TV Ltd and is the Chairman and majority shareholder. Simply is a broadcaster and develops, owns and operates channels. It has two satellite channels and a number of IPTV (internet) channels. It produces and distributes content, has its own in house studios, production and post production facilities. It has a media sales division and a technical services operation. It is also one of the two biggest operators of Captive Audience Networks with over 3,000 screens in over 750 different locations nationwide. Simply Home Entertainment has a library of specialist programming, creates new original ‘genre’ programming and has third party licences from rights owners for programmes, and second tier and older movies. It sells DVD’s to retailers and to the public via the internet and Direct Marketing, using its own 250,000 strong client data base. ML is also the largest shareholder in, and Chairman of 3View. This company has designed and manufactures Set Top Boxes which seamlessly integrate Freeview and Internet Television with full PVR features, HDTV and the ability to see YouTube, Facebook and iplayer on your television rather than on a computer screen. In early 2006 Ingenious Media Active Capital, a specialist media investment company, raised £150m on AIM. ML has been an investor and director in IMAC from its inception and in January 2008 he was appointed Chairman. He also sits on the Executive Committee of Ingenious Broadcasting. In May 2007 he became an investor in, and director of, Unit, a video editing and digital special effects company, based in Soho, London. His investment has enabled Unit to expand rapidly and it has recently become the biggest Apple based video facility worldwide. ML is also a member of various media industry associations. He was one of the founders of The Advertising Producers Association, The Independent Programme Producers Association (now PACT) and The Television Advertising Awards. In February 2004, under the aegis of The Film Council, ML set up UK Screen - the trade body representing service companies to the screen industries. He was Chairman from its inception until April 2010. ML is now mainly an active investor and has a broad based portfolio of interests in media and digital technology.