Darren has a 25-year track record in building and managing entertainment companies. Under his leadership as President and Chief Executive Officer, eOne has grown from a modest Canadian record distributor to the diversified global independent entertainment studio that it is today.
It was music that gave eOne its start – and serious scale.
“I was young, I loved music, and I’d just moved to Halifax, Nova Scotia. I wanted to be in business. I wanted to build something…I couldn’t find the music stores that catered to the type of music I liked to listen to – so I started my own.”
Darren opened Urban Sound Exchange in Halifax in 1991 and built it into an independent chain of music stores with locations around Canada. In 1999, he sold the business to music and video retailer CD Plus, where he joined as VP of Operations.
For the next decade, Darren led the company in building and acquiring several music distribution ventures, including Records on Wheels. He became CEO of ROW Entertainment (ROW) in 2001. Realizing that the traditional business model for media sales and distribution was changing, he diversified its operations through a series of acquisitions, including overseeing the purchase of Video One Canada, Canada’s largest home entertainment company.
Aiming far and wide: the launch of Entertainment One.
In 2003, Darren took ROW public and then orchestrated the acquisition of Koch Records, at the time North America’s largest independent music label. The name was subsequently changed to Entertainment One.
With eOne’s comprehensive North American distribution network in place, Darren began aggressively acquiring the rights for specialty content. In 2007, to fund expansion into independent feature film distribution and rights ownership, Darren orchestrated eOne’s movement to London’s Alternative Investment Market (AIM) in a $200 million IPO.
Shortly after the listing, Darren took eOne on a shopping spree, acquiring leading content producers and distributors around the globe. Stepping up to the main market of the London Stock Exchange in 2010, the company was confirmed as a FTSE 250 entrant in the FTSE UK Index Series in 2013.
From eOne’s headquarters in Canada, Darren now directs a talented cast of industry experts that shares his vision of sourcing and selecting the best content in the world, for exploitation across all media platforms, in all markets.
At A Glance
- Appointed in 2003, Darren is an innovative global entrepreneur with 25 years of senior management experience in the entertainment industry
- Darren has been inducted in the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and recognized as Entrepreneur of the Year by Grant Thornton for its Quoted Company Awards
- He sits on the IMAX Corporation Board of Directors
- A lover of all music genres, he has a soft spot for the hard stuff – metal!