Tom Drury

Group Chief Executive, Shanks Group plc

As Group Chief Executive of Shanks Group plc, Tom Drury (47) runs one of Europe's largest independent waste management companies quoted on the UK Stock Exchange.

With a turnover in 2007/8 of £564 million, the Group today employs around 4,000 people throughout the UK, Belgium, the Netherlands and Canada. In each of these countries Shanks is a major player in the waste management industry.

Tom Drury was educated at Queen Elizabeth Grammar School at Wakefield before reading Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford University where he gained a First Class Honours degree.

He joined Elida Gibbs, Unilever in 1984 as a graduate trainee working in marketing, sales, financial management, and research and development roles. In1989 he broadened his career with Price Waterhouse as a Senior Consultant in the financial management practice in Manchester, working on assignments in manufacturing and utilities. He was seconded to North West Water Group and then accepted an offer to join the company in 1990 as Group Financial Controller and later promoted to Programme Director in 1991.

In 1992 Tom Drury was appointed Finance Director of North West Water (NWW) and a member of the Board, responsible for all finance functions for the business which had over £700m turnover and an annual capital expenditure programme of around £400m. In addition he was responsible for economic regulation and the company's relationships with OFWAT. In 1995 NWW acquired Norweb Plc to form United Utilities Plc and Tom Drury was appointed Managing Director in 1996 of a new commercial enterprise. Vertex, established through the transfer of 2,500 staff to provide customer service and other administrative services to United Utilities and third parties in the newly developing Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) sector.

Vertex was a wholly owned subsidiary of United Utilities Plc and the company grew sales, external to United Utilities, from £5m in 2001 to around £400 m in 2006. During this period Tom Drury was directly responsible for acquiring five businesses in the US, India and the UK. He was also personally responsible for the company's relationships with external stakeholders, such as market and financial analysts, media and Government (both politicians and civil servants). He was also a member of the CBI Public Service Strategy Board. Vertex grew to be the number two firm in the UK's highly competitive BPO market before it was finally sold in March 2007 to a consortium of US private equity investors.

Tom Drury lists his leisure interests as family, rugby union, golf, running and travel. He is married with a daughter and a son and lives in Knutsford, Cheshire.