“One market changing technology is bad enough for market leaders, but what would you do if two came along at once?”   I’m not sure if you can buy a greeting card in Clinton Cards, the dominant greetings card retailer found on most UK high streets, that will encourage someone to “remember their mortality”, which is what Memento Mori means. Recent events...

“How thinking more generically can open doors.” Albagaia, a recent start-up, has quickly realised one of the most important value creating steps you can take in any business, particularly when you find that Plan A isn’t working quite as well as you had hoped – the need to think a little more generically about the business. Albagaia now states that it is...

“Why has China’s Bright Food just bought a controlling interest in Weetabix?” On The Daily Show, in 2011,United States satirist Jon Stewart joked that Weetabix wasn’t a breakfast, it was a building material. It may seem a little indigestible to some but it has been rather successfully sold as a breakfast cereal ever since it was invented in Australia in...

“Borrowing money to drive growth can make you rich, if you don’t take on too much risk.” Terra Firma Capital Partners, led by Guy Hands, is a London based private equity firm that specialises in leveraged buyouts of asset-rich businesses with complex structural or regulatory issues. However, its acquisition of EMI, for £4.7bn in 2007, was a very public proof...

“Why my neighbour, Premier Foods, has had to go back to basics.”   I live across the road from the headquarters of Premier Foods, owners of Hovis, Mr Kipling, Ambrosia, Sharwood’s, Lloyd Grossman, Oxo, Bisto and Batchelors. Which just happen to be most of the things I eat, but I guess I am not alone. From the outside you wouldn’t know that this is a...