Mike Harris (entrepreneur)

Mike Harris was founding CEO of Firstdirect, CEO Mercury Communications 1991–94 and founding CEO of Egg Banking plc.

Mike is the co-founder of semantic web company Garlik [1] in 2005 with ex egg CIO Tom Ilube. Garlik is the only company in the world to have the inventor of the World Wide Web Tim Berners-Lee on its advisory board.

Author of Find your Lightbulb [2] published by John Wiley & Sons in 2008.

Mike Harris' personal blog can be found at: [3] entrepreneur

Biography

Mike Harris spent the first 15 years of his career in IT at Midland bank in the UK (now HSBC). Having left Midland in 1986 to join technology company Space-Time Systems he returned in 1988 and led the development and launch of Firstdirect – a Midland Subsidiary which was the world's first major telephone bank. It was launched in 1989 with Harris as CEO.

In September 1991 he became Chief Executive of Mercury Communications (the first competitor to British Telecom in the UK) and Chairman of the mobile operator –Mercury One to One, (now operating as T-Mobile). Mercury Communications was the first Telco in the world to provide integrated competition (local and long distance) to an established former monopoly. During Harris's tenure Mercury's turnover grew from £1bn pa to over £1.6bn and a consumer brand was established with over 4m consumers joining the Mercury service. The Mercury Consumer business was placed in a 51:49 JV with Bell Cable Media in 1997 and the JV sold to NTL for $10bn in 2000.

In 1995 Harris moved on to the position of founding CEO of Prudential Banking plc and then the CEO of its successor, Egg – the first major player in internet banking in the UK and for several years the largest internet bank in the world. Egg went from start up to a billion pound public company in 2 years when it floated on the London Stock Exchange in July 2000 at a value of £1.3bn .Harris retired as CEO of Egg in January 2001 but continued to serve on the Board as Vice Chairman until 2005. Egg was sold to Citi Group in 2007 for $1.2bn

Harris became Chairman of Garlik in 2005. Garlik has offices in Richmond (UK) and New York and distributes an identity defense product known as Datapatrol through banks, insurance companies and broadband providers. By June 2008 the company had raised $18m funding from its founders and UK venture firms 3i and DH Ventures.

Persondata
Name	Harris, Mike
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth
Place of birth
Date of death
Place of death