The Bottom Line

When a company finds itself facing war or natural disaster how can it get staff out of harm's way, and is there any chance of ensuring business as usual? Evan Davis speaks to one business leader who helped move hundreds of staff out of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia when war broke out in 2022. Two crisis response companies explain how they have been helping clients with people and operations in Leban...

It must be one of the most-maligned professions out there - on a par, perhaps, with traffic wardens - but debt collectors perform a vital service to businesses and the wider economy. So why do we love to despise them? Evan Davis and guests discuss the industry's inner workings, from the public image of aggressive, burly bailiffs, to the reality of repayment plans prompted by artificial intelligenc...

Side hustlers are seemingly everywhere - some surveys suggest they account for around half of UK workers - and stories of getting rich quick and abandoning the 9-5 are plenty. But the reality for many is much less glamorous: long hours; a precarious balancing act with the day job; and a good chance of failure. Evan Davis speaks to side hustlers, and their employers, to find out what it’s really li...

The UK's power grid is undergoing a huge shift towards renewable energy, but running homes and businesses solely on this new form of electricity will be a delicate balancing act and will pose new choices for consumers. Evan Davis and guests discuss the challenge of matching supply - from wind and solar - with an increased demand from electric vehicles and homes using heat pumps rather than gas boi...

Every year has its business highs and lows which we don't often get an opportunity to chew over on The Bottom Line. This year is different. To mark our end of term, we thought we’d reflect on the business year and look at some of the highs and lows across the business landscape, creating our very own (and very unofficial) Bottom Line Business Awards. Three panellists, three categories, three nomin...

Private schools in the UK are mostly registered as charities – but they are also businesses – businesses in the sense that they sell a service to paying customers. They’ve recently been in the news because the new government has said it will remove their exemption from VAT. In this episode we take a look at the business of private education: how it works, how much money is made and what will happe...

All eyes have been on the new prime minister as he, and his team of ministers, settle into their jobs running the country. In this episode we consider the management challenge of taking over and starting a new role, maybe changing the direction of an organisation. Three leaders from the world of business and the charity sector share their experience of coming in as a new broom, reflecting on the m...

Managing the rituals of a loved one's death can be both bewildering and expensive. And although no-one wants to think about it being like buying a holiday or car, it is a business with a supply chain involving funerals, burials and cremation. A couple of years ago the Competition and Markets Authority - which protects people from unfair trading practices - carried out an in-depth investigation int...

Copyright law has been around since 1710. Back then it only applied to books. Now, it covers music, sport, film, television, video games, anything really. It was also much easier to enforce in the days when people couldn't reproduce things all the time. That all started to change with the introduction of the humble music cassette tape. Now, we can all copy things and publish them to social media w...

Millions of employees in the UK are now able to work flexibly – fitting their job around their home life. Many in office jobs, can finish early on a Friday, and are allowed, even encouraged, to routinely work from home. But, at the same time, we’re told that the levels of overwork, stress, and burnout in this country are on the rise. More than 17 million working days were lost to work-related stre...

Every brand wants attention, to be seen as a must-have, but how do some manage stratospheric levels of popularity? It might happen organically, perhaps even by accident, but it’s also true that many brands engineer it. Evan Davis and guest discuss the tricks of the trade, from social media influencers to artificial scarcity, and the potential pitfalls when a product is so popular that it's almost...

China produces more than half the world's electric vehicles and is scaling up exports, but there are concerns its manufacturers would have an unfair advantage in the UK, which could spell disaster for domestic firms. Evan Davis and guests discuss the UK's dilemma around Chinese EVs - do we open our doors to the competition, which might mean cheaper electric cars for consumers and a quicker transit...

Evan Davis sits down with Timo Armoo, the founder of social media advertising business Fanbytes, which he set up when he was 21 with two friends. Aged 27 he sold the company, which connects social media influencers with brands, for an eight-figure sum, saying he can now retire a multi-millionaire. Timo was born in Hackney in London but moved to Ghana to live with his grandmother when he was 3 mont...

