Knowing when to sell – and who to
The business news that matters
Hello and welcome to the latest edition of Off to Lunch…
He was well-known for his obsession with the appearance of his company vans. “Our biggest advertisement out on the streets of London is our vans,” he said. “They represent the company and have become a bit of an icon now.” This stellar reputation, alongside its fast growth, led Pimlico Plumbers to a £145m exit for the entrepreneur in 2021, but now he can’t stop talking about how much he regrets that sale.
At the time, Pimlico’s founder Charlie Mullins said: “I’ve handed it over to good people. [New owner] Neighborly has the same work ethic as myself.“ However, this good mood has since soured. He says he gets accosted by Pimlico Plumbers customers who still think he’s the boss complaining about service. “The American way of doing things is not personal enough,” he says.
Pimlico Plumbers was a family affair for Charlie Mullins. Since selling the business to a company backed by US private equity giant KKR, his son and grandson have left. His grandson says that its new owners prioritised internal meetings over dealing with customers.
Mullins is on the verge of launching a new company, when the non-compete clause baked into his sale agreement expires in September. The company will be a direct rival to his previous venture. “There’s a massive opening in the market,” he says in an interview with Bloomberg.
Mullins is never one to shy away from the spotlight; he knows how to get a headline. No doubt he’s looking to generate some interest in his new venture. But he raises a salient point. Many entrepreneurs, once they reach a certain level, are looking to sell up. Private equity is often a willing buyer, particularly recently with many US firms looking at under-valued British businesses.
But exiting is also hard. The way you ran things may not be the way the new owners do. Watching your hard work being undone can be difficult. A number of entrepreneurs, having sold, have founded new businesses in the same space. As a founder you always have to ask, are you really ready to give up control?
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Other stories that matter…
1. British Chambers of Commerce boss Martha Lane Fox has laid out what the business group is looking for from an incumbent government: “Businesses are crying out to hear what they stand for and how they plan to create the conditions so the economy can move to the high-wage, high-skilled jobs of the future”. Read more here.
2. Days after the release of its latest update to ChatGPT, the internal rows that have cast a cloud over OpenAI have spilled into the public domain. The turmoil led to the firing and then rehiring of Sam Altman, but now the detractors are speaking out for the first time saying that safety concerns led to the drama. Read the analysis here.
3. Mining giant BHP has scrapped its takeover bid for Anglo American. The announcement comes five weeks after the Australian giant first submitted it. The move threatened a global shakeup in mining and would have had major ramifications for Anglo’s subdivisions in South Africa and South America. You can read more here.
4. The Evening Standard will stop printing its daily newspaper and move to a weekly publication instead. Having haemorrhaged £84.5m over the past six years, the move brings to an end 197 years of the publication being available daily in the capital. You can read more here.
5. Our political expert Steven Swinford has penned an interesting column on the potential premiership of Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer:
To his detractors Starmer is boring. He is, so say he critics, a limited politician with none of the natural communication skills of Sir Tony Blair, someone who would be more suited to managing a bank than running the country.
But to write off the likely next incumbent of Number 10 as dull is to miss the point. As leader of the opposition, Starmer has been one of the most ruthless politicians in recent history.
You can read the full piece here.
And finally…
We are square into election season and the polarisation is rife. Social media sites are where it festers. We know these platforms provide a constant feed of content tailored to individuals, but did you know that the comments you are shown are tailored too?
TikTok user @elieli0000 posted a video showing the set of comments she saw on a video. However, after sending it to her boyfriend, he was served a completely different set. Each appeared tailored to their preferences and demographics.
Watch below or click this link
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It’s easy to look at this video in the context of “what time my boyfriend got back from golf” and laugh it off as a minor irritation. But this speaks to a bigger issue. We’ve all seen a post and made a beeline to the comments section to see if people think the same way that we do. That’s human nature.
But when social media is serving up exactly what you want to see, this video is a stark reminder of just how deep confirmation bias and the echo chamber is. This becomes all the more important when viewed through the lens of recent Ofcom data, which found that 47 per cent of UK adults rely on social media to keep up to date with news.
It also doesn’t bode well for the next generation, with 71 per cent of 16- to 24-year-olds relying on social media for news. These sites are a great asset for building a community and spreading the message about our businesses. However, as the election messaging propagates throughout our feeds in the next five weeks, keep in mind that we need to take everything we see with a pinch of salt.
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