Rule Financial advises banks and hedge funds on how to cut costs, manage risk, improve productivity and extract the maximum value from their IT. The London company has offices in Barcelona and New York, and acquired a Polish software consultancy at the end of 2008. Marcus Rule founded the company in 1997 and became chairman in March this year after appointing Chris Potts as chief executive. Sales grew 39% a year from £10.2m in 2006 to £27.3m in 2009.