4 The Sunday Times February 13, 2022
BUSINESS
L
ara Boro throws back her head
and laughs as if one of her own
journalists would never ask
such a stupid question. The
chief executive of The Econo-
mist Group has heard this one
before, plenty of times: what’s
the future for the print edition
of the famous magazine?
“I’ve always found that ques-
tion baffling,” says Boro.
“The honest answer is, I really don’t
have a point of view and in some ways I
don’t care,” she adds bluntly.
It is an answer that might furrow the
brows of cerebral readers of the historic
magazine, which has for decades been a
weekly staple of chief executives, aca-
demics and nearly every American presi-
dent since John F Kennedy.
“It will be around as long as our read-
ers want it and we can find a way to mon-
etise it.”
She reminds me that The Economist
started out in 1843 as a two-page newslet-
ter, not as a colour magazine.
“So it will just change. Whether it will
be fully audio one day or whether it will
be a film, it doesn’t matter because the
essence of it is the content and the values
of the brand.”
Her replies sum up Boro’s no-non-
sense attitude to the task she faces in
turning The Economist Group into a lean,
mean media machine.
She joined at a challenging time in
2019, just six months before the pan-
demic. Publishing businesses were hit
hard by global lockdowns as people
cooped up at home stopped nipping to
the shops for their favourite magazine or
newspaper. For some, habits have
changed for ever.
Early tasks included cutting 90 jobs.
She then shut down TVC, a London-
based broadcast PR agency, and Can-
back, the group’s alcohol and beverage
consultancy. But she also started busi-
nesses, launching the Executive Educa-
tion Directory, which delivers courses
designed to give business executives “an
edge in their careers”.
Next came Economist Impact, where
governments, organisations and compa-
nies pay The Economist to produce
branded content, policy research, data
and events on topics such as climate
change and globalisation (Boro stresses
this sits apart from the magazine). It still
has the Economist Intelligence Unit, too,
which provides data and economic
trends.
Readers can now also sign up to digital
products such as the app — a digital ver-
sion of the magazine — and newsletters at
a cost of £179 a year. Add the print edition
and the price rises to £215.
Subscriptions last year grew 9 per cent
to 1.1 million, with most new subscribers
signing up to the digital-only package.E
ven before Covid struck, Boro’s job
was to get The Economist fit for a
digital age. In some ways, the crisis
made her job easier. “Every crisis
can be used as an opportunity — and
I think the ability to accelerate change,
especially technology-driven change
around our digital products, was helped
by the pandemic,” says Boro, 54.
“Clearly, nobody would have chosen
that moment [the pandemic]. We had to
let go of almost 90 colleagues. It was a
very tough time for our colleagues, for
our suppliers, for the world, and we had
the challenge of how do you get the print
copy to people?
“But on the whole I’d say— we coined
this term — tech-celebration helped us.
So I sit here thinking that I wouldn’t
choose to do that again, but it probably
accelerated some of the changes that we
needed to make.”
Her mission when she started, Boro
says, was to “make everything as excel-
lent as the journalism”, conceding that
the commercial side did not match up
when she walked through the doors at
The Adelphi Building in central London,
where The Economist’s journalists bea-ver away on features and analysis and
where our interview takes place.
Boro, who claims to have been an avid
reader for 20 years, says that before she
joined, the company already had a very
strong presence on social media and pro-
duced popular, accessible podcasts. But
she also points out that it was a confusing
digital experience for readers, who had
the option to sign up to any of eight apps.
“How do you choose?” she asks.
“Looking through the customer’s eyes,
you think about [their] experience. How
do you subscribe? How do you deal with
customer service? What does the product
really look and feel like on a mobile
device? And it was clear that we had a lot
of work to do.”
Boro joined from Informa, the FTSE
100 media giant, where she ran the Intel-
ligence data arm. Last week, Pharma
Intelligence, part of that division, was
sold to US private equity firm Warburg
Pincus for £1.9 billion.
Carolyn Dawson, chief executive of
Brent Hoberman’s Founders Forum, ran
Informa Tech, a division inside the com-
pany, at the same time and watched how
Boro drove change — in a way that was not
always to everyone’s liking.
“I think she knows exactly what she
wants and she’ll prioritise and get to it,”
Dawson says. “I think that was on occa-
sion seen negatively by some. And so
there was a sort of sentiment of, ‘What’s
the prioritisation driving for?’ But actu-
ally, it was really clear and really focused
and she just got on with it.”Lara Boro: wartorn Lebanon
and Yugoslavia taught her
to live in the momentanything, I’m more impatient and live
more in the moment than most people
I’m surrounded by.”
As her career progressed after her
studies, Boro worked at Mastercard in
commercial development and became
head of e-commerce in 1999 at the Finan-
cial Times, where she spent four years.
She joined Emap, the publisher and
events business now known as Ascential,
where she rose to become chief executive
of the international arm. In 2014, she
joined Informa and became boss of its
Intelligence arm in 2019, before leaving
for her current job.
