Philips is the electronics brand behind a host of household appliances and it launched the air fryer, one of the most successful new products of the 21st Century so far. The history of the Philips brand dates back to the 1800s. Today the company that makes Philips products for consumers is called Versuni and the chief executive is Veronique Pauwels. In this episode of the Business Leader podcast we speak to her about the business, why it is capable of producing innovations like the air fryer...

Monday.com is a global software giant worth more than $14bn (£11bn) that has emerged from outside Silicon Valley. It lets companies build their own work and project management tools. This approach is often referred to as low code or no code. It gives teams the flexibility to build their own apps and control workflows. Monday.com was founded in Israel in 2012 and went public in the US on Nasdaq in 2021. It now has more than a quarter of a million customers in over 200 countries and the UK is...

Huel is one of the fastest-growing companies in the UK. The food and nutrition business has ambitions to be the next billion-dollar food brand and has already succeeded where many other UK brands have failed by breaking into the US. This is the story behind Huel's unique recruitment, marketing and growth strategy... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of Business Leader we speak to not one but four chief executives. They will help you understand housing associations and why they are the biggest organisations you have never heard of, why they left jobs in big business to lead not-for-profit organisations and how to tackle the housing crisis in the UK. We speak to the chief executives of four of the biggest housing associations in the UK. They are Patrick Franco at Notting Hill Genesis, Andy Hulme of Hyde, Sarah Jones of...

CMR Surgical is one of the most exciting businesses in the UK, but you probably haven't heard its story. Until now. Dr Mark Slack, the co-founder and chief medical officer, guides us through how CMR built a robot to do keyhole surgery and became a business valued at more than $3bn (£2.3bn), backed by investment giants like SoftBank and Tencent. It is a story that involves a failed athletics career, military service and a meeting of minds in Cambridge akin to The Beatles getting together... ...

Since 2017 Fawn Weaver has been building a new global whisky brand from Tennessee in the US, called Uncle Nearest. It stands out because it is inspired by the first known African American master distiller, Nathan “Nearest” Green. He was a former slave who worked very closely with Jack Daniel. It’s a story that fascinated Weaver when she first learned about it in 2016, so much so that she relocated from Los Angeles to Tennessee with her husband to learn more about the Green family – and...

Alex Depledge and Jules Coleman sold their first business Hassle.com for nearly £30m. But instead of taking the opportunity to take a step back and enjoy life, they went again and launched a second start-up - Resi. So, what is it like building a business for the second time? What is different? And why do it all again? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

James Daunt has turned around Waterstones in the UK and Barnes & Noble in the US. That gives him a unique insight into what it takes to run successful shops on both sides of the Atlantic at a time when many high street businesses are failing. In this podcast episode, we take a detailed look at how Daunt runs his book shops and the strategy that is required to succeed... If you enjoyed this episode, then you can find out more about the story behind Daunt Books, Waterstones and Barnes &...

Monzo is one of the most promising and fastest-growing companies in the UK. But when TS Anil became chief executive of the digital bank in 2020, there were question marks about its business model and whether it could grow beyond its loyal collection of millennial fans. Today it is worth £4bn and has more than 10 million customers. This is the story of how Monzo scaled-up into a big business and took on the established banks... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the 1980s and the 1990s, Serie A was the best football league in the world. The Italian league was where players wanted to play and what fans wanted to watch. Diego Maradona, Marco van Basten and Roberto Baggio were superstars and playing in Serie A. But in recent years that has not been the case. Serie A has been overtaken by other leagues, notably the English Premier League. Now, however, Serie A is fighting back. In this episode of Business Leader, Michele Ciccarese, the commercial and...

Sir Rocco Forte has led two businesses worth more than £1 billion. The first, Forte Group, was founded by his father, Charles. It owned hotels and restaurants and was one of the biggest companies in the UK. But in 1996 it was lost. Forte was taken over by Granada after a hostile bid battle and then dismantled. Sir Rocco had to start again. At first he had no properties and couldn't even use the family name. But Rocco Forte Hotels is now valued at £1.2 billion. This is the story about how Sir...

Andrew Dudum founded Hims & Hers to try to bring healthcare into the digital age. The business is a wellness platform that specialises in treatments for conditions that traditionally have a stigma attached, such as hair loss, acne and erectile dysfunction. It allows people access to over-the-counter drugs and prescriptions following an online consultation with a qualified doctor. The company went public on the New York Stock Exchange in 2021. It is now valued at more than $3.5bn (£2.7bn)...

