Best of the best: City stars and turnaround champions making waves in the Square Mile
from the North-East that had previously hidden its light under a bushel. However, since Kelly joined last year, he has wisely positioned himself as the voice of the small businessmen and women who are the backbone of the UK economy. With 14,000 Twitter followers, Kelly is also one of the UK’s most watched chief executives.
Sage operates in 23 countries and employs 13,500 people. Last year, pretax profits rose 41% to £180 million.
He has also launched the Sage Foundation, a charity encouraging staff to pledge up to 2% of their working time to good causes, backed by donations of 2% free cashflow from the company.
Rupert Soames (Serco): Dubbed St Rupert in some quarters, Soames has been trying to turn around government outsourcer Serco since 2014, a feat some think miraculous.
Soames came to the company with a formidable reputation having propelled temporary power company Aggreko into the FTSE 100. But the challenge at Serco is even more daunting for Churchill’s grandson: the company was in both financial and reputational crisis, with too many contracts losing money. Soames is now just over halfway through a five-year turnaround plan.
However, this year some big contracts have been landed: first, a £600 million deal to clean Barts Hospital in London, and now its biggest contract win for five years — a £1.5 billion deal to build and operate an Australian prison.
Serco is not out of the woods yet, but if anyone can pull this off, it is Soames. What will his next rescue job be?
Alison Brittain (Whitbread): As one of just seven female chief executives in the FTSE 100, Brittain heads the UK’s largest hospitality company, owning Costa Coffee, Premier Inn, Beefeater and Brewers Fayre. Brittain was one of the UK’s most powerful women in finance as head of retail banking at Lloyds Banking Group, but then left to take the helm at Whitbread, with its 50,000 employees. Doubts about her ability to switch sectors were quickly laid to rest and she continues to make her mark. In particular, Brittain has championed the need for more women in executive-level positions and put time and effort into Whitbread initiatives designed to improve career development.
She has responded to a tougher consumer environment with a cost-cutting drive to ensure the chain succeeds.
Jayne-Anne Gadhia (Virgin Money): Boss of Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Money, Gadhia is one of the financial services industry’s most senior women, and among the best-known. She first stuck her head above the parapet of this male-dominated world during the financial crisis and the collapse of Northern Rock, which she persuaded Branson to try to rescue.
Gadhia and Branson failed in that endeavour but did not let it go, finally buying its good parts in 2011 for a bargain price. Virgin Money is now one of the UK’s main challenger banks, which she attributes to her “sheer bloody-mindedness”. Two years ago, Gadhia led a government review of women in finance. This year, she lived up to her straighttalking reputation with her memoir The Virgin Banker. She wrote about her own mental health problems, her difficulties trying to conceive, and the old boys’ network at Royal Bank of Scotland under her former boss Fred Goodwin. Her candour has highlighted her achievements and brought her new fans.
The Evening Standard Business Awards, in association with HSBC and supported by Ballymore, will be held at Banqueting House, Whitehall, on
June 29. For more information visit: standard.co.uk/businessawards #ESBusinessAwards