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High
profile companies that have appeared
on our league tables include:
| ARM |
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ARM is one of the
top success stories of the Fast Track 100 league tables.
The microchip designer, which was identified on the first Fast Track
100 league table in 1997 when it was an unquoted company with sales
of just £16.7m, floated on the London Stock Exchange and NASDAQ in
April 1998. In 2001, ARM became a title sponsor of Tech Track 100.
Sir Robin Saxby, chairman of ARM, began by fixing radios and televisions
after school when he was thirteen. He was headhunted by ARM in 1990
when the company was spun out by Acorn and Apple, and had just twelve
engineers.
ARM-designed chips are now used in three quarters of the world's digital
mobile phones, as well as in such everyday products as faxes, digital
cameras and games consoles. Company partners include Sony, Intel and
Nokia. In addition to a licensing fee, ARM gets a royalty each time
one of these companies sells a product with an ARM chip inside it.
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| Carphone
Warehouse |
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The Carphone Warehouse
story is not only well-known, it also acts as an inspiration to other
wannabe entrepreneurs.
Starting with just £6,000 in 1989, Charles Dunstone was 25 when he
set up Carphone Warehouse. The company floated on the London Stock
Exchange in July 2000.
Dunstone's big breakthrough was to target smaller customers, including
small businesses and private individuals, when existing mobile phone
companies were neglecting that side of the market. He offered them
a one-stop shop, good service and knowledgeable staff and watched
his sales explode.
The company had 470 Carphone Warehouse stores in the UK, and 647 across
the rest of Europe in 2002. Carphone Warehouse appeared on the 1997
and 1998 Fast Track 100 league tables, and on the 2000 Profit
Track 100. |
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| Travelex |
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Travelex,
the company which paid £440m in March 2001 to buy Thomas Cook's
financial services division, started life in a small office in Trafalgar
Square in 1976. Travelex was founded by ex-merchant banker Lloyd Dorfman
with a £24,000 loan from a friend. Dorfman's Thomas Cook deal is the
result of a lifetime's dedication to transforming the currency exchange
business.
Travelex claims to be the world's largest retail exchange business,
with more than 650 branches worldwide. Starting out by offering a
cheap and efficient currency exchange business to travellers, Dorfman
was the first non-bank to win a licence to exchange currency at a
British airport. Later he diversified into corporate finance, providing
a global payments service for medium-sized companies. The company
also offers an outsourcing service to banks, supplying their customers
with foreign currency. This fuelled growth as banks decided to devolve
such non-core work.
Travelex completed a secondary buyout in august 2005, when Apax paid a reported £1.1bn for a 48% stake. Former investor 3i retained a 7% stake. Travelex appeared on
five Profit Track 100 between 2000 and 2004, all the
Top Track 100 between 2002 and 2006, and Fast Track 100 in 2003. |
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| Sophos |
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Two Oxford University post graduate engineers, Peter Lammer and Jan
Hruska, set up Sophos in 1985 in their front room to make anti-virus
software. After raising £40,000 in seed capital, the company
struggled to raise further finance until they were introduced to Nick
Randall, CEO of Airtech, an established data security company. Randall
invested £60,000 of his own money to finance the move to new
premises.
In 2002, Sophos had 300 staff in eight countries from Australia
to Italy, and sells its software to the likes of Orange, Norwich
Union and IBM. The Oxfordshire-based company provides online security
for over 10 million users worldwide.
In May 2002 US-based investor TA Associates paid £41m for
a minority stake in the company to help its US expansion.
Sophos has grown profits as well as sales, and appeared on
Profit Track 100 in 2002 and 2003. It also featured
in the Tech Track 100 in 2002.
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Bhs
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| The
Storehouse Group sold this London-based department store group for
£200m to Monaco-based British entrepreneur Philip Green in 2000.
Green set about turning around the struggling high-street chain and
put together a strong management team that included chairman Allan
Leighton, formerly chief executive of Asda and now chairman of Royal
Mail Group.
Following highly successful strategies such as the launch of a new
women's clothing range in the retailer's 160 UK stores in 2001,
the company was reported to be valued at over £1.2bn in 2002.
The company has appeared on the Top Track 100 league tables from 2002
to 2006.
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