Board of Directors

Richard Last

Non-Executive Chairman

Richard joined Hyve Group plc as Chairman and Non-Executive Director in February 2018. He is also the Chairman of Gamma Communications plc, which has a market capitalisation of over £1.5bn, revenues of over £300m and provides cloud, voice and data communications solutions to UK businesses, and the Chairman of Tribal Group plc, an international technology solutions provider for the higher and further education sectors which is listed on AIM.

Richard, who is a fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, is an experienced chairman, with over 30 years of public company board experience.

Richard is keen to promote the use of technology to improve customer experience, efficiency and profitability. He is also very passionate about the promotion and development of young talent and promoting wider diversity in organisations.

Nicholas Backhouse

Non-Executive Director

Nicholas was appointed a Non-Executive Director of the Group on 1 May 2019 and Chair of the Audit Committee in January 2020. He is also the Senior Independent Director and a member of the Remuneration and Risk Committees. 

Nicholas has extensive experience at board level and is currently the Senior Independent Director of both Hollywood Bowl Group plc and Loungers plc and the Chairman of the Giggling Squid restaurant group. He has also held positions as Senior Independent Director of Guardian Media Group plc and Non-Executive Director of Marston’s PLC, All3media Limited, Eaton Gate Gaming Limited and Chichester Festival Theatre. Nicholas was previously the Deputy Chief Executive Officer of the David Lloyd Leisure Group, Group Finance Director of National Car Parks and Chief Financial Officer of both the Laurel Pub Company and Freeserve PLC. He is a fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales and has an MA in economics from Cambridge University.

Nicholas has significant experience with companies undergoing operating model and cultural change. 

Rachel Addison

Non-Executive Director

Rachel was appointed as a Non-Executive Director of the Group on 1 March 2022. She is Chair of Hyve's Remuneration Committee and a member of the Risk and Audit Committees. 

Rachel has nearly 30 years of finance and operational management experience. Rachel is currently a Non-Executive Director of the business-critical services and software provider, Marlowe plc, where she is also Chair of the Audit Committee, a Non-Executive Director of housing developer and manager, Watkin Jones plc, where she is also Chair of the Audit Committee and a member of the Remuneration and Nomination Committees, and a Non-Executive Director of Mango Publishing Group, an innovative independent publisher based in Florida, USA. From July 2020 to October 2021 Rachel was the Chief Financial Officer at Future plc. Prior to that she was Chief Financial Officer at TI Media Limited and has held a number of senior financial, operational and board level roles at Trinity Mirror (now Reach) Regionals, Local World Limited, Northcliffe Media Limited and Boots the Chemist where she was Head of Risk Management.

Rachel is a chartered accountant and is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales. Rachel enjoys working with businesses with ambitious strategies to innovate and develop at pace to meet the ever-changing needs of their customers and consumers.

Julie Harris

Non-Executive Director

Julie is an accomplished B2C and B2B media, events, marketplace and subscription business Executive with over 30 years’ experience working in content and tech platform organisations, leading large multi-discipline teams, creating market-leading brands and building regional and global digital businesses.
 
Julie has a history of exceeding revenue and profit targets, successfully integrating acquisitions and driving significant shareholder value.
 
Julie is currently CEO of Comparison Technologies, a multi-channel customer acquisition platform business. Prior to that, she was CEO of Upper Street Events, a consumer exhibitions company, which she led the sale of in early 2019, and before that was Group MD of Immediate Media, the UK’s leading special interest media company.

Prior to Immediate Media, Julie was Global CEO of WGSN Group (an operating division of Ascential plc), the world’s leading consumer, lifestyle and product design trend forecasting company, where she grew the business to over 6,000 customer companies in 87 countries.

Julie has been a Non-Executive Director on the board of Which? Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Consumers' Association, since 2015 and is also a member of the Remuneration Committee.
 
Having worked with teams across the world, leading strategic and cultural transformation, Julie is passionate about working with high performing businesses, with ambitious growth strategies, where diversity, equality and inclusion sit at the heart of the people agenda.

Mark Shashoua

Chief Executive Officer

Having co-founded the business (then called ITE Group) in 1991, Mark returned as CEO in 2017 with a strong vision for the company’s potential and initiated a Group-wide transformation to future-proof the business. That transformation saw the company radically evolve. It changed from siloed working to a centralised model of best practice, from an emerging markets focus to a portfolio 95% rooted in advanced economies, and from a sprawling portfolio of mixed quality products to a streamlined focus on only market-leading events. This led to the average revenue per event increasing more than eight-fold, and attention is now on expanding the company’s digital products. Thanks to Mark’s leadership, the Hyve of today has resilience, diversity and enormous scalability.
 
Transforming businesses is in Mark’s DNA and prior to re-joining Hyve, Mark was CEO of i2i Events Group, the event arm of Ascential plc, where he led the internationalisation and diversification of the business. It was at i2i that he first adopted a market leading event only approach that led to turning a declining business to one of consistently high organic growth. This was supplemented by a number of leading acquisitions including Money20/20, which grew substantially under his guidance. 
 
Mark is driven by his ambition to reimagine the events industry, disrupting it through digitisation. His aim is to transform everyone’s expectations of what’s really possible at events and help customers to realise the game changing possibilities that Hyve events hold for businesses and beyond.

John Gulliver

Chief Finance and Operations Officer

John was appointed as the Company’s COO in October 2017. With effect from 1 October 2020 John took up the newly-formed combined role of CFO and COO. He oversaw the rollout of best practice as part of the TAG programme. John also has responsibility for implementing and maintaining our best practice operating model across our global network of exhibitions.

Prior to joining, John held senior financial positions in the media sector, including Interim CFO at Emap/Top Right Group and also Divisional CFO at Ascential, and CFO of i2i Events Group from June 2012 to June 2017, where he worked alongside Mark Shashoua, CEO. Prior to that, John was Finance Director at Precise Media from 2008 to 2010.

John’s background in finance and operational transformation, as well as his experience in the events sector, underpins his passion for bringing about positive change and disruption within the industry. John enjoys working in a change-led environment and loves the passion, energy and sense of achievement that occur as the company, and the people working within it, realise their potential.