Only 36 percent of the 500 largest companies in the United Kingdom are publicly listed, a marked shift that has been under way for many years, so a thorough understanding of today’s UK corporate landscape requires looking beyond the “UK plc”. Our research, which goes beyond publicly listed companies to consider the entire UK corporate landscape, indicates that top performers are more adept and purposeful in creating the conditions to turn their ambitions into reality.
On 14 November 2022, for the first time since comparable records started to be kept, the UK stock market briefly lost its position as Europe’s most valuable.1 While the demotion was temporary—and notwithstanding the FTSE’s recent rally and record highs—UK public markets have underperformed relative to those in other G-7 countries since the global financial crisis.2 A pound invested in the FTSE 100 in 2005, before the crisis struck, would have returned £2.24 by the end of 2023. Over a similar period, investors in the S&P 500 (United States) and OMX (Sweden) would have realised more than twice as much, while investing in France, which briefly overtook the United Kingdom as Europe’s most valuable stock market index, or even more broadly in Europe (STOXX Europe 600), would have each returned in excess of 10 percent more than the United Kingdom (on a local currency basis).3
On the surface this might look troubling, but it is not the full picture, as the stock market’s performance does not reflect the full UK economy. In fact, the United Kingdom more broadly continues to display many underlying strengths. It remains the sixth-largest economy in the world,4 home to more of the world’s largest public companies than any other country except the United States, China, Japan, and India.5 It is the second-largest exporter of services globally, with a particularly strong business services sector, including financial services, insurance, and IT services.6 It has also been one of the largest recipients of start-up and scale-up investment in Europe, with a strong position in important technologies that are set to shape our future, including clean energy, bioengineering, and artificial intelligence.7 These strengths, alongside many others, have long supported the case for investing in the United Kingdom—and still do (see sidebar “The United Kingdom’s enduring strengths”).
To bridge the gap between the United Kingdom’s inherent strengths and the lacklustre performance of public indexes, a broader view of the corporate landscape is required. In other words, equating UK corporate performance solely with “UK plc”—that is, the United Kingdom’s publicly listed companies—misses the significant inflows of private capital into UK companies and the presence of subsidiaries of global companies in the UK economy. The risk of taking a partial view—of public companies only—is that it does not fully reflect the resilience of the corporate United Kingdom and areas where it has performed strongly.
With this in mind, we have created the UK500—a composite of UK companies with substantial operations domestically, globally, or both, including public firms, private firms, and UK subsidiaries of international firms. Our analysis shows that only about a third of these companies are listed today. It also brings into focus the many multinational subsidiaries that play a major role in the UK economy—the likes of Airbus, ALDI, and Amazon. This composite group provides an alternative, broader perspective on the United Kingdom’s corporate landscape and its aggregate performance (Exhibit 1).
The case for systematic ambition
In our research, we analysed the performance of companies in the UK500 with the goal of identifying those that stood out from their peers. For public companies, we looked at those with top-quartile TSR between 2015 and 2023 (a longer time frame to offer a broader perspective), and for unlisted organisations (private companies and the UK subsidiaries of international companies), we examined those that ranked above average in terms of revenue growth, with a focus on the most recent five years due to the lack of consistent earnings releases data for 2023 at the time of writing (see sidebar “UK500 methodology”). We augmented this analysis by interviewing more than 100 CEOs and senior executives to deepen our perspective on what lay behind companies’ success.
We found that many factors propel success. But a consistent theme emerged: top performers not only set high ambitions, they also appear to be more effective in creating the right conditions to turn those ambitions into reality. For many of the outperformers, ambition was more than just a mindset or call to action. It was supported by purposeful steps to embed ambition within their organisations and create conditions that improve the odds of success—what we have termed “systematic ambition”.
This report first describes the UK500, highlighting its composition and performance, data on the UK market’s substantial public-to-private shift over the past 15 years, and observations from top performers in both the listed and unlisted segments. We then highlight lessons from the research about embedding systematic ambition. We hope that this perspective better informs the collective understanding of how the UK corporate landscape is evolving and how to best encourage its growth and strategic renewal—a priority for company leaders, stakeholders, and policy makers.
