Awards celebrate the region's fastest growing firms

More than 200 guests, including representatives of the Ward Hadaway Yorkshire Fastest 50 companies, key members of the region’s business community and guest speaker Larry Gould, founder and CEO of translation company thebigword, will gather at Aspire Leeds to find out the identities of Yorkshire’s fastest growing privately-owned companies.

Awards will be handed out this lunchtime to the fastest growing small, medium and large companies in the region.

One of these three winners will then go on to be crowned as Yorkshire’s overall fastest growing company of the year.

The Ward Hadaway Yorkshire Fastest 50 Awards are organised by leading North law firm Ward Hadaway and supported by The Yorkshire Post.

Larry Gould, CEO and founder of Leeds-based translation company thebigword, will give the keynote speech at the event while Philip Jordan, partner in the commercial team at Ward Hadaway’s Leeds office, will talk about the firm’s involvement in the awards and announce the winners and runners-up in each category.

Greg Wright, the deputy business editor of The Yorkshire Post, will introduce proceedings at Aspire Leeds.

Jamie Martin, managing partner at Ward Hadaway, said: “We are proud to say that the Ward Hadaway Yorkshire Fastest 50 Awards have become a real fixture in the region’s business calendar since we first held them in 2011.

“The event highlights and celebrates exceptional achievement in business by companies right across Yorkshire and always proves to be a positive and uplifting occasion.

“I am sure that everyone is looking forward with great anticipation to seeing which companies will be revealed as those who have achieved the most impressive results in terms of growing their businesses.”

The Ward Hadaway Yorkshire Fastest 50 recognises and celebrates privately-owned profit-making companies which have shown the strongest sales growth over recent years.

In-depth research carried out by independent economic experts has been used to put together the Ward Hadaway Yorkshire Fastest 50 for 2017.

Figures from a company’s previous three years of accounts are analysed and then an average annualised growth figure produced for each of the companies.

To be eligible, companies need to be privately owned rather than publicly listed plcs, to have an annual turnover of at least £1m and to have made a profit for each of the previous three years.

Businesses must also be locally owned in Yorkshire or, for foreign-owned companies, have local control.

The fastest growing small business award is for companies with annual turnover of between £1m and £7.5m, the fastest growing medium business award is for companies with annual turnover of between £7.5m and £15m and the fastest growing large business award is for companies with annual turnover of more than £15m.

A full report on the awards, together with analysis and feature articles, will appear in a special supplement celebrating the event in The Yorkshire Post on Tuesday, March 21.