A: First, and most important, don’t jump to automatically dismiss the employee; being arrested does not mean they have committed a crime. Before taking any action, you need to speak to them and find out what has happened.

Dismissing someone without further investigation is highly likely to be an unfair dismissal if the employee has two or more years’ service. And with the new government looking to make unfair dismissal a day-one right, this could soon apply to all employees, even the ones you are just getting to know.

If your employee is in custody, it may be some time before you can contact them. You do not have to pay someone for work missed while they are in police custody, however.

We’ve seen examples recently where the law and public opinion are not always aligned. For example, the BBC has come under strong criticism for not sacking the news presenter Huw Edwards once they were notified of his arrest in November.

A tribunal ruling in May, in J Difolco v Care UK Community Partnerships Ltd, highlights the risks of dismissing an employee suspected of criminal activity. A care assistant was charged with murder in October 2022. She was sacked, due to her employer’s concerns about reputational damage, and subsequently brought a claim for unfair dismissal.

The employment tribunal upheld the claim, stating that the company failed to properly investigate whether these charges could reasonably cause reputational damage to the organisation. The care assistant was acquitted in March.

While she had been charged, albeit not convicted, Huw Edwards was only charged recently. So if the BBC had sacked him in November, there’s a good chance it may have found itself using taxpayers’ money to defend itself and, potentially, pay out on an expensive lawsuit.

We have also seen examples over recent days amid the ongoing unrest and violence across the UK. Several of those arrested have lost their jobs after employers were tracked down and contacted via social media.

The impact on an organisation if an employee is involved in the riots can be very complicated, and employers will need to navigate this carefully. Some of the areas to consider include the effect on the wider workforce and clients, as well as reputational damage.

It’s likely that having an employee who has been arrested for potentially racially motivated violence will not go down well with colleagues. Employers need to consider not only how they manage the individual who has been arrested, but also how they deal with any conflict between employees who have different political views and how they support anyone affected by the events.

That does not mean employers cannot dismiss someone for reasons of reputational damage. Employment law sets out five fair reasons for dismissal, and misconduct is only one of them; there could also be another “substantial reason”. The legal test for deciding whether this is fair is whether the employer followed a fair process and acted reasonably in reaching the conclusion to dismiss.

If it turns out that the crime committed by the employee means they are not fit to continue in their role with you — for example, if it is the finance director and they are convicted of fraud, or a delivery driver who has been arrested and charged with driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs — then dismissal is likely to be fair, provided you follow the correct procedure.

If your employee is convicted and sentenced to prison, you might assume that you can automatically dismiss them. But, again, the employment contract will not automatically terminate because someone is imprisoned. As with all dismissals, you need to follow a fair procedure before confirming this.

Peter Done is co-founder and managing director of Peninsula, an employment law, HR and health and safety advice specialist

The early days of Dash were the darkest and it can be very lonely when you don’t know what you’re doing. Even now, as the chief executive of Dash, 60 per cent of the time I’m doing stuff that I’ve never done before.

This was especially true on the manufacturing side. It’s very simple ingredients — we only have food, water and bubbles in our drinks — however, it’s a very delicate liquid and is very hard to manufacture.

An early example was right at the beginning. I was 24 and Jack and I took a van and drove to Wales, which is where the best spring water in the UK is from. It took us ten hours to drive there, where we picked up a cubic tonne of water. We got a puncture on the way back and finally got back to north London where we had hired a portable canning machine.

We plugged it in and everything was looking shipshape. Then the cans came down the line and I’d never been more excited in my life. I took a swig of our cucumber drink and it tasted like off-berries because the canning line hadn’t been cleaned properly. We were seriously deflated. That’s when you need another person at the end of the day to go for a beer with and say, “That was a dreadful day; let’s try and pick ourselves up tomorrow.”

We started exporting early on

Dash got picked up quickly because the issues around soft drinks containing too much sugar and sweeteners, as well as food waste, aren’t just UK issues, they’re global. But Brexit was such a pain for us and created friction. Instead of looking at Europe we went much further afield than you would usually do as a business that was relatively nascent.

We decided to go to Australia because we had lots of demand — there’s a huge focus over there on wellness, sustainability and provenance — but we didn’t want to ship products around the world because that’s not very good for your carbon footprint. So we decided to set up local manufacturing in 2020 and from there export to New Zealand, Singapore and Hong Kong.