The UK500: A fresh take on the UK corporate landscape
Any examination of the UK corporate landscape needs to begin with a better understanding of the dynamics in the public markets and the performance of listed companies (UK plc). One pattern that stands out is how much investor returns generated by UK public companies skew toward dividends. From 2005 to 2023, more than 70 percent of the TSR generated by FTSE 100 companies came from dividends—a higher percentage compared with other European countries and indexes and much higher than in the United States, where the corresponding figure is less than 40 percent (Exhibit 2).8
In addition, relatively few large, disruptive UK companies have emerged in the past two decades—five of the ten largest publicly listed UK entities in 2000 were still among the top ten in 2023, compared with just one in the United States. This is not just a UK phenomenon: in Germany and France, respectively, five and four of the ten largest publicly listed entities in 2000 remained in the top ten in 2023. However, the largest UK companies have failed to scale in the same way as their European peers. None of the UK top ten in 2023 have achieved a market capitalisation growth of greater than ten times since 2000, whilst three in Germany and five in France have done so (Exhibit 3).9
In fact, only six UK start-ups in the past 20 years have scaled to more than £3 billion in revenues.10 There has also been a marked shift in the ownership of “UK plc”, with the proportion of UK shares owned by pension funds falling from 32.4 percent in 1992 to 12.8 percent in 2008 to just 1.6 percent in 2022.11
As these changes have been occurring in the public markets, private investment has flowed at scale into the UK economy. In the past 15 years, the United Kingdom attracted $1.80 trillion in private equity investments and $0.95 trillion in foreign direct investment, substantially reshaping the corporate landscape by taking listed companies private or buying and investing in unlisted ones.12 Many household names, such as Morrisons and HomeServe, have been part of this trend. In aggregate, 197 UK firms were delisted from the London Stock Exchange through take-privates between 2016 and 2023, with only two relisted since then, both in the United States (Exhibit 4).13
In most cases, private investors have paid a substantial premium for the companies they took private—indicating the return expectations they have for these investments and the latent value they see relative to the public markets. Sterling’s depreciation against the US dollar during this period is also likely to have played a role in driving this trend,14 as has a decade of low interest rates—but if those were the only factors, we would have expected to see private capital investments abate as the rate environment shifted. On the contrary, even with UK base rates increasing from 0.25 percent at the end of 2021 to 5.25 percent by mid-2023,15 27 companies have been delisted since January 2023 for a total consideration of $24 billion.16 Five of these—ContourGlobal, Dechra Pharmaceuticals, Gresham House, Instem, and the Sureserve Group—were taken private at an average premium of 45 percent for a total consideration of $9 billion.17
Combined, these observations reveal a more dynamic picture of the UK corporate landscape—one characterised by less renewal in the public markets and a shift to private ownership supported by substantial investment inflows. In 2022, this aggregate group, the UK500, brought in revenues of roughly $4.1 trillion, generated EBITDA of nearly $600.0 billion,18 and employed 8.6 million people.19 Just over a third of the UK500 are listed companies, though they generated nearly 60 percent of the composite group’s revenues, while 40 percent are private, contributing 21 percent of revenues. The remainder are UK subsidiaries of global companies, generating 19 percent of revenues.20 Notably, while private companies and UK subsidiaries saw average revenue growth of nearly 8 percent over this period, the listed companies as a whole remained flat.21
As we analysed the underlying performance of the UK500, we focused on what we could learn from the highest performers. Our data shows there are strong performers across each ownership category in the UK500, whether listed or unlisted. For listed companies, we defined top performers as those that fell within the top quartile of TSR performance (in this case, TSR of at least 144 percent) in the 2015–23 period.22 For private companies and UK subsidiaries of global companies, we looked at revenue growth because we lacked TSR data. For this group, the top quartile grew revenues annually by at least 14 percent in the most recent five-year period for which full data was available (2017–22).23
How to unlock outperformance? Systematic ambition
Many factors influence corporate performance, such as fluctuations in market demand, geopolitics, and macroeconomic events, some of which are not realistically within a company’s control. There are also country-specific idiosyncrasies—for instance, employment laws in the United Kingdom affect access to talent and corporate governance codes (such as regulatory conditions on dual-class share listings and share remuneration for nonexecutive directors, though initiatives to reform these are under way).
However, when we focused on the elements that are within leaders’ control and looked at the themes that appeared to unite many outperformers across the UK500, a clear pattern emerged involving systematic ambition. Our research, backed up by our own experience working with companies in the United Kingdom, suggests that top performers pay particular attention to five topics:
- shaping a concentrated base of long-term, aligned investors
- aligning ambition with management and board incentives
- delivering growth through tech-led business models, new geographies, and new product lines
- partnering with innovators when making bold technology investments
- purposefully reskilling the workforce
1: Shaping a concentrated base of long-term, aligned investors
Many of the executives we interviewed described the difficulty of building consensus on a company’s ambitious growth strategy when different shareholders have varying investment objectives and horizons. It is a challenge encountered less by outperformers, however, who are often very purposeful in aligning their investor base with their ambitions.
