OPERATIC DUET FOR MITIE BOSS AND HUBBY
WHAT connects Mitie, the FTSE 250 support services company, with opera? It isn’t just that Mitie is responsible for managing the facilities at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. The £19m contract, which sees Mitie providing cleaning and security services to the 2,256-seater venue, is certainly important to chief executive Ruby McGregor-Smith – but she shares a personal connection to opera as well.
Her husband, Graham McGregor-Smith, is an opera singer who has just finished a run of La Traviata at the South Hill Park theatre in Bracknell (coincidentally, the Verdi masterpiece is also playing at the Royal Opera House).
They say opposites attract, but Mr McGregor-Smith wasn’t always in the arts business. Like his wife, he trained as a chartered accountant before taking a string of financial jobs at brewer Scottish and Newcastle. According to his LinkedIn profile, he then spent eight years in private equity. But he called time on his high-flying career to spend more time with the McGregor-Smith children once his wife decided to join Mitie, and retrained as an opera singer.
When The Capitalist caught up with the Mitie chief executive last Thursday, she still hadn’t had a chance to see her husband in La Traviata. Here’s hoping she got her skates on – the run came to an end on Saturday night.
GHOST AT THE BANQUET
THE great and good of the mobile phone world yesterday kicked off the biggest event in the industry’s calendar. Before the likes of Google and Microsoft arrive today, Samsung, HTC, Sony and Huawei laid out their plans for the year. But there is a ghost at the banquet. Every release is measured against the standards of a company that has no intention of gracing Mobile World Congress with its presence: Apple. Rumours abound that Apple executives maintain a shadowy presence at the event, peering unseen from around every corner. In hushed tones people even say an early version of the iPad 3 is somewhere on site. By not even turning up Apple has, once again, stolen the show.
TAXING TIMES FOR KEN
Veteran banker basher and Labour mayoral candidate Ken Livingstone has never minced his words when it comes to tax avoidance, saying earlier this year: “These rich bastards just don’t get it… everybody should pay tax at the same rate on their earnings and all other income”.
So it must be embarrassing to see his personal accounts splashed across The Sunday Telegraph, including allegations that by putting all his earnings through a limited company, he (perfectly legally) avoided at least £50,000 of tax in one year. Over to you, comrade!