Last week’s gala dinner celebrated figures from the Liverpool business community at the 14th annual ‘Livercool’ event. Andrew Wright reports.

The awards ceremony, hosted by Downtown in Business and supported by headline sponsor PMC Family Law, was held at Liverpool’s Crowne Plaza hotel.

The ‘Livercool’ awards celebrates the success of Liverpool’s business leaders and entrepreneurs who have contributed to the city’s economic growth over the past twelve months.

Decided by the public, with more than 13,500 votes registered, the sixteen categories included ‘Legal Entrepreneur of the Year’ and ‘Communications Personality of the Year.’

Both city’s football clubs picked up awards, with Liverpool’s Vicky Jaycock claiming the ‘Business Development Manager of the Year’ prize and Everton’s Carl Bradshaw named as Male ‘Sexy Networker’ of 2016.

Liverpool John Lennon Airport’s Ashley Morgan picked up the Female ‘Sexy Networker’ gong, whilst her colleague Robin Tudor won the ‘Communications Personality of the Year’ award.

In the professional services categories, Julie Mogan of Excello Law won ‘Legal Entrepreneur of the Year’, Deloitte’s Sean Beach was the ‘Financial Services Personality of the Year’, Mark Armario scooped the ‘Banking Personality’ award for Barclays, and Butterworth Spengler’s Alan Tune was the ‘Insurance Professional of the Year.’ Michael Gavin of Arc Recruitment won the closest contest of ‘Livercool’ 2016, beating the runner-up for the recruiter award by just two votes.

Full service marketing agency Kitsune Studios boss Michael Braithwaite was ‘Newcomer of the Year’ and Kyle Disley claimed the ‘Young Entrepreneur’ prize.

Managing Director of a range of city centre venues, including District House and the Richmond Hotel, Stephen Hesketh, won ‘Hospitality Personality of 2016’ and ‘Property Personality of the Year’ was Peter Grieve of Laing O’Rourke. Matt Liggins from Health@Work was the Employee of the Year.

Special awards were presented to Victoria Brown, oneHR (chairman’s award), Paul Corcoran, Agent Marketing (chief executive’s award) and Nicola Matthews, Barclays (the Paul Rice award).

The big winner of the evening was restaurateur entrepreneur Nisha Katona of Mowgli.