Outperformers build that alignment in two ways. First, they aspire to build a strong anchor set of long-term and often active investors. For example, RELX, a listed information and analytics company, counts UK investment management firm Lindsell Train, known for its long-term value investment strategy,24 among its long-term core investors.25 RELX has been the largest holding in Lindsell Train’s UK equity fund since its establishment in 2006 and has significantly outperformed the fund’s benchmark index as well.26 Over the 2015–23 period, RELX ranked in the top quartile among UK500 companies for TSR.27 One challenge UK companies may face is that they tend to have a more fragmented base of investors than companies in the United States and the rest of Europe28—and the absence of investors with strong conviction can affect ambition.
Second, outperformers have selectively turned to private capital investors to support their growth ambitions, using them to enable a longer return horizon particularly where there is a need for deeper business model renewal. Looking at the past two decades, we uncovered examples of companies more than doubling their EBITDA while sustaining revenue growth after drawing in private backers. For example, Huws Gray, a builders’ merchant, made 16 acquisitions in three years after private equity firm Inflexion made a minority investment in the company in 2018, doubling its store footprint and head count, tripling profits, and increasing revenues more than sevenfold.29 At the time of the investment, Huws Gray described Inflexion as a like-minded company that shared its values and objectives.30
With a more concentrated base of investors aligned with their longer-term objectives, companies may be better able to reinvest profits in growth, with less short-term focus on paying dividends and buying back shares to meet shareholder expectations for income. Our analysis surfaced a group of UK corporations that delivered impressive TSR performance with less reliance on dividends. In particular, for the top 20 percent of FTSE 350 companies by performance, dividends constituted an average of just 33 percent of TSR, compared with 63 percent for the remaining firms.31 Our analysis revealed that these top performers share a common trait of reinvesting capital to fund their ambitions—whether that means ventures into new domains, partnerships for innovation, or reskilling their workforce—rather than increasing dividend payouts.
This is not to say that companies should rush to reduce dividends. In fact, doing so often has a negative impact on share prices, particularly if there are no broader tailwinds supporting the stock.32 However, Antofagasta, a mining company and top performer in the UK500, provides an instructive example. The company cut its dividends in February 2024 as it embarked on a new phase of growth, with leadership emphasising to shareholders its solid pipeline of projects, strong balance sheet, and determination to contain costs.33 Antofagasta’s share price rose by more than 25 percent in the two months after the dividend cut announcement34—buoyed by clarity on future value creation the retained earnings could help unlock, and likely also supported by copper prices rising to new highs.35 It is crucial to have a clear and credible plan for how a dividend reduction will drive growth and improve the long-term health of the business or its future growth prospects36—thereby generating better returns.
2: Aligning ambition with management and board incentives
There is a stereotypical view that ambition and entrepreneurship are more highly valued in US corporations than in the United Kingdom, where the culture is seen as more risk averse.37 The earnings releases of US and UK companies reinforce this, at least in investor communications: analysis of statements from the largest 50 US corporations in the S&P 500 showed twice as many references to “ambition” as those of the largest 50 UK corporations in the FTSE 100 and 1.2 times as many references to “innovation”.38 By the same measure, the top quartile of performers by TSR may show the same orientation versus other UK companies. Their earnings releases referenced ambition and innovation 2.3 times and 2.0 times as often, respectively, as the bottom 15.39
Why are these leaders placing more emphasis on ambition and innovation in their statements? One explanation might be the greater prevalence of performance incentives and their link to total compensation, particularly for the company’s CEO (a good indicator of overall executive compensation) and board members. Our research explored the link between outperformance and performance-based compensation for CEOs, finding that UK CEOs receive a relatively lower share of performance-based compensation in the form of stock options or equity grants. In 2021, FTSE 100 CEOs received an average 9 percent of their total compensation this way, compared with 74 percent for the CEOs at the top 100 companies in the S&P 500 by market capitalisation.40
There are also differences in how boards are compensated. Seventy-four percent of nonexecutive directors (NEDs) at S&P 500 companies receive stock as part of their remuneration.41 Yet although a sizeable proportion of FTSE 100 companies have a minimum stockholding requirement for their NEDs, only eight of these companies compensate with stocks42—including two of the FTSE 100’s top five performers by TSR from 2017 to 2023.43 This could be partly because the United Kingdom’s governance code states that NED remuneration should not include share options or other performance-related elements,44 but there is some ambiguity as to whether this can include market-price share remuneration.45 The United Kingdom is generally aligned with its European peers in this regard, while the United States is more flexible.46 However, FTSE 100 companies that offer shares as part of board compensation emphasise the importance of aligning their board members’ interests with those of shareholders.47
Finally, the practice of CEO target-based compensation is most prevalent in the top quartile of listed firms, with a greater number of CEOs receiving such compensation compared with lower quartiles.48 Private companies generally use this more consistently, with “sweet equity” management incentivisation pools typically ranging from 8 to 20 percent of the shareholder capital and often requiring top management to invest (often including board chairs and selected NEDs).49
3: Delivering growth through tech-led business models, new geographies, and new product lines
Some of the highest-performing companies we looked at were more prepared to make significant investments to explore technology-led business models, expand into new geographies, and launch new product lines in pursuit of future high returns.
