City profiles

John McDonnell

Shadow chancellor John McDonnell has led a varied working life, says Oliver Shah in The Sunday Times. The Liverpudlian trained to be a Catholic priest before dropping out to work at Birds Eye, Silentnight (“I hope no one’s got any of my mattresses,” he jokes) and Philips, where he made TVs (“the job title was ‘exposer’ – try travelling with that on your passport”). In person, McDonnell is charming and emollient, and his “nimbleness” has won him some unlikely admirers. “He’s very impressive,” says Paul Drechsler, the former president of the CBI. “I’ve seen him address a dinner audience and, for 95% of the time, you’d have followed him out of the room. Then an interesting combination of Karl Marx, Lenin and Trotsky pops out and it reminds you why we should be nervous about him.”

Peter Pritchard

The Pets at Home chief Peter Pritchard has little time for retailers who moan about the rise of the internet, says Laura Onita in The Sunday Telegraph. “As a modern retailer, you’ve got to stop bleating on and start reinventing and that’s what we’ve tried to do,” he says. Part of Pritchard’s strategy is to grow his shops’ add-on services – things like in-store vet clinics, grooming, dog birthday parties and dog agility classes – from 30% of revenues today to 50% by 2024. He’s also spending heavily on refurbishing all 450 outlets – an ambitious plan called “Project Kylie”. “We chose [the name] Kylie because she’s reinvented herself through the years, which is what we’re trying to do,” he says. “Everybody loves a bit of Kylie; we’d like people to love us.”