We said to our team there we can’t get a supermarket listing in 2020, we’re not ready for it. We need to find a manufacturing site, we need to be able to meet the retailers, we need to be able to set up the back office and finance team.

Then I got a call when I got into the office from Australia about 7am in February saying, “Alex we’ve got really good news. We’ve got a listing for five [product lines] in Australia’s biggest supermarket, Woolworths.” And I said brilliant, but obviously we’ve got our agreement that we won’t launch into any supermarket until next year. They replied, “Yes, that’s the only slight hurdle — the listing would be in July 2020.”

We had crunch talks about whether we would be able to fulfil these orders

We decided to go for it and it was all looking fine until May when I got a call from Jack, my co-founder, and my finance director saying, “Alex, not great news, but we’ve got a solution to it.” The cans that we were hoping to get from Dubai we couldn’t get, but we could get the exact same ones from a manufacturer in Vietnam.

The next day I got another call saying, “Alex, it’s not great news, and we’ve not got a solution. Vietnam has just gone into lockdown and we’re not able to use those cans.” We didn’t think we could use cans from Australia because the timings were too short but we managed to make it work.

It was very tight. We manufactured for the first ever time in Australia the week before launching into Woolworths and the products were on the shelves in Australia before anyone in the UK even tried them. It was a hair-raising moment when we did but it was absolutely delicious.

One of our investors is the chief executive of another drinks brand in Australia and another owns a distribution business in Australia, so they were able to show us the manufacturing sites and introduce us to the retailers. We wouldn’t have been able to do it without them.

We were working around the clock

Jack was working on the cans with our can manufacturer over Zoom about three weeks before [the launch]. They had to do it between midnight and 4am because of the time difference and they would put up the can to the camera and Jack would say a little bit more blue here, a little more white here. He did that for three nights running because we were working on such a tight time frame.

The whole thing was a bit rough around the edges. We don’t normally operate like that but sometimes you just have to get stuff done. We’ve now got a team of four people Down Under, two people from Australia and two people from our UK team who moved over.

Being able to get out to Australia in early 2021 was one of the most fantastic experiences because we had put in so much work and there was so much risk associated with it.

It’s going very well and we’re now also in Australia’s second biggest supermarket, Coles. I try to go out there once or twice a year and I speak to the Australian team every day — always at 7am, then often at the end of the day as well, depending on daylight saving hours.

The key lesson I learnt about exporting to a new market was to not be afraid to test a product, even though it’s not perfect. We started with a small batch of products in Australia that we brought over from the UK and we tested it with customers, and that performed well and we got interest from the supermarkets. So I’d say, get out there, see what the reaction is. Then learn, iterate and relaunch.

Alex Wright was talking to Hannah Prevett, deputy editor of Times Enterprise Networkhttps://www.thetimes.com/business/enterprise-network

Stronger economic growth, improved job creation, falling inflation and lower interest rates boosted output in the key services and manufacturing sectors, the latest S&P flash survey of purchasing managers showed.

The S&P Global purchasing managers’ index (PMI) of activity in the private sector rose for the tenth month in a row to 53.4 in August from 52.8 in July, the best output figure since April. Any figure above 50 indicates overall growth. The pound rose to $1.3118 against the dollar, the highest since July last year.

The survey was conducted a month after the general election, with companies reporting that “more upbeat assessments of the domestic economic outlook had spurred efforts to boost business capacity”, S&P said.

The manufacturing sector, which has been one of the weakest-performing parts of the economy over the past two years, had its best monthly output since early 2022, with the PMI rising to 52.5 this month. Services companies, which account for more than three-quarters of the economy, also reported rising output, up to 53.3 from 52.5 in July.

Private sector surveys are an important measure of potential economic growth. The UK had the fastest growing economy in the G7 in the first half of the year and rising PMIs suggest that it is holding up in the third quarter.

Chris Williamson, chief business economist at S&P Global, said the figures pointed to third-quarter GDP growth of 0.3 per cent, after a 0.6 per cent expansion in the second quarter.

“August is witnessing a welcome combination of stronger economic growth, improved job creation and lower inflation, according to provisional PMI survey data,” Williamson said. “Although GDP growth looks set to weaken in the third quarter compared to the impressive gains seen in the first half of the year, the PMI is indicative of the economy expanding at a reasonably solid quarterly rate of around 0.3 per cent.”

The Bank of England cut interest rates for the first time in four years this month, and falling inflation and gradually declining borrowing costs have lifted business sentiment.