Pure-play tech companies within the FTSE 350 achieved 1.8 times the TSR of their FTSE 350 peers between 2015 and 202350—a phenomenon that is reflected in many markets, particularly the United States. But across sectors, tech-led companies (those that have used technology more deeply to innovate and renew their business models) have also done well—leaning into changing customer behaviours, shifts in distribution, and other trends. Total shareholder returns of the tech-led companies in the FTSE 350 in the same period were ten percentage points higher than those of other companies in the index, and 22 percent of companies in the top quartile were tech-led compared with 17 percent of the remainder.51 For instance, Greggs, a bakery chain, undertook a digital transformation that, among other benefits, nearly tripled the number of people using its click-and-collect app in just two years.52 Between 2015 and 2023, the chain’s total shareholder returns more than tripled.53 Rio Tinto, meanwhile, has invested in autonomous trucks, trains, and drills to boost efficiency. The company estimates that each driverless truck can operate an additional 700 hours a year compared with a conventional truck, with 15 percent lower costs.54
Thoughtful overseas expansion can also fuel top-line growth. In the past 17 years, on average, foreign markets have generated some 85 percent of the revenue growth of FTSE 350 companies.55 Sterling’s depreciation against the US dollar during this period is likely a driving factor, but nevertheless, a rise in the proportion of revenues generated abroad was found to be correlated with improved returns. Between 2015 and 2022, a 1 percent increase in the share of international revenues of the listed companies in the UK500 was associated with a 4 percent increase in TSR, on average.56 The Ashtead Group, which rents out industrial equipment, has continually expanded in North America and now generates some 90 percent of its revenue in that market.57 Its total shareholder returns surged more than fourfold between 2015 and 2023.58
In addition, outperformers tend to not only update their product and service offerings to capture emerging demand but also expand into new lines of business. Some do it through programmatic step-out M&A programmes, in which the acquirer ventures beyond its industry. Our analysis of the largest UK corporations by market capitalisation found that those that undertook such programmes between 2013 and 2022 achieved average TSR of 254 percent. Those that focused on fewer but more substantial M&A transactions, such as doubling down on core capabilities, achieved even greater outperformance, with average TSR 1.2 times higher than peers who undertook programmatic M&A step-out programmes.59 For example, pharmaceutical company Dechra acquired Piedmont Animal Health and Med-Pharmex, helping contribute to TSR of 413 percent from 2015 through the end of 2023 (after which Dechra was taken private by EQT Partners in January 2024).60 Nevertheless, outperformance does not necessarily hinge on M&A—an organic approach can also be effective. For example, private company Dyson diversified from vacuum cleaners and hand dryers into high-end home technologies and products. The company introduced new hair drying and styling products in 2016 and 2018 after investing millions of pounds and more than four years of research and development into applying its expertise in airflow to the hair dryer, which had previously been a stable product.61 The company’s revenues grew an average of 10 percent a year from 2017 to 2022.62
Some companies expand into new geographies and new business lines simultaneously. Aerospace and defence company BAE Systems, which already had a significant global presence (80 percent of its revenues being non-UK as of 2022),63 sought to strengthen its US presence through the 2023 $5.6 billion acquisition of Ball Aerospace, a manufacturer of spacecraft, gaining both product expansion and cost synergies.64 Flutter, originally a betting firm, diversified into the fantasy sports sector through its 2017 and 2018 acquisitions of US firms Draft and FanDuel,65 helping to deliver TSR of 240 percent between 2015 and 2023.66
4: Partnering with innovators when making bold technology investments
Access to innovative technology is often a game changer, which is why top-performing companies tend to recognise the importance of forging links within the United Kingdom’s vibrant innovation ecosystem as a way to stay ahead.
