Bought or Learned?
Intro
Well-known companies, read from their published accounts. Each issue takes one business, measures the value it creates per person, and breaks that number into the three things that drive it: margin, how hard the capital works, and how much capital sits behind each person. What the accounts can show, we show. What only an insider can answer, we set out as questions.
No.1 Diageo and Pernod Ricard (October 2026)
- Between 2019 and 2025, both companies added about a quarter more real capital for every employee.
- Both got less real gross profit per employee back.
- Margin wasn't the problem.
- Twelve years of published accounts, adjusted for inflation, covering where the capital went, what it assumed, and what Diageo's turnaround plan now does to each part of the equation.
The Method
The framework behind these examples is set out in the
Value Creation Imperative papers.