By: Harriet Green

I am City A.M.'s deputy business features editor. I look after the Entrepreneurs page, Alternative Finance and our Office Politics section. I also help out with the Forum, running our daily debate. I have a special interest in distributed ledger technology. Prior to working at City A.M., I ran a social enterprise.

Lycamobile’s chairman Subaskaran Allirajah: Meet the philanthropist behind the multi-million pound business

He cooks for everyone and we stand around the breakfast bar and chat. Some of the most important decisions the company has taken have been over meals he’s made.” This is one of Lycamobile’s leadership team, and he’s talking about his boss, founder and chairman Subaskaran Allirajah. Lycamobile is a mobile virtual network operator, providing [...]
We can predict investment risk. So why don’t we?

NULL
Riverbed Technology’s Jerry Kennelly on turning over $1bn a year making products named after fish

When I meet Jerry Kennelly, the least aggravating part of the eight-hour journey he’s just made was on the tube between Westminster and Bond Street. His flight from Stockholm to Gatwick had been fraught with issues, it’d taken him the best part of two hours to get into London from Gatwick and, having stopped off [...]

FinnCap chief executive Sam Smith on IPOs, MBOs and the value of skin in the game

March 14, 2017

FinnCap is a unique business grown from unusual circumstances. The leading City broker was established in 2007, when Sam Smith, its chief executive, orchestrated the management buy-out (MBO) of a small broking subsidiary of a private client stockbroking firm. Most significantly, FinnCap is now almost entirely owned by its employees – something that was a [...]
Meet the serial entrepreneur building P2P energy company Squeaky

March 13, 2017

That was the worst choice of name ever,” admits serial energy entrepreneur Chris Bowden, as I add an extra syllable to “Utilyx”, his first company, which he sold to Mitie in 2012 for £16.2m. Founded in 2000, it became the largest energy broker for commercial and industrial consumers and independent power producers. “When we started, [...]
Absolute rubbish: Waste entrepreneur Bruce Bratley on building his recyling empire

March 6, 2017

Did you know that it takes 10 days to recycle a cardboard box, and for it to become a new cardboard box? When the material is too old to re-use in the same guise, it’ll become an egg box. Another recycling factoid: coffee grounds are recycled all over London and turned into biofuel. It’s easy [...]
Here’s how we build P2P firms that actually service the poor

March 2, 2017

Is payday lender Wonga the only alternative finance business that actually addressed credit demand among poor people? A regulatory crackdown on the industry has pushed the most disadvantaged in this country towards hire purchase firms, where they “buy” something on credit, sell it on almost immediately to obtain ready cash, then end up paying back [...]
Tandem Bank’s chief executive Ricky Knox talks sarongs, dumb pipes, ornithology and why Facebook is scared of banking

February 27, 2017

"Would you have called Amazon? I didn’t! We all thought that was just a fad – it was a bookseller. An online bookseller with that valuation? But the internet creates these giants – and it’s not just one or two of them. "Look at music – EMI is basically dead. Google – a little bulls*** [...]
Meet the man making 10,000 luxury watches a year in Britain

February 20, 2017

It takes two years to make a Bremont watch. It takes seven years to train the person who makes it. “We tend to mop up the area when we hire,” says Giles English, one half of the fraternal founders of Bremont, the luxury watch company. “We can’t just rock up and ask for a watchmaker [...]
Feeling the burden of social care and the NHS? Crowdfunding can save us

February 16, 2017

Earlier this month, a crowfunding platform launched solely to raise money to create adult-only games. This week, teachers from schools in Portland, Oregon turned to crowdfunding to help close gaps in funding for classroom equipment. And last week, we ran an interview on this page with Julia Salasky, the founder and chief executive of CrowdJustice. Her [...]

Subscribe