The United Kingdom attracts the same level of venture capital investment as a proportion of GDP as the United States,67 and is particularly strong in key emerging technologies, including AI, climate tech, and biotech. In 2023, it had the highest number of AI start-ups in Europe,68 claimed the top European spot and third position globally in climate tech investments,69 and ranked second globally for the number of active biotech companies in the country.70 Since 2000, it has nurtured 144 unicorns.71
Many leading companies are concentrated in one of the United Kingdom’s 18 clusters of innovation and excellence. Each of these clusters has a sectoral focus; together, they have a total gross value added (GVA) of £185 billion (as of 2021).72 Three of the clusters—in London, Cambridge, and Oxford—are competitive on a global scale, according to the Global Innovation Index, which measures patents and scientific-article publication rates per capita.73 In particular, when it comes to science and technology intensity, the Cambridge cluster ranks first, with Oxford third. The Cambridge cluster, which brings together academics, start-ups, and global companies, now hosts around 5,000 knowledge-intensive firms, employs about 61,000 people, and generates annual revenue of more than £15.5 billion. It is the global base for top performers such as AstraZeneca and home to Microsoft’s UK research lab.74
Numerous companies have forged ahead by taking advantage of such innovation and expertise. Some do so through investments or partnerships with start-ups, while others become their customers and thereby avoid the complexity of in-house research and development. IQVIA Biotech struck a 2023 partnership with Oxford Nanopore Technologies to broaden its access to nanopore sequencing technology, offering its laboratories to support Oxford Nanopore in advancing research, diagnostic applications, and clinical care decisions.75 Publicly listed retailer Watches of Switzerland partnered with e-commerce innovator Tangiblee to boost its online presence using Tangiblee’s AI and augmented-reality technology to launch “Compare to” and “Virtual try on” functions on Watches of Switzerland websites. The initial trial results led to what industry commentators described as a staggering return on investment thanks to the increase in conversion rates and revenue per visitor.76 Watches of Switzerland’s TSR was 136 percent between 2015 and 2023.77
Some companies work not only with start-ups but also with academic institutions, supporting their research. The semiconductor and software company Arm, for example, has made use of the vast array of academic talent within the Cambridge cluster. The company has formed multiple research partnerships with Cambridge University’s Department of Computer Science and Technology and Department of Engineering in areas such as self-driving vehicles and supercomputers to help advance medicine, predict and mitigate natural disasters, solve energy problems, tackle climate change, and study the origins of the universe.78
Successful clusters in the United States can also offer valuable lessons for UK corporations seeking to enhance corporate partnerships and academic collaborations. Some US clusters date back decades—for example, those in Silicon Valley and in Boston–Cambridge—and four US clusters rank among the top ten globally.79 In terms of research income, which is the extent to which corporates are willing to pay for research and a university’s ability to attract funding, US universities received more than five times as much from industry as their UK counterparts did.80 As an example, the Boston–Cambridge cluster is home to roughly 500 biotech companies (and almost 1,000 biotech companies for the greater Boston area), thanks to its proximity to both Harvard and MIT (two of the world’s top ten universities) as well as leading hospitals and research centres, which has led to significant collaboration between academia and industry.81 The cluster has evolved into a global hub for the largest biotech and pharmaceutical companies, drawing an outsize 20 percent of all US venture funding for biotech companies in 2023.82 US corporations are also more active when it comes to corporate ventures as well as cross-sector and large-scale partnerships. In 2023, the United States had 30 times more deals and ten times more corporate venture funding than the United Kingdom,83 while recent large-scale cross-sector partnerships include Amazon’s collaboration with Eli Lilly for pharmaceutical delivery and Google’s partnership with Ford Motor Company to accelerate auto innovation.84 Some UK corporations are already following a similar pattern; for example, LSEG is entering a strategic partnership with Microsoft to build next-generation productivity, data and analytics, and modelling solutions.85
5: Purposefully reskilling the workforce
Clearly, having the right skills is critical for realising high ambitions. However, the nature of “the right skills” is changing fast, making skills a crucial performance differentiator.
