How do the 1 per cent spend their holidays?
Plus, "painful" October budget pending, ministers urged to help SMEs with soaring energy bills, retail prices fall for the first time in three years and the couple who built £4bn Specsavers empire
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Business Thinker
Deep dives on business and leadership
By Sarah Vizard
⛱️ How do the one per cent spend their holidays?
The Financial Times has looked at how the top 1 per cent spend their holidays – and it is surprisingly similar to how they spend their time working. Delegation (getting someone else to organise it!), every minute accounted for and trips with a defined purpose are among the trends.
👓 Couple who built £4bn Specsavers empire – and still run it in their 80s
Specsavers is one of the UK’s biggest business success stores. It was founded 40 years ago by husband-and-wife team Doug and Mary Perkins, who still own and run the company. In this interview with The Times, Doug, who is now 81, recalls their expansion journey, as well as how they are planning for the future.
Mary also recalls some of the advice she received from the former Asda boss Allan Leighton: “‘If you’re number one, then act as if you’re number two.’ I think that is such good advice for any company. You have to keep thinking about how to differentiate your business.”
😞 How to sequence an antidote for ailing leaders
Trust in business, media and government leaders remains low – the Edelman Trust index put it at just 51 per cent. This article from Big Think suggests there is a leadership crisis stemming from a misalignment between today’s leadership content and the skills and mindsets that have traditionally shaped leadership practices. And it puts forward three adjustments leaders need to make to rectify these.
Business Agenda
A summary of the most important business news
1. The prime minister Sir Keir Starmer has warned that the upcoming October budget will be “painful”. This is the biggest hint that tax rises are likely, as he asks the British public to “accept short-term pain for long-term good”. The budget is due to be held on October 30. You can read more here.
2. Ministers are being urged to intervene to help prevent businesses struggling with gas and electricity costs from going bust, as bills are forecast to be 70 per cent higher next year than before the energy crisis. The Guardian has shared research by the forecaster Cornwall Insight which indicates that a typical small business, such as a pub, restaurant or independent retailer, is paying £5,000 extra a year on bills compared to 2021. You can read more here.
3. Figures from the British Retail Consortium and NielsenIQ show that prices in British shops have fallen for the first time in almost three years. Prices declined by 0.3 per cent year on year in August, driven by heavy markdowns as clothing retailers try to sell off summer stock. You can read more here.
4. Several thousand former and current Next employees have won a landmark equal pay claim against the high street retailer after a six-year legal battle. An employment tribunal has ruled that Next failed to demonstrate that the lower basic wage paid to sales consultants compared with warehouse operatives was not the result of sex discrimination. Between 2012 and 2023, the period examined by the tribunal, 77.5 per cent of retail consultants at the fashion and homeware retailer were female, and 52.75 per cent of warehouse operators were male, according to the ruling. You can read more here.
5. More than three-quarters of households that park their cars on the street do not have a public charger for electric vehicles within a five-minute walk and 9.3 million households do not have off-street parking where they could install a charger, according to the analysis by the Field Dynamics consultancy. The number of places to plug in is increasing, with 46 per cent growth in the number of public chargers across the UK in the year to July 2023. But regulators are concerned that big areas, known as “charging deserts”, are not served adequately by the public network. You can read more here.
Business Question
Who am I?
- I was born 32 years ago yesterday
- It’s not all success – I had to steal frozen pizzas to get by at 18
- I penned a book that went along the lines of ‘Joyful Glamorous Tycoon’
- I have 7 million YouTube subscribers but many more podcast listeners
- I’m no firebreather but am called a Dragon
The answer can be found at the bottom of the page.
Business Quote
Inspiration from leaders
“Education is the mother of leadership.”
– Wendell Willkie
Business Leader
The best of our content
Learning to lead: Breaking barriers in the City
Sam Smith, the first female CEO of a City stockbroker, transformed the financial landscape by leading a management buyout to create finnCap in 2007 and acquiring Cavendish Corporate Finance in 2018.
Floating on London’s AIM, she grew the company in a shrinking market through her unique leadership style. Now a strategic adviser and non-executive director, Smith continues to influence the industry, leveraging her experience to help scale-ups thrive.
We talk to Smith for the next instalment of our Learning to lead series where she shares lessons from her career. You can read the article here.
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🤝 The power of coaching and mentoring
And finally…
With the football season underway fans are flocking back to stadia to experience the drama of match days.
There is now a new way for fans who are deaf or have impaired hearing to immerse themselves in the atmosphere and feel the tension.
The Royal National Institute for Deaf People and Newcastle United’s kit sponsor Sela have developed a fan’s shirt that turns noise from the stadium, captured by a series of microphones, into physical vibrations over the body, which convey the changing emotion of the crowd. It’s a form of “haptic” (or touch) feedback, as you find on many tech products these days, including laptops for example.
There is a special language to learn. Pulses felt on the shirt sleeves mean the home team is singing, whereas if you feel the same on the back of the shirt, that means an away goal.
The Saudia Arabian firm Sela is offering the tech at home games as part of a campaign called ‘Unsilence the Crowd’.
You can learn more about Newcastle United’s scheme here.
The answer to today’s Business Question is Steven Bartlett.
