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Mike Luckwell was educated at 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 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: For six months in 1995 ML was Chief Executive
of Riverside
Plc, in which he was a substantial shareholder. The group owned the 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
ML was Chairman and largest shareholder in The Listening Company from its start up in 1999. TLC provides specialist
Contact Centre services to Media companies, and to other sectors such as
Financial and Automotive, and Sky is currently its biggest client. It was the
first such company to introduce integrated Digital Solutions: Telephony/E
Mail+Chat/Video support. TLC was sold to Serco, a
FTSE 100 company, in March 2011 for c. £55m. ML currently has an active involvement in Simply
Media TV Ltd and is the
Chairman and majority shareholder. Simply produces TV programmes and creates
and executes Digital Solutions for the Advertising sector. It has its own
comprehensive production facilities. It also owns Simply Home Entertainment which has a library of specialist programming,
creates new original ‘genre’ programming and has third party licenses 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. 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. In May 2007 he became an investor in, and
director of, Unit, a
video editing and digital special effects company based in Soho, 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. |
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