In the past two decades, the UK workforce has shifted away from industries requiring manual labour. Twenty years ago, about 26 percent of all jobs were white-collar jobs conducted in offices or administrative settings. Today, 34 percent of positions are white-collar jobs, 28 percent are manual blue-collar jobs, and 34 percent are grey-collar jobs (that is, partially technical).86 This evolution in general has increased the need for tech skills and capabilities, and new technologies are propelling this shift further. Up to 25 percent of time spent on current work activities in the United Kingdom could be displaced by automation by 2030, with demand growing in some but shrinking in other areas of the economy. As a result, around two million workers—around 6 percent of all employees—would likely need to transition to new occupations. Beyond that, specific tasks in almost every job would change, enabled by new technology.87 According to a recent McKinsey survey,88 UK organisations are particularly concerned about the rapidly evolving nature of future skills. In particular, they worry that workers will not be sufficiently adaptable as jobs change, and skills will not be upgraded fast enough—which would have a negative impact on corporate performance, competitiveness, and the ability to leverage technological trends and advancements.
Many companies are acquiring the talent they need to make strides in their respective industries through external partnerships or talent acquisitions. A recent example is LSEG’s decision to partner with Microsoft to enhance its capabilities and product offerings by transitioning to the cloud and adopting AI. As part of this partnership, the executive vice president of Microsoft’s Cloud and AI Group joined LSEG’s board as a nonexecutive director.89 On the other hand, BAE chose to procure talent through its acquisition of Malloy Aeronautics after a two-year partnership, acquiring a workforce with “expertise and innovation” in the area of heavy-lift drone and aeronautical technologies.90
The harsh reality is that for most corporations, externally acquiring skills is unlikely to be accessible or sufficient. They also need to focus on reskilling the existing workforce through recruitment and training programs. The majority (80 percent) of the United Kingdom’s 2019 workforce is expected to continue working into 2030,91 yet 94 percent of future workers lack the full suite of skills that will be required to perform well in 2030.92 This underscores the critical need to invest in enhancing the capabilities of the existing workforce.
The long-term benefit tied to re- and upskilling comes from internal talent acquisition and development. Our analysis found that reskilling can lead to a 6 to 12 percent productivity uplift and cost savings through avoided recruitment costs and downtime.93 Additionally, the Financial Services Skills Commission estimates that reskilling could save companies £50,000 per employee,94 while separate McKinsey analysis suggests that more than 75 percent of up- and reskilling efforts have a positive business impact.95 Many companies have taken this approach—for example, BAE has invested £180 million in education, skills, and early-career activities, boosting its 2023 apprentice and graduate intake by 43 percent.96 Additionally, Rio Tinto focuses on building early careers and reskilling rather than on buying talent,97 while Antofagasta created a digital academy in 2020 focused on upskilling and reskilling its workforce to match the new demands of its digital transformation and innovation processes.98 Recently, Larry Ellison, the founder of US software giant Oracle, established a £1 billion research institute within the Oxford cluster to create new companies and jobs in medicine, food security, and clean energy. The mission of the institute is to train people with the skills to invent, improve, and manage the next generation of technology.99
The public and third sectors can also support corporates with accessing and developing talent. The UK government offers skills bootcamps to plug local skill gaps through industry collaboration, with a specific focus on digital skills. Many institutions support this, providing the educational infrastructure that can be difficult to provide internally; for example, the Open University offers more than 40 professional development courses that businesses can pay for their employees to take.100
Broadening our understanding of the United Kingdom’s corporate landscape by looking at the UK500—the largest public firms, private companies, and subsidiaries of international firms in the United Kingdom—reveals many examples of thriving companies beyond those that are publicly listed. A common theme cutting through the most impressive success stories is systematic ambition. Many outperformers have high aspirations and a willingness to take risk. But many also take steps to create distinct conditions that ultimately help them realise their ambitions.
Business leaders today are not short of challenges. Powerful technological, geopolitical, and economic forces are reshaping the environment their businesses operate in, and the companies that can respond to these shifts will realise stronger performance and valuation outcomes.101 The five factors of systematic ambition can be a key component in navigating that response. They can help company leaders to realise the full potential of their organisations and take advantage of the United Kingdom’s many enduring strengths.
