Friday High Five – the news this week

Sometimes you can’t beat a bit of breaking news to get the pulse racing.

We bashed out a breaking news alert this week once Inflexion confirmed the news that the private equity investor had taken a stake in Manchester-based fitness business Ultimate Performance. 

To call UP Fitness a global gym chain would be an appalling understatement. Friends of mine who have been on their 12 week transformation programme describe the experience as completely life-enhancing, but absolutely intense.

Possibly more enjoyable than an upper body workout with UP founder Nick Mitchell was the deeper dive I did into the business in a longer piece we published on our new Rainmakers platform this week. 

We do work hard to bring a lively and more insightful stream that is designed to not just say what just happened but what else it represents. In this case what it might take to ignite some of Inflexion’s ‘dry powder’ as well as the exits they’ll need to engineer.

Other highlights of this week are yet more grief for two businesses never far from controversy. Boohoo’s Prettylittlething got its knuckles rapped by the advertising regulator for a Black Friday campaign that wasn’t clear. 

United Utilities may have hoped that the focus of attention would have been on its “robust finances” – increased revenue, bigger dividends to shareholders, and that massive £8billion debt pile – but quite rightly their illegal pumping of 10 million litres of raw sewage into Lake Windermere is the story. 

There’s always more to do, more questions to ask, more angles to grind, not least the colour and detail behind S&P Global’s commitment to Garv Neville’s St Michael’s scheme. Please get in touch if you can shed any background on this.

Have a great weekend.