A measure of inflation in businesses’ inputs fell to a three-year low but average prices charged rose in August. Companies also increased their hiring this month, lifting overall employment by the fastest rate since June last year, according to the survey.

Equivalent PMI figures from the eurozone rose from 50.2 to 51.2, driven higher by the Olympics hosted in Paris.

Amid high property prices and mortgage rates, it is not surprising that parents are considering helping their adult children get on the property ladder. However, buying property for your children can be complicated and you should consider the tax implications before making such a big investment.

If you already own a home then the property purchase could be liable to a stamp duty surcharge if you buy it yourself before giving it to your children. In England and Northern Ireland the surcharge is 3 per cent. There may also be inheritance tax (IHT), capital gains tax (CGT) and other stamp duty consequences when transferring the property into your child’s name.

• How to protect your child’s inheritance if you marry again

A simpler option may be to give your child the cash to buy their own home. If they are a first-time buyer, they may be able to make use of the stamp duty relief available (first-time buyers pay 0 per cent on the first £425,000 and 5 per cent on anything above that up to £625,000. Properties worth more than £625,000 are exempt). There would be no immediate tax implications of the cash gift, but IHT will still need to be considered.

Gifts made in your lifetime are known as potentially exempt transfers for IHT purposes. This means that if you survive seven years from the date of the gift, the value falls out of your estate and is not subject to IHT. If you survive at least three years from the date of the gift, the amount of IHT due may reduce until it becomes entirely tax-free at the end of the seven years.

There is an IHT exemption of £3,000 each tax year for gifts. If unused, this exemption can be carried forward for one tax year before it is lost. If two parents gave money to their children, and neither had made gifts in the previous tax year, this would allow £12,000 (£3,000 per parent, for two tax years) to be given without IHT implications. This could go towards a child buying a property.

• A guide to inheritance tax

Strict rules apply when a person makes a gift but still benefits from it, for example by continuing to live in a house after it has been given to a child. These rules are known as gifts with reservation of benefit. This means that if you continued to live in a property after giving it away it could remain within your estate for IHT purposes. You can avoid this by paying market rent to your child for staying in the property.

Kate Aitchison has been advising clients on capital gains tax, inheritance tax, succession planning, investment structuring and tax residency for almost 20 years

Hays has seen “increasingly challenging market conditions” over the past 12 months, with companies reluctant to hire and workers staying put.

“It’s normal in a downturn that clients have less roles to fill, are more picky and need more interviews to find the perfect candidate,” Dirk Hahn, chief executive of the FTSE 250 company, said. “On the other side, candidates are more cautious in a more tricky economy because it could be that they are last in and first out.”

The slowdown has been a global phenomenon, with profits down in Hays’s three largest markets: Germany, Australia and the UK. Italy and Portugal were among the few bright spots, achieving record fee income.

Hays’ army of consultants generated fee income of £1.11 billion in the 12 months to the end of June, 14 per cent lower than the £1.29 billion they pulled in in the previous financial year. Pre-tax profits declined 51 per cent to £94.7 million from £192.1 million. The final dividend, to be paid on November 25, has been held at 2.05p per share, although there will be no special dividend.

Stock market investors knew the slump in profits was coming, with Hays warning last month that the market was still tough. With expectations having recently been lowered, Hays shares rose 2½p, or 2.6 per cent, to 97½p on Thursday morning. At the peak of the pandemic’s “great resignation” they were trading at almost double that.

Hays is headquartered in London but has offices in 33 countries around the world. It is known for being Britain’s biggest recruiter of qualified accountants, although its most profitable specialism is now technology.

The downturn in the hiring market has persisted for almost two years now and Hahn, 55, said he could not remember “such a long period of downturn” in his 27 years in the industry.

All of the big recruiters have felt the squeeze and have repeatedly pushed back their expectations for when the recovery might arrive. Hahn said he did “not have a crystal ball” and so could not make a prediction, although the feeling in the industry is that it will not be until 2025.

Elections around the world have not helped sentiment, while uncertainty remains about the outlook for the global economy. As a consequence, many businesses have put their expansion plans on ice, while workers are less inclined to move, especially without the lure of big pay rises. In the post-pandemic hiring rush, companies were offering new joiners rises of 15 per cent, sometimes more. Now, increases of 5 per cent are the norm, which the existing employer is often happier to match, and Hays has seen more counteroffers made in recent months.

