Michael Hayes is an English businessman, best known as the former president and CEO of SEGA Europe and SEGA of America (collectively

SEGA is a Japanese multinational corporation, multinational video game and entertainment company headquartered in Shinagawa, Tokyo. Its international branches, Sega of America and Sega Europe, are headquartered in Irvine, California and London, r ...

West). He has also held executive positions at Codemasters and Nintendo UK and currently leads the digital and e-commerce division of

Mercia Fund Management Mercia Fund Management, which is now known as Mercia Fund Managers or Mercia is part of Mercia Technologies PLC. It is a UK-based venture capital fund manager. The company provides venture capital to businesses focused on innovative technolog ...

Career

Mike Hayes was involved in the localization of

StarCraft ''StarCraft'' is a military science fiction media franchise created by Chris Metzen and James Phinney and owned by Blizzard Entertainment. The series, set in the beginning of the 26th century, centers on a galactic struggle for dominance am ...

at Blizzard Entertainments in 1998. From 2002 to 2003, he was credited in various

Codemasters The Codemasters Software Company Limited (trade name: Codemasters) is a British video game developer based in Southam, England, which is a subsidiary of American corporation Electronic Arts. Founded by brothers Richard and David Darling in Oct ...

games for a role in public relations. During the late 1980s, Mike was employed by General Foods (soon to be bought by Kraft), where he was a Brand Manager and then Marketing Manager on their desserts products including Angel Delight and Bird's Custard. It is unknown where he was employed between then and 2001. He joined the company in 2004 as managing director. In 2005, Hayes became president contributing to the company's reinvention from a hardware maker to a third-party games publisher. In his tenure as COO of SEGA Europe, he was credited for restoring SEGA's dominance in Europe by setting up the now-defunct

Sega Racing Studio Sega Racing Studio (abbreviated as SRS; also known as Sega Driving Studio) was a computer and video game developer established in 2005 (based in Solihull, England) for the sole purpose of developing AAA Sega racing titles. The studio had radical ...

and acquiring video game studios

Creative Assembly The Creative Assembly Limited (trade name: Creative Assembly) is a British video game developer based in Horsham, founded in 1987 by Tim Ansell. In its early years, the company worked on porting games to MS-DOS from Amiga and ZX Spectrum platfor ...

and Sports Interactive. In June 2009, Mike Hayes replaced Simon Jeffery as President of Sega of Europe & America.MCVUK.com
/ref> He remained Sega's president until June 2012.

References

Year of birth missing (living people) Sega people English businesspeople Living people Video game businesspeople {{England-business-bio-stub