How Matt Isaacs took his web business global

Building on success with Carphone Warehouse and Google, Matt Isaacs attracted a host of other blue-chip brands as clients to his digital agency.

As an unemployed former strategy consultant, life could have looked bleak for Matt Isaacs, now 41, in 2006. Fortunately, he had a plan. A few years earlier, "a group of friends had started a credit-card firm and they wanted me to help". Accucard had developed a technology that checked customers' credit ratings and offered them a variety of personalised deals.

The idea caught the attention of Lloyds Banking Group, who snapped it up in 2002. "Being part of a larger group was great. It gave us the funds to explore exciting new areas." But after a few years Lloyds began to lose patience with Accucard. "The business wasn't delivering what they had hoped and eventually they decided to close it."

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James McKeigue

James graduated from Keele University with a BA (Hons) in English literature and history, and has a certificate in journalism from the NCTJ. James has worked as a freelance journalist in various Latin American countries.He also had a spell at ITV, as welll as wring for Television Business International and covering the European equity markets for the Forbes.com London bureau. James has travelled extensively in emerging markets, reporting for international energy magazines such as Oil and Gas Investor, and institutional publications such as the Commonwealth Business Environment Report. He is currently the managing editor of LatAm INVESTOR, the UK's only Latin American finance magazine.