In response to the subdued market, Hays, like its peers, has focused on cutting its costs. Its annual cost base is now £60 million lower than it was, with most of the savings coming from a much lower headcount. The company employs around 11,000 people around the world, which is 22 per cent lower than the peak 18 months ago. Some of that has come from “performance management”, although most of it has been “natural attrition”.

Hahn is also trying to move Hays “further up the food chain”, given that demand for the most skilled and most senior positions is holding up better than for more junior roles. “For instance, in the UK, where the [broader] market is not very supportive, in our permanent senior finance business, we’re seeing much more resilience,” he said.

Minutes from the Fed’s open market committee meeting at the end of July, when the cost of borrowing was held in the 5.25 per cent to 5.5 per cent range, show the “vast majority” of ratesetters said “it would likely be appropriate to ease policy at the next meeting” if the economic data came in as expected.

The minutes also noted “many” Fed officials viewed the stance of rates to be restrictive and “a few participants” ­contended that, amid a continuing cooling in inflationary pressures, no change in rates would mean that monetary policy would increase the drag on economic activity.

The minutes said that while all Fed officials agreed with keeping rates steady in July, “several” policymakers said that progress on lowering inflation amid a rise in joblessness “had provided a plausible case for reducing the target range 25 basis points at this meeting or that they could have supported such a decision”.

The case for cutting rates rests on easing price pressures and getting ­inflation back to the central bank’s 2 per cent target amid increased anxiety about the state of the jobs market in the wake of recent data showing a rise in the ­unemployment rate. The Fed’s concerns about the jobs market will have been heightened by the Labor ­Department’s revised estimate on Wednesday that 818,000 fewer ­payroll jobs ­existed in March than previously ­reported. The change was part of the annual benchmark revision process. Analysts at Goldman Sachs said that they expected a cut of about 600,000 to the payrolls estimate over 12 months to April.

The speed of the jump in the jobless rate, which bottomed at 3.4 per cent early last year and has since climbed to 4.3 per cent as of last month, has added urgency to the debate over rate cuts and has prompted some analysts to say that a half-percentage-point reduction in borrowing costs should be considered next month.

The minutes noted that officials see the jobs market as having largely ­returned to where it was before the Covid-19 pandemic started, and ­described the labour market as “strong but not overheated.” Financial markets have been expecting the Fed’s September meeting to begin the reductions in the federal funds rate, with as much as a full percentage point worth of easing expected by the end of this year.

Traders are pricing in a 33 per cent probability of a 50 basis point cut next month, little changed from before the revised jobs data, and a 67.5 per cent chance of a 25 basis point reduction, ­according to the closely watched CME Group’s FedWatch tool.

“A deteriorating labour market will allow the Fed to highlight both sides of the dual mandate and investors should expect the Fed to prepare markets for a cut at the September meeting,” Jeffrey Roach, chief economist at LPL Financial, one of America’s biggest independent broker-dealer firms, said.

“A weaker than expected job market could pave the way for the Fed to cut by a half percentage point in September.”

Tom di Galoma, managing director and head of fixed income at Curvature Securities, a rival broker-dealer, said: “My general feeling is that the Fed probably wants to make a 50 basis point cut in September, rather than 25, just because it’s the first rate cut and you want to get the process going, and then 25 in November and 25 in December.”

The revised figures mean the US jobs market has been softening more than anticipated in a key election year, raising speculation about major interest rate cuts from the Fed this year.

A rate cut in September, coming less than two months before the presidential election, could bring some unwelcome political heat on the Fed, which seeks to avoid becoming involved in election-year politics.

Donald Trump, the former president, has argued that the Fed should not cut rates so close to an election. But Jerome Powell, the Fed’s chairman, has repeatedly underscored that the central bank would make its rate decisions based purely on economic data, without regard to the political calendar.Wall Street managed to hold on to gains after the updated jobs data and the Fed minutes.

By the close on Wednesday in New York, the broadly-based S&P 500 was up 0.42 per cent at 5,620.85 while the technology-heavy Nasdaq had risen 0.57 per cent to 17,918.99. The dollar fell against a number of major currencies, while the benchmark ten-year yield on US Treasuries dipped to 3.791 per cent, after earlier falling to a two-week low of 3.782 per cent. On the wider commodities market, spot gold prices eased 0.1 per cent to $2,508.40 an ounce, a day after hitting a record high of $2,511.30 an ounce, a rise of 3.4 per cent since the start of August.

Concerns about growth in the US economy outweighed worries about conflict in the Middle East disrupting supplies as Brent crude, the international benchmark, fell almost 2 per cent to $75.77, taking its monthly fall to almost 4.5 per cent.

