What's next for Off to Lunch...
The business news that matters
Hello and welcome to Off to Lunch…
I want to dedicate the start of this Friday edition of Off to Lunch to letting you know about the exciting plans for this newsletter.
It was two years ago this month that I launched Off to Lunch (“Sorry to be gloomy…” was the headline of the first edition on April 22, 2022, which you can read here). Back then, Boris Johnson was prime minister, interest rates were 0.75 per cent, few people had heard of ChatGPT, and Sam Bankman-Fried was seen as a genius and not a criminal. A lot has changed. I have loved being with you along the way - sharing the important news, expertise and analysis, and (hopefully) having some fun too.
Off to Lunch has grown dramatically during that time. The newsletter now gets about 200,000 views every month, a number I could only have imagined at the start. And it is now part of Business Leader and a bigger ambition after being acquired last year. Off to Lunch is a key part of our plans to build Business Leader into an agenda-setting, aspirational and inspirational business publication for the UK.
As part of these plans, Off to Lunch is getting a refresh. You will notice a new look and new content over the coming weeks as we improve the newsletter and build on what we have.
These improvements will also see the brilliant Josh Dornbrack take over the newsletter. This is quite a moment for me. But as plenty of founders have told me in interviews about their business, it’s important to recognise when you need to hand something over to the person who can take it to the next level. Josh has already written a few editions of Off to Lunch while I have been away. As you will have been able to tell them from those newsletters and all the content he has produced for Business Leader, he is one of the brightest talents in UK media and we are lucky to have him.
You will still hear from me regularly, but in a different way. More on that soon. In the meantime, enjoy the rest of today’s newsletter and your weekend. As ever, please get in touch with any ideas and suggestions you may have at graham.ruddick@businessleader.co.uk.
Podcast…
The new episode of our Business Leader podcast looks at how a business can survive for 250 years and still be controlled by the same family. Rankin Brothers & Sons was founded in 1774 and is celebrating its 250th birthday in 2024. It has seen the creation of the United States of America, two World Wars, and the Covid-19 crisis. Jim Rankin is the sixth generation of the family to lead the business, which supplies corks and caps for beer, wine and spirits, but initially he didn’t want to be part of it…
You can listen to the episode on Substack here, Spotify here and Apple here
Other stories that matter…
1. The UK economy grew by 0.1 per cent in February, according to official data from the Office for National Statistics. This follows growth of 0.3 per cent in January and suggests that the recession in the UK is over. The economy entered a recession after it shrunk in the third and fourth quarters of 2023. A recession is technically classed as two consecutive quarters of economic decline. It is over once a quarter of growth has been recorded. A recovery in manufacturing drove the growth in February. You can find the data from the ONS here
2. The Financial Conduct Authority has published its report into the collapse of Neil Woodford’s £3.7 billion investment fund in 2019. The FCA has alleged that Woodford had a “defective and unreasonably narrow understanding of his responsibilities for managing liquidity risks”. This is a fascinating case study on failure. Patrick Hosking has done a great in-depth piece in The Times about what we know happened. You can read there here and find the FCA’s report here
3. Amazon is close to hitting a valuation of $2 trillion (£1.6 trillion) on the stock market. More here
4. Interest rates may have gone up sharply over the last two years, but a look back over history suggests the long-term trend is down. Gillian Tett has analysed this trend in the Financial Times here
5. The Economist has published a fascinating piece on the struggles facing electric vehicle start-ups. Sales are sluggish and manufacturers are struggling to control costs. More here
The new Business Leader…
The new Business Leader website and magazine have now launched. We are building a new inspirational, aspirational and agenda-setting business publication for the UK. You can read our analysis, interviews and expert columnists on our website by clicking the image below. Our new magazine is now available in shops and you can subscribe to your own print or digital version by clicking here
And finally…
This is a TV recommendation that I have wanted to share for some time. I have a four-year-old son and a one-year-old daughter, so inevitably we watch plenty of children’s television programmes at home. Honestly, I find myself enjoying much of it too. The quality of kids’ television is dramatically better than it was when we were growing up. It is obvious that parents are now deliberately targeted too.
One show stands above the others - Bluey. It manages to be ridiculous one moment and then ridiculously profound the next. You can laugh and cry watching the show. Bluey is Australian but is produced with the BBC. It has become a huge hit in Australia, the US and the UK. Remarkably, Bluey is regularly the most-streamed TV show in the US, according to the weekly data from Nielsen. If you look online you will find plenty of articles claiming that Bluey is one of the best television programmes ever made - not just the best children’s television show - and debating the best episodes.
A new episode was released earlier this year in the UK that I, and many others, think is the best. It’s all about cricket. The episode is so good that whole newspaper features have been dedicated to it and Bluey has even got Americans interested in cricket. For example, The Guardian asked: “Bluey’s cricket episode: why did it leave Australians in tears and Americans puzzled?” You can read that here. The Independent said it was “the best sports drama on TV”. You can read that here. The Financial Times noted that more Australians watched the cricket episode of Bluey than watched Australia beat India in the final of the World Test Championship against India. You can read that here
If you can, watch the episode. It’s only seven minutes long and will make your day better. The full episode is on Disney+ now and will be available on BBC iPlayer next month. There is a YouTube clip below. If you don’t watch it, at least you now know a bit more about the cultural phenomenon that is Bluey…
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