WMG boss awarded honorary title
Lord Kumar Bhattacharyya has been presented with an Honorary Membership Award from the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME). He is the first Briton to be honoured with the title.
The founder and director of WMG – who secured the top spot in Insider's Power 100 list last month – was presented with the award for his contribution to the manufacturing sector.
He is the only person from outside of the USA to receive the award in the last ten years.
A total of 63 awards have been granted by the SME in the last 77 years. Lord Bhattacharyya joins a list of recipients including Henry Ford II; Edward N Cole, president and chief executive of General Motors; Harry J Gray who lead the transformation of United Aircraft into United Technologies and Willard F Rockwell Jr, founder of Rockwell Automation.
Lord Bhattacharyya said: "I am honoured to have received this award, especially as this is usually awarded to an American, I can now say I am one of the handful of non-Americans to have been given this honorary membership."
He founded WMG – formerly Warwick Manufacturing Group - in 1980 to "reinvigorate UK manufacturing".
WMG now employs more than 450 staff working across four buildings at Warwick, with education centres in six countries and an annual programme of more than £120m.