“The market is going from pricing in a stronger economy to a potential hard landing, which is why oil prices are reluctant to move higher,” Phil Flynn, an analyst with Price Futures Group, said.Markets are likely to get an update of Powell’s views on Friday when he speaks at the Kansas City Fed’s annual research conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

1 Embrace and listen to inclusive leaders. My experience of becoming disabled from polio has given me a unique insight and transferable skills such as resilience that are invaluable for business. Create a culture where different viewpoints, including those of disabled people, are valued in decision-making.

2 Ensure you are truly accessible. Accessibility benefits everyone and opens opportunity. Discover the barriers employees and customers face to fully access your business, both in-person and digitally, and find solutions.

3 Create a brand with broad appeal. Intentionally emphasise diversity and inclusion, including a range of success stories, as it will help to attract a wider audience of both talent and customers.

4 Drive Continuous Development. People need to be moving forwards, otherwise they will move on. Provide opportunities for career development, growth and leadership training based on individual skills and goals.

5 Stay Flexible. The pandemic showed how much employees value flexibility. It helps to promote wellbeing and work-life balance, especially for disabled staff. Businesses need to ensure that progress isn’t reversed. Encourage flexible scheduling, remote work choices and supportive policies.

6 Transparent communication. Create trust by openly discussing disability issues and accommodations. Too often people feel they must hide their needs. Instead, encourage teams to communicate requirements, concerns and experiences and find shared solutions that benefit everyone.

A critical sale had just fallen through, leaving an empty pipeline and no prospect of being able to make payroll in two months’ time. The crowdfunding campaign she had launched to make up a £120,000 funding shortfall had also ground to a halt without hitting its target.

“That was the moment I went, ‘I think we’re done’,” she said.

Taylor, 40, set up Do Nation, an app that encouraged employees to make environmentally friendly behaviour changes, in 2010. Its revenues peaked at £650,000 in 2021 but in April this year, after 14 years in business, the company ceased trading due to a combination of increased competition, slowing customer demand and a failure to secure new funding.

Last year business failures hit a 30-year high of 25,158 as owners struggled to keep up with interest rates, rising costs and customers cutting spending.

That number may rise this year, with the Centre for Economics and Business Research forecasting in February that 33,000 companies will fail. However, last week’s official figures suggested the upward annual trend may have peaked, with company insolvencies in May at 2,006 — 21 per cent down compared with the same month last year.

From the outside, a company’s closure often appears swift: the money runs out, emergency meetings are held and in come the insolvency practitioners. In reality, signs the business isn’t working have probably appeared months, even years, earlier.

“When we started, encouraging your employees to cycle to work or switch to a renewable energy company was quite radical but now most people realise those are good things to do,” Taylor said. “Initially we had great product-market fit but the market evolved rapidly and because we never had more than three months’ runway, we weren’t able to evolve to match.”

It was a similar story for Josh Lachkovic, 35, who closed down Wine List, his wine tasting by post business, in September 2021.

In July that year, a missed shipment of wine meant the start-up could not fulfil its monthly deliveries to customers on time, leading to a spike in people unsubscribing. Revenues fell 36 per cent, £22,500, that month.

Lachkovic tried to raise money to plug the shortfall but could not do it in time. “The decision was out of my hands,” he said. “We would have been trading insolvently if we had carried on without any sign of investment.”

The lost funding triggered the closure, but the numbers had been trending down for some time. Wine List’s success came during lockdown, when people were looking for new activities to try at home. At its peak, it was generating monthly revenues of £85,000 and on track for £1 million annual turnover. Yet “as the world returned to normal, we didn’t have a product that solved a problem,” Lachkovic said. “You could see that in our decreasing retention rates.”

Stories of big-ticket fundraisers, explosive growth and triumph over adversity are easy to come by in entrepreneurial circles. Less discussed is the reality that many more businesses fail, and how to know when it’s time to pull the plug.

For John Pritchard, 51, who founded Pala Eyewear, an ethical sunglasses brand, in 2016, closing down his business before it ran out of cash meant he could avoid the insolvency process. “The business closed on a zero balance with all the supply chain paid off and Kayleigh [Pala’s marketing manager and only employee] paid fairly with two months’ notice,” he said.

The decision came in August last year, after a meeting with an investor made Pritchard realise Pala was years away from becoming profitable, or giving him a pay rise. With the cost of living rising and a family and mortgage to take care of, the £26,000 salary he was paying himself was no longer enough.

