Sunday Jan 30, 2005

ExCeL and its sister organising company, London EventCo, today announced their separation into two autonomous businesses. Jamie Buchan and Kevin Murphy will step down from the Board of London EventCo and Rob Mackenzie will resign from ExCeL's Executive Committee, all with immediate effect.

London EventCo was set up eighteen months ago to accelerate the launch of large-scale consumer shows at the London venue and has successfully launched three shows in that time. The largest of these events, Game Stars Live, reached 20,000 gross sqm and attracted over 50,000 visitors in its first year. However, as Deputy CEO of ExCeL, Kevin Murphy, explained " ExCeL's consumer show business has developed much more quickly than we originally anticipated, so the need for us to create events in-house to demonstrate ExCeL's potential has largely disappeared. Our core business is that of providing venue services to organisers and we do that exceptionally well."

Rob Mackenzie, Managing Director of London EventCo, continued: "The previous arrangement imposed certain restrictions on our ability to grow. From now on we will be independent in every sense of the word - free to choose where and when we run our shows. We believe there are fantastic large-scale consumer shows just waiting to be launched at ExCeL, and at other venues, and we're now going to chase these opportunities aggressively."