Executive Team

Chairman of the Board

Morton began his career as a chartered accountant. After years spent advising people on how to build businesses and protect their money at his St Albans practice he decided to roll up his sleeves and get his own hands dirty in 1970.

The business he became involved in was an exhaust fitting company called Euro Exhaust Centres. After launching it with just £1000 of capital it became Europe's number one exhaust fitter before being reversed into Kwik Fit in 1979 for £11 million.

Morton sees his role in a venture as providing financial expertise and guidance to a company. He always looks to work with ‘operators’ and sees the people involved and their independence from him as the key to the success of an enterprise. He describes his role as helping other people make money and in the process adding to his own wealth.

Morton told citywire.co.uk: ‘People are 100% of the business. If you empower people and then take away their power they can’t function. Everyone I work with has to be charged with running their own businesses.’

He needs two pre-requisites before he will become involved in a venture or make an investment – there must be an exit strategy and he must always be able to cover his downside. Morton does not usually exit until he’s seen considerable growth , although he cannot claim to have a 100% success rate. Who can?

He has a value philosophy in so far as he will not overpay to get into high growth markets but will always look for companies with good growth potential.

So, a few examples of some of Morton’s past deals. Morton told citywire.co.uk that Norank was started with £1000 worth of capital and was eventually sold for £10 million. Hapfield Estates was started with just £100 before being sold for £19 million. Spargo Consulting was set up with £125,000 and went to £40 million.

It is not just cold start ups which Morton has made returns from, he has also turned round a number of quoted vehicles. He told citywire.co.uk: ‘I have always been in the business of building companies then selling them, it is just that I am more high profile now. Because I have more capital I have to look for bigger deals and that means I need a bigger market place [quoted companies]’

Some of the quoted businesses which have been successfully turned round by Morton include: Burgess which he became involved with when the market cap was circa £1 million and sold it four years later for £350 million. The first quoted technology company Morton was ever involved with, Vistec, again had a market cap of about £1 million when he took the chair and was later sold to Lynx Holdings for £22 million.

In fact Morton has done incredibly well out of technology companies, but rather ironically he makes no secret of the fact that he has never learnt to use a PC.

There are a number of companies which Morton is currently chairman of which have done very well, all of which he says he is still very bullish on. Incepta Group(ITA) (which citywire.co.uk recently put out a positive research report on) has gone from a market cap of around £1million to £475 million over 7years.