Sir Richard Harpin

That's certainly what's happening in the U.K.,

The London stock market is underperforming.

The junior market, which is called AIM, the alternative investment market, has got less than 700 companies listed.

It's fallen significantly over the last 20 years.

And yet many entrepreneurs in the UK dream of listing their business on the UK stock market.

So I do think that it's really important that we find a way that more companies can join the public markets.

I think there is an attraction.

Great for small investors to be able to invest in those public companies, pick the ones that are the best, and they're getting a good return on their money.

Yeah, historically, the big news in the UK stock market was around government-owned companies like British Telecom, British Gas being privatized.

And a big opportunity for...

uh members of the public to be able to invest in those big institutional companies and that worked really really well so we've got to find a way as a country to get back to that um great stock market success yeah richard i could talk to you about business all day um i want to i want to close with this question you can take it whatever way you want um

That is my step number five in my book, which is hiring my replacements.

And that's a really tough thing for us entrepreneurs.

But I worked out after eight years of running HomeServe that I was a rubbish chief exec, that I'd got lots of ideas, that I'd got vision.

My team said I challenged them and inspired them, and together we delivered more than we ever dreamt of.

But my magic model was hiring people that were better than me

And effectively, I hired a guy that became the MD of HomeServe UK.

And that then meant I could work on the business rather than in the business.

When that works, and he ran the UK better than I had, I then thought, right, as we grow into other countries, and I can step up in HomeServe rather than step out, I'm going to take responsibility for internationalizing our business.

And then went and hired great chief execs in each of those nine other countries.