Ken Davy

Ken Davy (born 1941) is a businessman who is also the chairman of the Super League side Huddersfield Giants and former chairman of the Football League Championship side Huddersfield Town.

Career

Davy grew up in Filey on the East Coast of Yorkshire, he left school at 15 with no academic qualifications and worked as a photographer for P&O. At 21 he set up a commercial photography business in Huddersfield before joining Abbey Life in 1971. In 1979 formed independent financial advice company DBS, which he sold in June 2001, for £75 million. In 2003 he set up SimplyBiz, providing development, research and marketing services to financial advisers. He has been awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Business Administration from the University of Huddersfield and an Honorary Fellowship of the Chartered Insurance Institute.^[1]

In 2011 he gave his views on the changes happening in the financial services industry "...One thing Davy is certain of is that independent advice will remain the gold standard after the RDR. “Restricted advice will prove much less attractive than many organisations believe. I can see why life insurers would be attracted to it, because it is a way of increasing their profits, but it does nothing for consumers or advisers.”.^[2] However, he then went on to seemingly contradict himself when he launched a national Restricted (rather than Independent) advice firm - Sandringham Partners in 2012 backed by £2m from SimplyBiz.^[3]

Huddersfield Giants

In 1996, Davy took over as chairman of Huddersfield Giants Rugby League club. In 1999, he merged Huddersfield Giants with Sheffield Eagles, a move which resulted in the formation of the Huddersfield-Sheffield Giants. It was an unpopular move with supporters. After one season the club reverted to being the Huddersfield Giants.

During Davy's chairmanship Huddersfield Giants played St Helens in the Rugby League Challenge Cup Final on 26 August 2006. It was the first time that the Giants had reached the final since 1962. Also during Davy's chairmanship, Huddersfield Giants won the League Leaders Shield for the first time in 81 years, after a 40-0 victory over Wakefield Trinity Wildcats.

Huddersfield Town

Davy lead the successful consortium, out of three interested, that took over Huddersfield Town in 2003, when they were in administration following the collapse of ITV Digital and Town's recent relegation to the Football League's bottom tier. As part of the takeover Huddersfield Towns 40% share in the ground was transferred to a holding company called Huddersfield Sporting Pride Ltd. Huddersfield Sporting Pride Ltd holds a 60% stake in the Huddersfield ground with the combined original stakes of the football and rugby club, the other 40% stake is owned by Kirklees Council.

In September 2006, he was criticised for failing to offer Town a significant transfer budget for the 2006–07 season to enable the club to build on their play-off position of the previous season. The budget, which was unspecified, was (according to former manager Peter Jackson) already been used up on signing just two players, goalkeeper Matt Glennon and striker Luke Beckett despite the release of Tony Carss, David Graham, Junior Mendes, Phil Senior, and Anthony Lloyd. However, Davy openly stated that Jackson was given the opportunity to strengthen his squad in order to mount a drive for promotion. This was not utilised and Jackson's "inability to attract key players" was one of the reasons given by Davy for the manager's dismissal.^[4]

After Huddersfield's 2–3 loss to Yeovil Town on 16 September 2006, he addressed a peaceful demonstration of around 100 Town fans who had called for him to up the transfer budget or go, because of Town's poor start to the season in Football League One in which they only picked up nine points from the first nine games.

On 3 June 2009, he handed over the chairmanship to Dean Hoyle, and after a brief period of retaining a minority shareholding relinquished all ownership in Huddersfield Town^[5]

References