TONIGHT is the night that the business community of the Tees Valley has been waiting for.

At the Tall Trees Hotel in Yarm, The Northern Echo's editor, Peter Barron, will reveal this year's winner of the Lifetime of Achievement Award, sponsored by the paper.

The announcement will be made at The Tees Valley Business Show, which will be attended by more than 300 businessmen and women.

The shortlist for the award includes Steve Gibson, chairman of Middlesbrough Football Club; Duncan Bannatyne, operator of the health club businesses Bannatyne Health and Just Fitness; Chey Garland, creator of a corporate call handling business in Hartelpool; Rob Shotton, chairman of Business Link Tees Valley; Alistair Arkley, chairman of New Century Inns, and Rob Bennett, chief executive of Tees Valley Training and Enterprise Council.

One of them will follow in the footsteps of last year's winner, Les Bell, who set up Teesside Dairies with a £1,000 loan from his father in 1957 and is now one the area's top business figures, having created a further four businesses, employing more than 2,000 people.

The event will also feature this year's Tees Valley Business Lecture, given by Christopher Garnett, chief executive of GNER.

Jerry Roest, group managing director for strategy and Internet at ntl, will also be a speaker, giving his thoughts and views on the future of British industry.

BBC Radio Cleveland presenter Alan Wright will be the after dinner speaker.

The main sponsors of the event are law firm Dickinson Dees. Others include regional development agency One NorthEast, Century Radio, Keith Robinson and Co, Tilly Bailey and Irvine, Nattrass and Northumbria University.