Michael is an experienced Executive Chairman, CEO and Managing Director with over 45 years’ book industry experience, primarily in the academic, scholarly and STM sectors.
With an early career in marketing at Pergamon Press, working across scholarly monographs and journals, textbooks, reference books and professional medical publications, Michael is best known as Chairman of the Board and majority shareholder at Eurospan Group, where he oversaw its transformation from a specialist sales agency, focussing primarily on UK and Europe, into a class-leading global sales, marketing and distribution agency. During this expansion, Michael established branch offices in India, Singapore and Australia, each backed by sales agents, local stockholding and country-specific marketing, which were further enhanced by later regional entities in both Latin and North America.
A seasoned publishing professional, and skilled in sales and marketing, leadership, business strategy / development and Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A), for publishers looking to expand internationally, Michael’s extensive knowledge of the processes and pitfalls in doing so is second to none. His experience in identifying and working with regional sales agents and representatives, local customer engagement and marketing techniques, alongside pricing and stock availability, is invaluable to those he assists.
His M&A expertise is in no small part enhanced by the prominent part he played in the acquisition by Eurospan of Electronica Books & Media Ltd, Turpin Distribution Services Ltd and, most recently, Transatlantic Publishers Group Ltd. Subsequently, he was also lead negotiator on the sale of first Turpin, then Eurospan, to United Independent Distributors (UID) in 2020 (whom he then joined as Vice-Chair and Non-Executive Director to support the Board and the Chairman during the transition).
Michael brings to Maverick not just a safe pair of hands in marketing and sales, but also solid experience at planning and delivering profitable revenue growth in international markets.