Chris Oglesby succeeded his father Michael as chief executive of Bruntwood in 1999. Since then he has grown Bruntwood into one of the biggest and most important businesses in northern England. Bruntwood is responsible for much of the regeneration work in Manchester in recent years and is working on property developments across northern England. The company thinks there is an opportunity to transform the economy in northern England. But the Oglesby family has recently been hit by tragedy ...

Matt Grech-Smith and his business partner Jeremy Simmonds had an idea a decade ago that they called “competitive socialising”. They’ve gone on to create a mini-golf entertainment empire that is a thriving global business with annual sales of more than £35m. It all started with a warehouse in east London, an email that went viral, and a website that crashed. Now Swingers is heading for Las Vegas and Dubai. Dougal Shaw presents the story behind a business that has changed how people socialise...

Joanna Knight was an entrepreneur running a business that imported components for laser printer cartridges into the UK. But it was struggling. Her mother urged her to get a job. So Joanna Knight did. She joined Wrexham-based Moneypenny as its first sales director. More than a decade later she is now the chief executive of Moneypenny, one of the fastest-growing companies in the UK. "Failure is just another step to success," Knight says. This is the story of how she went from failure to CEO,...

Hawksmoor was founded by friends Will Beckett and Huw Gott in 2006 and the pair now have 10 restaurants in the UK. From humble beginnings in a former Turkish restaurant in London, Hawksmoor generated sales of more than £90m in 2023 and is now expanding overseas. In this episode of Business Leader, Dougal Shaw looks at the story behind a culinary and business success. “People don’t like being miserable," says Beckett. "One of the joys in life is spending time with people in...

Airbus is one of the biggest manufacturing businesses in the UK, Europe and the world. In this episode of Business Leader, we look at Airbus's business in the UK, its commitment to manufacturing in the country and its concerns about the geopolitical situation. We speak to John Harrison, the chairman of Airbus UK, the most senior Brit in the company and also its general counsel Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sage is exactly the sort of company the UK needs more of. It is the biggest UK technology company on the stock market and is valued at more than £10 billion. Not only that, but it is based in Newcastle and outside the south-east of England. This is the story behind how it went from a promising business to a FTSE 100 giant and the leadership of chief executive Steve Hare, who rebuilt his career after being told he would never work in the City again... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy...

David Richards has built successful teams in rallying, Formula 1 and business. This is the story of how he built Prodrive, which became a world leader in motorsport and advanced manufacturing. Why is the UK so successful in these industries? What can other businesses and industries learn from this? And how do you manage Formula 1 drivers and factory workers? You will find the answers in this episode of Business Leader Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 2006 Julia Hartz started a company with two co-founders in Silicon Valley. They wanted to shake-up how people bought tickets for events through using mobile phones and QR codes. Eventbrite started by facilitating meet-ups in the tech community. But last year it issued more than 300 million tickets for 5 million events around the world and the company was valued at more than $1.8bn when it floated on the stock market in 2018. In this episode of Business Leader, Julia Hartz, the chief...

How do you turn a bold idea into reality? How do you deliver when things get really hard? Mark Beaumont might be the expert on this. Anyone can come up with an idea and anyone can talk about performing at a high level. But Mark Beaumont has delivered on both. He holds the world-record for cycling around the world and has now turned his considerable skills to being a venture capital investor. But that is only part of his remarkable story, which also includes capsizing in the Atlantic Ocean,...

In 2017 Tom Leathes decided it was time to give the second-hand car market a digital update. With his two best friends and long-time business collaborators, Alex Buttle and Harry Jones, he co-founded Motorway. Investors spotted the potential and by 2021 the company was another British unicorn, valued at more than $1bn. The platform handled £2.2bn worth of transactions in 2023, helping customers sell their second-hand vehicles to a network of more than 5,000 verified car dealers. The three...

Lord Mark Price spent more than 30 years working for the John Lewis Partnership, including eight years as the boss of Waitrose. He then joined the government as trade minister before founding his own business, WorkL, which tracks the happiness of employees. In this episode of Business Leader we explore what he has learned about running a business as well as the past, present and future of the John Lewis Partnership, and why businesses are underestimating the importance of their staff being...

The story behind Manchester-based travel company Travel Counsellors and why it might be the company with the best reviews in the UK. Steve Byrne, the long-serving chief executive, explains why customers and staff rate it so highly, why you may not have heard about the company until now, and why it has ambitious plans for the future. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit offtolunch.substack.com Hosted on...