In November, Phil Bentley took a big punt. On himself. Having just been hired to clean up Mitie, he decided to buy £3.6m of shares in the troubled outsourcer.
It was a bold move, but not out of character. In 2014, he took a £2.4m stake in his then employer, Cable & Wireless Communications. Two years later, Bentley and investors pocketed a chunky windfall when the telecoms company was bought by American cable tycoon John Malone.
The task that faced him at Mitie was a lot more forbidding. His predecessor there, Baroness (Ruby) McGregor-Smith, had left an unholy mess in her wake.
Under the “prickly peer”, Mitie grew into an outsourcing hydra. It performed myriad tasks, from cutting grass for councils to running office blocks