The Economist, like the FT, was owned
by Pearson, which in 2015 sold its stake in
the company for £469 million, leaving a
“unique” collection of shareholders. The
largest are the Agnellis, the family behind
the Fiat car empire, as well as the Roth-
schilds, the Cadburys, the Schroders,
and the Laytons.
“The thing that binds them, which is
probably unique to us, is that they...
believe in the mission of The Economist —
championing progress for generations to
come,” Boro says. “So the conversations
we have, I feel I’m very lucky to have.
They are about the long-term sustainabil-
ity of what The Economist stands for, and
very little about how much profit did you
make this quarter.”
They will still be keeping a close eye on
Boro’s financial performance. For the
year ended March 2021, revenues dipped
from £320 million to £310 million, drag-
ging pre-tax profits down from £53 mil-
lion to below £20 million as The Econo-
mist counted the cost of the pandemic.
She says the company has begun to
hire again as part of the Covid recovery
and even has half an eye on acquisitions —
“not now, but I’m not ruling it out”.
What does she think of the rise of opin-
ion-based services such as GB News? She
argues there is “a place for everything”,
but warns of a risk of too much partisan
debate and too few trusted news brands.T
he Economist focuses on broad cul-
tural and geopolitical shifts that do
not often make the headlines on a
daily basis. Are the rest of us too dis-
tracted by the daily news agenda?
“If you grow up watching the BBC, you
probably have a balanced sense of the
world, but it’s still fairly restricted. If you
grow up watching Al Jazeera, you have a
different sense, and if you grow up watch-
ing Fox News, you have a completely dif-
ferent sense. I think actually no one does
a good enough job,” she says.
Boro does admire The New York Times
and tech publication The Information.
“How do you make what we produce
attractive and interesting for a generation
that’s born on video games and Zoom?
I’m always intrigued by media organisa-
tions that are thinking very differently.”
One of her tasks is to direct online
readers to stories to which they are not
automatically attracted. “We are not
about ‘come to us for news’. We’re ‘come
to us for insight, reflection, a brain
stretch, and discover things that maybe
you didn’t know are going to be impor-
tant.’ The media has done ... not such a
good job on that front.”
There are plenty of big topics for The
Economist to cover, as Boro is well aware.
Russian troops are lining up on the
Ukraine border, US-China relations are at
rock-bottom, Britain has just left the EU,
climate change is front and centre — not
to mention what happens in the Middle
East, and the rise of Africa.
“Certainly in my lifetime, I think
there’s never been a time where there has
been so much fundamental tectonic
change,” Boro says.
“It’s a turbulent period — we have a
role to play. The most important thing is
not just for The Economist but for all fact-
based, non-partisan, non-political
debate to teach our children to think criti-
cally and debate and open their eyes to
the world.”
They just might not be reading all
about it in print.My childhood has
made me aware
that you can’t
expect tomorrow
to be just like today
Daily ice baths help Andrew Mason de-stress and focusA
thrice-weekly ice
bath at dawn may
not be everyone’s
idea of fun, but for
Andrew Mason it is
the perfect way to
de-stress and focus
on the day ahead.
He became interested in
the idea when he read a book
by Wim “the Iceman” Hof,
who famously attempted to
become the first man to climb
Everest in his shorts. Mason,
48, may not have taken it to
quite such extremes yet, buthe is a convert to cold
exposure. “It’s life changing.
You still have stress but it
doesn’t affect you,” he said.
He owns several IT firms
under the umbrella of Storm
Technology Group, the
largest of which is Pentest
People. It specialises in
“penetration testing” — bug
hunting on IT networks and
websites —and made sales of
£3.25 million and pre-tax
profits of £650,000 in 2021. It
employs 92 people in Leeds
and Cheltenham. The group
has total sales of £5.5 million.
Mason knew he wanted to
run his own IT company from
the age of ten, having fallen inGates. “He was really warm
and just oozed passion.”
He then set up his own
consultancy while studying
for another technical
qualification on software
made by Cisco, the IT giant.
To practise for the tests, he
bought £40,000 worth of
equipment that went from
the floor to the ceiling of a
room in his home. “When I
turned it on, all the lights in
the street used to dim.”
Not long after passing the
exam, he launched an IT firm
called Boxing Orange with a
friend. Things started well,
but he left after five years
following a disagreement
with another director.
“I wasn’t a businessman
when I started Boxing Orange
— I was a techie. I learnt the art
of business — the hard way.”
RandomStorm was
Mason’s next venture. StartedThe iceman of IT is climbing the hard route to the top – and taking his team
love with his ZX Spectrum, an
early home computer that he
got for Christmas in 1983.
Growing up in Leeds, he
studied for a BTEC at the local
college and got his first job at
tank-maker Vickers, working
in the personnel department
on a salary of £9,863.
“It was torture,” Mason
said. “I still have nightmares
about working there.
