Julian Richer's crusade to clean up capitalism

Julian Richer, the entrepreneur who put people before profits, and yet produced plenty of the latter, has been lauded for handing his empire over to his staff. What is his motivation?

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(Image credit: 2018 Shirlaine Forrest)

Everyone from politicians to newspaper leader writers has been queuing up to salute Julian Richer, who has just handed control of Richer Sounds the hi-fi store chain he founded as a teenager to his 522 staff. The move wasn't entirely a surprise: "My life's work is my legacy and I haven't got a spoilt child to run the business," Richer observed in 2013. But at 60, "he has reached the age when he thinks of posterity", says the Financial Times.

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Jane writes profiles for MoneyWeek and is city editor of The Week. A former British Society of Magazine Editors editor of the year, she cut her teeth in journalism editing The Daily Telegraph’s Letters page and writing gossip for the London Evening Standard – while contributing to a kaleidoscopic range of business magazines including Personnel Today, Edge, Microscope, Computing, PC Business World, and Business & Finance.

She has edited corporate publications for accountants BDO, business psychologists YSC Consulting, and the law firm Stephenson Harwood – also enjoying a stint as a researcher for the due diligence department of a global risk advisory firm.

Her sole book to date, Stay or Go? (2016), rehearsed the arguments on both sides of the EU referendum.

She lives in north London, has a degree in modern history from Trinity College, Oxford, and is currently learning to play the drums.