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Christopher Staines CV
Chris Staines (48) has a joint honours degree Business Economics and Accounting from Southampton University, and is a Chartered Accountant and M&A Specialist. He started his career with Lloyds Bank International in Peru in 1983, where he became fluent in Spanish. He returned to the UK in 1984 and trained with Deloitte Haskins & Sells to be a CA. After qualifying he became the Internal Lecturer for Deloittes, before then specialising in M&A in 1987. He was posted to set-up the M&A department for Deloittes Australia in 1988, and was then appointed Deloittes Head of European M&A in 1989. Chris became Finance Director of the UK’s then largest Independent Film & TV Company, Initial Film and TV Ltd in 1990 until 1992, when he sold the TV side of the company to the Guardian and Manchester Evening News and the Film side Working Title (who went on to make films such as Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill). In 1993 he joined BDO Stoy Hayward as Director of Mergers & Acquisitions, and began helping inventors develop their ideas.
In 1995 he founded Freeplay Energy Group PLC and developed the World Famous Inventions, “The Wind-up Radio” and “Wind-up Flashlight” – over 5 Million now sold. Funded by both GE and The Body Shop International, Freeplay listed on the London Stock Exchange in 2005. Chris has set-up four factories in Cape Town in South Africa, employing largely disabled people, to make the wind-up products. Chris also established distribution companies for Freeplay in London, Johannesburg, Mauritius and New York and, at its peak, the Group employed over 650 people.
Chris’ story was made into a BBC ‘QED’ documentary (1996 & 1997); he won the BBC Design Awards 1997, and was listed in the World’s Top Ten Entrepreneurs by Business Week Magazine in 1999. Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki (current President of South Africa) opened his factories. Al Gore, Sir Richard Attenborough and The Duke of Kent visited them. Prince Charles and John Major (then UK Prime Minister) endorsed them in writing. Peter Jennings, Tom Hanks and Bill Clinton have all applauded the Wind-up Radio on US TV.
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