Everything about it — the
culture, the unionisation —
was absolutely horrible.” He
became the point-person for
IT problems and stuck it out
for five years, before going to
a small furnishings firm to
help it upgrade its IT systems.
He studied for an MCSE
(Microsoft certified systems
engineer) qualification and
“more than tripled his salary
overnight” to £60,000. As
part of the experience, he
met Microsoft founder BillHOW I MADE IT
ANDREW MASON
FOUNDER OF STORM TECHNOLOGY GROUP
Hannah Prevett
Deputy editor, Times
Enterprise Network2017 and now has 1,500
clients. It works with large
corporations.
Mason’s ventures had all
been self-funded until 2020,
when he sold a stake in
RapidSpike to Praetura
Ventures for £1 million to
invest in senior staff. This
meant he and Hill could focus
on Pentest People. “We
needed to step away from
RapidSpike. It was hard work,
but we drove a hard bargain
with the venture capitalists
because we didn’t need the
money to survive — we
wanted it in order to grow.”
To staff his companies, he
maintains close links with
nearby universities and looks
for “people who are
culturally aligned and have an
appetite to learn”.
It can be hard to keep hold
of talented young staff,
though. “Some of them willget offered £20,000 or
£30,000 a year more, and we
just can’t compete with that.”
The move to remote working
during Covid exacerbated the
problem, Mason added.
“Suddenly you’ve got
London-based companies
recruiting northerners
because it’s cheaper and they
can work from home.”
Those leaving miss out on
some interesting perks:
Mason took a dozen of his
sales team on a Wim Hof
endurance weekend to the
Lake District last November.
It included a seven-mile hike
wearing just shorts and
rucksacks, and swimming in
lakeland pools at 10.30pm.
While Hof ’s methods are
not for everyone, Mason
advises entrepreneurs to find
ways to tackle stress and “to
focus on what you can control
and let go of the rest”.with business partner Robin
Hill, it scanned IT systems for
vulnerabilities and carried
out penetration tests. They
both had a 50 per cent stake.
Having started with £100, it
was sold to security firm
Accumuli in December 2014
for £9 million. “I took three
days off and we started again.I probably could have retired,
but there’s so much
opportunity out there.”
A month later, he launched
RapidSpike, a website-
monitoring firm that now has
14 staff; Data Protection
People, a compliance
specialist, followed in 2016.
Pentest People emerged inThe magazine’s boss is fighting to fix its digital strategy amid changing habits. Interview by Jamie Nimmo
The Economist now competes
against video games and Zoom
SUNDAY TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER JACK HILLDawson adds: “She had to make some
pretty tough decisions at Informa and she
didn’t shy away from it... She doesn’t
take any prisoners.”
Boro’s ruthless streak can, perhaps, be
traced back to her childhood. Born in
Croatia to a Lebanese father, who was an
architect, and a Croatian-Austrian
mother, she grew up in Lebanon. But the
family had to flee the war there in the
mid-1970s when she was young. They
moved to the former Yugoslavia for two
years before arriving in the UK. She went
on to study economics and business at
the University of California and later didan MBA at INSEAD in France. She has
since lived in 15 different countries — “I
love to live in new places, so I chose the
rest of that journey.”
Of course, though, some of that jour-
ney has left its mark. “As far as I remem-
ber, it was a happy childhood, but it
wasn’t without its major events,” she
recalls. While she had left Yugoslavia long
before the war started there, her engi-
neer husband is Croatian.
“My childhood has made me probably
more sensitive than most people to the
fact that you can’t anticipate tomorrow
being exactly like today,” Boro says. “IfTHE LIFE OF
LARA BORO
VITAL STATISTICS
Born: Dubrovnik, Croatia on
August 1, 1967
Status: married with two
teenage sons
School: the French Lycée in
London. “My English wasn’t
good enough when I arrived
in the UK, so I schooled in
French and Arabic”
University: economics and
business undergraduate at
the University of California
and an MBA at INSEAD in
France
First job: secretary to a dean
at university
Pay: £928,000 in 2021Homes: London and Croatia
Car: electric — “I don’t like to
drive”
Favourite book: “anything
by Margaret Atwood”
Film: Out of Africa
Music: U2 and Croatian folk
songs
Gadget: Apple Watch
Charity: The Economist
Educational
Foundation
Last
holiday:
CroatiaWORKING DAY
Lara Boro
wakes up at about
7am. She has lots of
meetings, often shuffling
between The Adelphi in
central London and the
Canary Wharf office acrossthe city. She often travels to
different countries to meet
customers and staff. When
in the UK, Boro usually
clocks off at about 7pm,
goes home and spends time
with her family. She
watches the news
or a film before
sending some
emails. She is
never in bed
before
midnight.DOWNTIME
The Economist
boss likes to be
with her family
and also has a
personal project
building an eco
house in
Croatia.An Apple
Watch, Out
of Africa and
U2’s Bono are
favourites of
Lara Boro