Business Diary: January 17

The Hessle-based engineering group’s decision to forge ahead with investing £150m in its factories when the UK was deep in recession drove its share price down to 32p in March 2009.

“There’s a joke going round the company that I arranged our highest level of borrowing to coincide with March 2009 when the City was falling out of bed,” said finance director Richard Perry.

Well he’s the one laughing now, with shares in the company now changing hands for more than 430p and turnover heading towards £800m.

Mr Perry said Fenner had no choice but to hold its nerve with the investment, even when markets collapsed, adding it is now paying off.

“It would have been like landing on the D-Day beaches and going ‘This is no good, let’s get in the boats and go back’. It was a long-term strategy and we had no option but to continue it.”

Black and grey issue

DIARY gets to see some strange press releases at the Yorkshire Post.

Some of our leading companies and advisers just can’t resist using unnecessary jargon to complicate the issue.

So we were a bit bemused to see a release from accountants PwC asking: “Are black swans turning grey? PwC paper reveals companies are not prepared for the new risk landscape.”

Excuse me? Black swans turning grey?

Apparently it’s something to do with “major-impact, catastrophic events becoming more frequent “.

Right you are.

It goes on to explain that “many organisations’ risk management practices are worryingly incomplete and are being outpaced by an era of catastrophic ‘black swan’ events “.

Ah a black swan event! Got you.

Is that like a film premiere with Natalie Portman prancing around pretending to be a ballerina?

Bill Henry, risk assurance partner at PwC in Leeds, said: “By their nature, black swan events should only occur at unpredictable intervals. Yet recent experience suggests events that fit this definition are happening more frequently.“

Maybe the film is now out on DVD?

None the wiser, Diary decided to google “black swan events”.

According to Wikipedia: “The term black swan derives from a Latin expression – its oldest known reference comes from the poet Juvenal’s characterisation of something being “rara avis in terris nigroque simillima cygno”. In English, this Latin phrase means “a rare bird in the lands, and very like a black swan”.

Right, so nothing like the film. Glad we’ve got that cleared up.

Input equals output

WE were all informed yesterday that it was officially the most depressing day of the year, with Monday, January 16, being nicknamed Blue Monday.

What a cheering thought with which to kick-start the week.

And to make matters worse, according to research by the University of Exeter, supported by Ambius, workplace malaise extends beyond one day and could be costing businesses as much as £93bn in lost productivity.

The research found that by giving employees input into the development of their workspace, productivity can improve by as much as 32 per cent.

Plants were cited as having multiple benefits in the workplace, including the potential to reduce depression, anxiety and overall stress.

That magic touch

magician Damian Surr claims to have cast a spell on the business world. He’s just picked up a national award as the Entrepreneur of the Month.

Mr Surr, from Sheffield, is one of more than 4,000 members of the Entrepreneurs’ Circle, which is a national organisation dedicated to helping businesses grow.

After using lessons learned from his membership of the circle, Mr Surr has, apparently, multiplied the turnover of his business, www.gingermagic.com, by 375 per cent.

Mr Surr picked up a gong from the Entrepreneurs’ Circle for his self-imposed “month of implementation”. He said: “I was fed up of knowing the right things I had to do to move my business forward, but never finding the time to do them.

“So, back in November I set myself a task to implement one change into my business each and every day. These changes had to either improve my ability to reach more customers or enhance the quality of service that I offer them.”

He set up a blog to chart his progress as the demand for his services increased.

It seems we all need the help of a touch of magic, even in these harsh economic times.