Business Leader Graham Ruddick

In 2018 the founder of Tide, George Bevis, stood aside as chief executive and was succeeded by Oliver Prill. Since then Tide has grown rapidly. It has gone from being a promising financial technology start-up to a company whose online banking services are used by one in 10 small and medium-sized businesses in the UK. In this episode of Business Leader, Oliver Prill discusses the challenges of becoming chief executive, how to disrupt the financial services industry and why regulators may hold back innovation in the UK.



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Wizz Air has emerged as one of the biggest airlines in Europe and a new low-cost rival to Ryanair and EasyJet. Its first flight was in May 2004, travelling from Katowice in Poland to Luton in the UK. Today it carries more than 60 million passengers every year and is valued at well over £2 billion after floating on the stock market in London. In this episode of Business Leader, Jozsef Varadi, the founder and chief executive of Wizz Air, discusses how he founded and built the airline, the challenges he has faced and his fascinating views on what it is like running a UK-listed business.


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit offtolunch.substack.com

How does a business 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. He has been in the business for 30 years, but when he was younger he didn’t want to join it and feared he would fall-out with the rest of his family…


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit offtolunch.substack.com

Floyd Woodrow and Peter Malmstrom had illustrious military careers in the SAS, the special forces unit of the British Army. Now they are using what they learned about leadership, team-building, and negotiating to build a business. That business - Quantum Group - is already worth hundreds of millions of pounds, and they have ambitions to make it much bigger. This episode of Business Leader is the story of what the military taught them about how to build and scale-up a business. And it includes the key points from the elite coaching courses that Floyd Woodrow gives to professional sports teams and businesses.


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit offtolunch.substack.com

Duncan Clark was an environmental journalist at The Guardian, pioneering a new way of telling stories through data visualisation and graphics. Now he is at the centre of one of the fastest-growing tech companies in the world - Canva, which offers free online tools for graphic design and has been valued at $40 billion (£32 billion). This is the story of how he built a business, sold it to Canva, and is now leading the company’s ambitious expansion plans in Europe


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit offtolunch.substack.com

Robinhood is one of the fastest-growing companies in America and claims it is helping to democratise finance by offering commission-free share trading for all. Now it is coming to the UK. Jordan Sinclair, the president of Robinhood UK, explains how it is approaching a UK launch, the story behind the business and the challenges it has faced along the way…


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit offtolunch.substack.com