PAUL PHILPOTT

Kia UK's president and CEO has transformed the brand's role from background extra to major player, and the momentum is still building.

- Mark Tisshaw

The story of Kia's remarkable rise past 100,000 annual sales in the UK all started at the end of 2006, in a hotel room in West Horsley, Surrey. There, Paul Philpott, then commercial director of Toyota, outlined his vision for Kia to a group of seven individuals.

The beds had been removed from the room and replaced by trestle tables laid down the middle. Alone on his side of the table, Philpott gave a 15-minute presentation on his vision for Kia. Questions were fired at him for two hours afterwards.

"I came away from that not knowing how it had gone," recalls Philpott. "A week later, they invited me to lunch and offered me the job."

In the 16 years since, Philpott has completely transformed Kia in the UK and delivered remarkable and sustainable long-term growth and success. He is the winner of our 2023 Editor's Award, presented to the individual who has had the greatest impact on the success of their company.

Philpott almost ended up in banking, having been sponsored for his finance degree by a bank, but he decided his future was in automotive and joined Ford's graduate sales and marketing scheme. After nine years at Ford, he switched to Toyota as its number two in marketing, later becoming marketing director and then commercial director.

The headhunters for Kia approached him at the end of 2006 about becoming the firm's UK managing director. "Kia was a company that had big ambitions but was chaotic and a bit broken in the UK," says Philpott. "My initial reaction was 'why would I want to leave Toyota for a small Korean brand that's relatively unknown?', but I went along and had a chat."

Kia had already recruited esteemed Volkswagen Group designer Peter Schreyer as its global design boss, but it would not be until the 2010 Sportage that the Schreyer effect was really felt in the attractiveness of the brand's cars.