BBC Worldwide wins prestigious Queen's Award for Enterprise
21st April
BBC Worldwide has been granted the Queen’s Award for Enterprise by Her Majesty the Queen. We are one of around only one hundred businesses to receive the accolade, which is awarded on the Queen's official birthday every year. The International Trade Award recognises substantial growth in overseas earnings and commercial success at outstanding levels, based on 3 years trading results.
BBC Worldwide showed that it had increased its overseas revenues by some 33% and had invested over £1billion pounds from overseas activity back into the UK's creative industries over the last 3 years. It is able to do this by working in partnership with both the BBC and independent production companies to acquire intellectual property, and with third parties like licensees and international broadcasters to exploit these rights through its business operations.
John Smith, CEO, said: "It's an enormous honour to receive this award and testimony to the hard work and commitment of all at BBC Worldwide, its partners and customers. Content created by the BBC and the UK creative industries are the lifeblood of our company, whether in television or publishing, and we are proud to represent this wealth of British talent across the world. We pride ourselves not just in generating export income for the UK generally, but also in building international partnerships that benefit the creative industries and ultimately the licence fee payer."
BBC Director General, Mark Thompson added: "This award is also testimony to the achievements of our partners throughout the creative industries including the independent production sector who help make Britain such a powerful creative force overseas. This recognises the work BBC Worldwide do to bang the drum for the whole of UK PLC abroad as well as creating value that benefits licence fee payers."
This is the second time that BBC Worldwide has won the accolade. It first won the Queen's Award for Enterprise in 2002, while 2Entertain, BBC Worldwide's joint venture video distribution with Woolworths plc, received the award for International Trade in 2008.
Our business is founded on our partnerships both in the UK and around the world, so we really could not have achieved this award without you. <span style="FONT-SIZE: 10.5pt; COLOR: #333333; FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: PMingLiU; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: ZH-TW; mso-bidi-language: A