THE ETHICAL CAPITALIST

Capitalism has lost its way.

Every week brings fresh news stories about businesses exploiting their staff, avoiding their taxes, and ripping off their customers. Every week, public anger at the system grows. Now, one of Britain’s foremost entrepreneurs intervenes to make the case for putting business back firmly in the service of society, and setting out on a new path to a kinder, fairer form of capitalism.

Drawing on four decades of hands-on management experience, the founder of Richer Sounds argues that ethically run businesses are invariably more efficient, more motivated and more innovative than those that care only about the bottom line. He uncovers the simple tools that the best leaders use to make their businesses fair, revealing how others can follow suit. And he also delves into the big questions that modern capitalism has to answer if it is to survive and to thrive.

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Julian Richer established Richer Sounds in 1978. His business now turns over in excess of £200 million a year, and Richer Sounds has won the prestigious Which? Best Retailer award (2010, 2011 and 2015). In 2011 Richer Sounds was granted a Royal Warrant by HRH The Prince of Wales for the supply of consumer electronic products to the Royal Household. The first shop to be opened, near London Bridge, has for over 20 years been listed in Guinness World Records as achieving the highest sales per square foot of any retail outlet in the world. Fifteen per cent of the company’s profits are donated to charitable causes (over 400 of them in 2017). In addition to his commercial activities, Julian Richer is the founder and a trustee of Acts 435, set up to help those in need, and in 2013 he established ASB Help, which works with victims of anti-social behaviour.