Former TalkTalk boss bounces back to stock exchange in Mind Gym flotation
FORMER TalkTalk boss Dido Harding is about to return to the stock market.
Baroness Harding, a Conservative peer, is to be a senior independent nonexecutive director at Mind Gym, a company that trains business leaders how best to motivate staff.
The company’s chief executive is Octavius Black who has strong connections with the Tory party.
Mind Gym is expected to be valued at up to £140 million when it floats on the stock market later this month. The firm is in talks with City investors and will confirm financial details of its flotation in the coming weeks.
Harding’s return comes just over a year after she left telecoms company TalkTalk. She had been chief executive since 2010 but stood down shortly after the company was given a record £400,000 fine by the Information Commissioner’s Office for losing customer data in a cyber-attack. She is a nonexecutive director at the Bank of England, where she is chair of its remuneration committee. Harding, 50, is also an amateur jockey and racehorse owner. Her husband is Tory MP John Penrose.
Mind Gym – founded in 2000 by Black and occupational psychologist Stephen Bailey – reported revenues of £37 million in the year to March, up 21 per cent on the year before.
Black’s wife, Joanne, will also be on the board of Mind Gym as nonexecutive chair, a position she has held since 2014.
The firm has worked with around 60 FTSE 100 companies, teaching bosses behavioural science.