There are few businesses that actively welcome the introduction of new or more stringent regulations. Intertek is one: every time the rules are tightened, it gives this company more to test to provide the assurance its customers need that they are in compliance. In that, given the trends among regulators, it is probably operating in a structurally growing market.
Intertek is one of the UK’s great, but relatively unsung, corporate achievers. The group was founded in 1885 as a marine surveying business to independently test and certify ships’ cargos and has grown through a combination of organic expansion and bolt-on acquisitions.
Having been spun out of what was then the Inchcape industrial conglomerate by its management in 1996, it listed its shares in 2002 and