Evan Davis sits down with Richard Walker the Executive Chairman of Iceland foods a company founded by his father. Richard started at Iceland Foods in 2012 from the bottom up working as a shelf stacker at the start. A qualified chartered surveyor he is an entrepreneur in his own right having set-up a property business, Bywater Properties, of which he is still chairman. A fan of physical challenges...

Martha Lane Fox was first catapulted into the public eye during the dot.com boom as co-founder of lastminute.com the online agency she set up with Brent Hoberman in the late 1990s. It was valued at three quarters of a billion pounds when it floated on the London stock exchange in 2000. She then experienced a life change road accident while on holiday in Morocco when she was thrown from the passeng...

Simon Beckerman is the founder of Depop, a platform where people can buy and sell pre-loved fashion, it currently has around 35 million registered users. He sold the company to Etsy for £1.25 billion in 2021. Simon grew up in Italy to British and Italian parents who he describes as rebels in their own way and even as a teenager he knew he had to build his own business because ‘I was unemployable’...

Krisi Smith started Bird and Blend Tea company with business partner Mike knowing very little about tea or running a business. She drew up their mission statement in the pub whilst working as a ski instructor in Canada. They started up working in her mums back bedroom to now running 20 retail stores across the UK. Before starting the company she had more than 30 jobs and that’s just by the age of...

With the entrepreneur, philanthropist and author. The Decisions That Made Me A Leader is a mini-series from The Bottom Line. It features one-on-one interviews with entrepreneurs and business leaders, including Duncan Bannatyne, Martha Lane Fox, and the boss of Depop, Simon Beckerman. All of these episodes are available on BBC Sounds and you can also watch them on BBC iPlayer. To find the series, j...

Evan Davis makes up crisis management scenarios to see how three CEOs handle a business emergency. To make it more realistic none of the guests know what the predicaments are before speaking to Evan. Guests: Kathryn Jacob, CEO of Pearl and Dean Dame Inga Beale, former CEO of Lloyd's of London Justin King, former CEO of Sainsbury's Production Team: Presenter: Evan Davis Editor: Matt Willis Producer...

A typical career, for many, involves some kind of progression, or at least the expectation of it, until we stop and retire. But is there a better model? Evan Davis and guests discuss whether more of us should think about easing into retirement by taking more junior roles, going part time, or switching profession altogether, instead of stepping off a career cliff edge when we reach pension age. Cou...

The UK’s biggest nightclub operator recently announced the closure of around half of its venues, and with them almost 500 jobs. REKOM UK, which owns the Atik and Pryzm brands, blamed the cost of living crisis hurting its customers, along with increased operating costs. But is there something else going on? According to the industry association the number of nightclubs in the UK has more than halve...

It’s easy for people to say they want to buy a particular product, perhaps in the name of sustainability. But how often do individuals actually follow through with these well-meaning intentions? Academics regularly observe a difference between what consumers say they want to do and what they actually do. The gap can cause problems for businesses when they're trying to figure out how to serve their...

It's useful to know how you're doing at work, but feedback from managers and colleagues can often be unhelpful, upsetting, or even non-existent. So what's the best way to give and receive it? Evan Davis and guests discuss some top techniques, particularly in the tricky area of negative feedback, and the importance of training managers in how to have these conversations. But feedback isn't just abo...

UK consumers are eating less meat than at any point since records began 50 years ago, according to the latest government figures, so how are farmers, processors and retailers responding? The cost of living crisis is part of the reason for a recent drop-off in demand, but warnings about meat's impact on the planet and our health might also play a role, and plant-based alternatives have been eating...

Some major fashion brands have started charging for online returns, or even banning customers who routinely send products back. The companies say that growing levels of returns are hitting their profits, so just how costly is it to process an unwanted dress, and what really happens when we pop it back in the post? Evan Davis and guests take us behind the scenes into the hidden world of returns and...