LDC opens nominations for The Top 50 Most Ambitious Business Leaders 2023

LDC has launched its sixth annual search to find the UK’s most outstanding entrepreneurs and is inviting business leaders to enter The LDC Top 50 Most Ambitious Business Leaders programme.

Working in partnership with The Times, LDC will celebrate business leaders who have demonstrated ambition both within and beyond their own companies. Those who are committed to making a bigger impact, whether this means creating jobs, creating more equitable societies, contributing to sustainability, pursuing international expansion, or actively putting purpose at the heart of what they do.

A leading panel of judges will join forces to select the award winners, which includes The UK’s Most Ambitious Business Leader for 2023 – the standout individual who showcases the leadership qualities needed in business today. With additional awards focused on sustainability, people and international ambition. This year’s categories will also include The Alumni Award, in recognition of a previous Top 50 business leader who has gone on to achieve great things.

The LDC Top 50 and Ones to Watch for 2023 will be profiled in The Times later this year and invited to a national celebratory event in London where the individual award winners will be announced.

Over the last five years The LDC Top 50 has profiled more than 250 exceptional business leaders from Edinburgh to Brighton, and Bath to Norfolk. Those organisations represented by our Top 50 in 2022 collectively turn over more than £1.2billion and employ 9,500 people.

The Most Ambitious Business Leader of 2022 award went to Martin Rae, CEO of Yorkshire-based haircare firm Cloud Nine. Martin’s innovative approach to sustainability captured the judges’ attention, and his initiative that allows people to send in old haircare products, regardless of their brand, to be recycled, was called out for keeping more than 100,000 products out of landfill.

Last year’s winners also included Nima Beni and Nagma Ebanks-Beni, co-CEOs of Prima Cheese, who transformed their parents’ pizza-cheese processing company into a global powerhouse that now shreds 600 tonnes of cheese a week and exports to 55 countries.

Former Top 50 business leader Justin Whitston from FOD Mobility Group said: “Being part of The Top 50 brought incredible exposure. It’s a prestigious award and, even three years later, it’s amazing how many people still remember reading about us in the paper.”