The space age: Condeco’s Paul Statham talks trickle-down economics, expansion plans and why being a business leader feels so good August 2, 2015 Back in the early 1980s, the Statham family started an electronic security business in their garage. “We grew it into a fairly formidable company; we had 200 people working for us,” says Paul Statham, son, and now founder and chief executive of Condeco Software. The family sold Masco Security in 1999, in a multi-million pound [...]
Why I left the City to found a business – Investec Comment August 2, 2015 What makes a barrister, with a comfortable salary and a promising career, leave her job and risk everything by starting her own company? It’s a question – or a version of it – that many in the City with an entrepreneurial spirit will have asked themselves. I won’t pretend that it wasn’t a big decision [...]
One in four millennials would rather bank with a tech company like Apple or Google than their current bank July 29, 2015 Fed up with your bank? You’re not alone. Just one in three millennials (that's people born after 1980) actually think their bank meets their requirements, and in fact, quite a few of them think Apple or Google would do a better job. It seems out of touch banks risk losing millennial business, as just 32 [...]
How the traditional world of law is embracing entrepreneurial values July 29, 2015 THE legal profession has always been exactly that – a profession. It has grown within a strict statutory framework, which has been vital for maintaining standards, but it’s perhaps not the easiest environment for flexibility and entrepreneurialism. However, that doesn’t mean law firms can ignore this growing trend. After all, the legal profession vies for [...]
July 27, 2015 We can survive longer without food than without sleep. We spend about 10 per cent of our lives eating and drinking, one per cent of our lives exercising, and almost one whole third sleeping. So why do we pay sleep quality and quantity so little attention? We all know about the importance of exercise and [...]
Green & Black’s founder Craig Sams on his plans to get us drinking real kola beans with Gusto Cola July 26, 2015 Back in the 1980s few people even knew that cocoa came from a pod grown on a tree. Absurd though that sounds, even supermarket buyers were unaware of cocoa’s provenance. As an experiment, Craig Sams, a legend in the macrobiotic diet community and founder of organic food company Whole Earth, decided to have some [...]
Finding the right partner for your growth July 26, 2015 ESTHER Marlow, finance director of Carmel Clothing, and Gary Edwards, Growth & Acquisition Finance at Investec, discuss why a fast-growth business needs the right funding partner to support its expansion. How did Carmel and Investec come to work together? EM: Carmel Clothing is a UK-based manufacturer that supplies clothes to supermarkets and high street retailers. [...]
Brewing up a storm: Pact Coffee’s Stephen Rapoport talks Brazil, bikes and changing the coffee industry July 19, 2015 There is one person at Pact Coffee who knows more about a cup of joe than anyone else in the company – and it’s not founder Stephen Rapoport: “I just can’t keep up with our head of coffee, Will. His knowledge is astonishing.” This is difficult for Rapoport, who is, by his own admission, “pretty [...]
Investec Comment: Managing your foreign exchange risk July 19, 2015 In the first three months of 2015, the value of the euro fell 10 per cent against sterling. Since a stronger pound makes UK exports relatively less competitive in other markets, for a company doing business in the Eurozone, such a sizeable move could have had a significant impact on their profitability. Plenty of firms [...]
Hotel Chocolat co-founder Angus Thirlwell on how he built a chocolate empire July 12, 2015 Europe is awash with chocolatiers and the British consumer is spoilt for choice. So the idea that someone could set up a chocolate company with £10,000 and take it from startup to a market-conquering beast in just a decade seems a little far fetched. But that is what Angus Thirlwell and his business partner Peter [...]
