It’s one thing to survive a global pandemic, another to thrive in its aftermath. Business Leader’s first attempt to identify Britain’s fastest-growing 500 companies has inevitably been coloured by the Covid years of 2020 and 2021.
Should our rankings have excluded, say, travel agents and airlines who had to pull down the shutters or ground their planes during the pandemic and therefore started from a very low base when we came to measure their latest years of turnover?
We decided against this for two reasons. First, pubs, restaurants, music venues, theatres, high-street retailers and many other businesses were obliged to close for months during the dark days of Covid. If we stripped out the travel industry, where would we stop?
Second, to bounce back strongly after such a global crisis is an achievement worthy of recognition. All travel agents started from that low base, yet some have flourished while others have continued to struggle.
Excluding certain sectors would also counter the Growth 500’s ambition – to give readers the largest and most comprehensive rankings of which UK companies are growing most quickly. This inaugural dataset, compiled by combing through thousands of filings at Companies House, compared annual turnover reported in the most recent accounts with those reported in the financial year three years before.
We did not ask for – or accept – submissions. We excluded UK businesses owned by foreign companies. Only firms that grew sales across the period counted.
Our list includes companies with turnovers as low as £3m over the latest reporting year. Hundreds of our entries are quiet achievers, often little known outside their industry or home town. But you’ll also see much-heralded entrepreneurial success stories of recent years, including Revolut, Ovo Energy, Atom Bank, Starling and Octopus Energy.
Then there are entries with a flash of celebrity, such as Victoria Beckham’s fashion label, Olympic sailor Sir Ben Ainslie’s Athena Sports Group and the West End musical production empire built up by former stagehand Sir Cameron Mackintosh. One of television chef Gordon Ramsay’s ventures also made our final 500.
Few will have expected to see Iron Maiden Legacy, the company that receives the heavy metal veterans’ earnings from touring, music rights and selling merchandise. Famed for their zombie-themed T-shirts and posters, the band’s accounts showed plenty of life. Turnover climbed to £27.5m in 2023-24, up 258.5 per cent across the three years.
Our research also tells us a good deal about the UK economy and which companies are thriving in the post-pandemic world. Financial services, a sector ranging from retail banks to a gold-trading app, accounted for 101 companies – the most of any sector. Business services (71), travel & leisure (65) and construction (61) are also well represented.
London (197) and the South East (59) dominate our list, together accounting for more than half the entries. The East of England (55), the North West (39) and South West (35) follow as the next best-represented regions. But all the regions of the UK are represented.
Not far off a third (154) of our 500 did not show a pre-tax profit in their latest accounts. Sportswear label Castore, Euan Blair’s ed-tech venture Multiverse and fellow unicorn Quantexa all showed a loss over the past year. Ambitious founders understand that investing boldly can be critical to growth. Breaking even is often a longer-term goal.
The research also tells us not to assume it’s only start-ups that can grow fast. Fifteen of our companies were founded more than a century ago. Three – the private bank C. Hoare & Co, the retail consultancy Herbert Group and the horse-racing group Weatherbys – have histories stretching back more than 250 years.
Our researchers found plenty of other impressive and surprising results. Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou founded not one but two of our 500 companies: budget airline easyJet and hospitality group easyHotel. Fund manager Jeremy Hosking makes the cut not because of his investment expertise but due to his steam train side-hustle.
There are some striking hotspots. Fourteen of our enterprises are based in Cambridge. The Welsh town of Wrexham and Nottinghamshire’s Sutton-in-Ashfield punch well above their weight, each having three companies in our rankings. Their populations number around 40,000. Wrexham is one of three football clubs to appear, along with Luton Town and Ipswich.
Low-cost and luxury enterprises are both here too. There are seven McDonald’s franchisees and the group behind Michelin-starred London restaurant Quo Vadis.
It’s that diversity of enterprise that is perhaps the most striking aspect of the Growth 500. Yes, you will find founders with ballooning revenues thanks to AI, cutting-edge cybersecurity or innovative payment platforms. But you will also see pig farmers, housebuilders and car dealers.
Ultimately, ambition is the most important raw material for high-growth ventures. These are the companies who have it in spades – and they have lessons for us all.
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