To make the business work, Pala would need to pivot from selling to consumers to offering more lucrative white-label services to hotels and other businesses that might want branded sunglasses. Driving home from the meeting, Pritchard decided that he could not do it.

“It was an easy decision in the end and it came with a great sense of relief, as opposed to feeling sad. I’ve not looked back at all,” he said. “You’re working the weekends, you’re working the bank holidays, it all becomes normalised and I was near burning out, not just from a financial standpoint but a mental health standpoint.”

Pritchard calculated that Pala needed to generate £35,000 in sales to meet its remaining financial obligations, which it did through a clearance sale on its website and fulfilling remaining wholesale orders. The business ceased trading in September and was later bought by Coral Eyewear, a competitor.

Despite their experiences, all three entrepreneurs don’t seem ready to give up the title of “founder” just yet.

Lachkovic has set up a growth agency, Ballpoint, which works with small businesses to acquire new customers. Pritchard also has an agency, called Illume, that helps small and medium enterprises develop sustainability strategies and apply for B Corp certification.

Lachkovic says going through a business failure has taught him things that other entrepreneurs wish they knew. He said closing a business was “like living through a loss of someone. You go through the motions, but you’re not really present.”

He wrote about the experience on LinkedIn, prompting business owners in his network to reach out for advice. “I didn’t expect to be such a useful voice to early-stage founders but I was, because of the issues we went through. Now I can reflect on it all and see which [problems] were fatal and which weren’t. It puts you in a unique position.”

As for Taylor, while she may not be running Do Nation, she’s hoping she can keep encouraging people to hop on their bikes by continuing the company’s annual Ride The Change challenge between London and Brussels as an independent venture.

“I’m saying to people that I don’t want to jump into running my own business again, but I have found myself organising this cycle ride that is fast becoming a bigger beast than perhaps I realised,” she said. “It’s been 16 years since I was employed by anyone else, so I’m taking some time to figure out what’s next.”

In a rare public discussion on leadership style, the boss of GSK said it was “important to recognise as a leader you’re not some kind of all-powerful superhero that has the answers to everything.

“I’ve never believed in that and sometimes I think it’s unfortunate how chief executives are set in that way.”

In a wide-ranging discussion with Octavius Black, the Old Etonian who co-founded MindGym, the AIM-listed workplace training company, Walmsley said she had “never, ever woken up, wherever it is in the world, and thought, ‘Gosh I feel powerful’ … It’s just not what I feel … Being the leader is how you unlock the individual possibilities but also the team’s collective possibilities”.

GSK, one of the UK’s two big pharma companies, employs about 69,400 people and operates in more than 80 markets.

Walmsley, 53, who has been the company’s chief executive since 2017 and is also a non-executive director of Microsoft, said she had to be “really careful” to manage her energy and its impact.

“One of the things that happens when you’re in a leadership job, not just as a CEO, for all of us, is this consciousness of the impact that you have [on others].

“Whether you’re standing on a stage in a large boardroom or you’re in a one-on-one with somebody, the transfer of energy you give, whether you come in a bit tired off a plane, you can lift someone, you can inspire them, you can clarify them, you can reassure them, you have to listen really carefully.

“One of the things I’ve learnt the most, it’s not that you are powerful, but you need to be acutely conscious of the impact you can have to help people do more and want to do more.”

Walmsley also acknowledged the influence of her background on her role, saying that “because I’m the daughter of a naval officer, if you’re trying to captain the ship, you are setting a direction, you have a clear destination, you need to articulate to people why that is the right place to go, what it is, create a vision of that future”.

She also gave an indication of how she is managing the threat of thousands of potentially costly lawsuits in the US alleging that Zantac, an old GSK blockbuster heartburn drug, caused cancer.

“If there is a lawsuit on a drug that takes an enormous hit to the market cap [value] of several companies in the sector and is a drug that was launched when I was in high school, does that mean GSK is going to change the amount of investing? Does it mean this is going to change our strategy? Does it mean my job is affected?

“And so we very quickly explained to everyone, ‘The science is on our side. We are going to defend our position rigorously, it’s going to take time because this is the situation in the US legal operating model … but don’t worry, we’ve got all the best lawyers working on it.’

“We have a small really expert group working on it. Our job and the rest of the company, 98 per cent of the rest of the company, is to focus on discovering and developing medicines and vaccines.”