Nobody could accuse Mark Dixon, the founder of Regus in 1989, of a lack of confidence in his product. The provider of temporary office accommodation, which includes among its customers large corporations as well as the expected techie start-ups, has doubled in size over the past four years and in the first half of this year opened its 2,000th centre.
He expects to see another 450 open this year and the same in 2015, so clearly that rate of expansion is accelerating. Regus has 85 per cent of its revenues outside the UK and believes that its model is equally suited to high-growth developing economies, such as India and Botswana.
This expansion costs money. Regus shares wobbled ten months ago when Mr Dixon pointed out