Hollick, Clive Richard (1945– )

English business executive and Labour Party donor and peer (from 1991). He built up a financial services and media conglomerate Mills & Allen (MAI) in the 1980s and 1990s and became an important financial donor to the ‘New Labour’ project.

In 1996, he merged (for £3 billion) United Newspapers (owners of the national Express titles and the Daily Star) to form the United News & Media (UNM) group, of which he became chief executive (CEO). He changed the political alignment of the previously pro-Conservative Express to support for the Labour government and appointed a liberal editor to appeal to younger readers. In 2000, following a failed merger attempt with Carlton, he sold most of his television interests and newspaper concerns to concentrate on building up his renamed United Business Media as a business information group. In 2005, MAI sold NOP World and Hollick retired as its CEO to become managing partner in the private equity firm, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts.

The son of a French polisher, Hollick was educated at Taunton's Grammar School in Southampton, and studied politics, psychology, and sociology at the University of Nottingham. He began his career as a graduate trainee with Hambros merchant bank in 1968, becoming its youngest ever corporate finance director in 1973. Hambros gave him control of ailing fringe bank J H Vavasseur, from which he created MAI in 1974, after selling its non-core property interests.

He acquired NOP, a leadig market research organization, in 1989 and moved MAI into television from the 1990s. He won the Meridian TV franchise in 1992 and the licence (with Pearson) to operate Channel 5, buying Anglia TV in 1994 (for £292 million) and the HTV franchise in 1997. In 2000 Hollick's attempt to merge MAI with Carlton was blocked by the Competition Commission, so he sold his three ITV franchises to Granada for £1.75 billion.

In November 2000, with circulation declining, he sold his newspaper titles to English publisher Richard Desmond for £125 million. MAI concentrated on business information, acquiring in 2000 CMP (a publisher of hi-tech magazines, including the business title Information Week, and a leading online business portal) for $920 million.

A member of the Labour Party from the age of 15, he became a major donor to ‘New Labour’ and helped found, in 1988, the Institute for Public Policy Research think tank. He was created a life peer in 1991, as Baron Hollick of Notting Hill.