The secretive Barclay clan don’t have many public faces in their £6.4bn empire, but Mike Hancox can lay claim to being an insider.
His office in Liverpool may be 270 miles from Brecqhou, the Channel island that the senior Barclays transformed, but the chief executive of their delivery company Yodel has been associated with the tycoons for more than two decades through various ventures.
In recent weeks, the spotlight has shone directly on the quiet dynasty, after the Barclay family lost control of the Daily Telegraph and the Sunday Telegraph in a row over nearly £1bn of unpaid debts.
Lloyds’ subsidiary Bank of Scotland has appointed the management consultant AlixPartners to handle the receivership of the newspaper group’s holding company.
Hancox admits that he quickly got in touch with an aide to Aidan Barclay, son of the late Sir David Barclay, to assess whether Yodel could be pulled into the situation. “I did ask the question: ‘Is there an impact on Yodel?’ I was told very clearly: ‘No – we don’t bank with Lloyds Banking Group and we don’t trade with the Telegraph so there is no link.’”
Hancox cuts a down-to-earth figure compared with his wealthy paymasters, dressed in a black-and-white striped shirt and thin-framed glasses at the company’s offices on a business park near Liverpool airport. (A recent relocation from the city’s historic Royal Albert Dock was designed to cut costs and encourage staff back in.)
He commutes from Cheshire’s “footballer belt”, where England stars Jordan Pickford and Jordan Henderson are near neighbours. Manchester City party boy Jack Grealish is renovating a property in the area.
Hancox’s relationship with the Barclays – who have owned some of the UK’s most high-profile assets, including at one point London’s Ritz and Claridge’s hotels – began in 2003.
The Birmingham native had spent his early career as an accountant, climbing the Cadbury ranks at chocolate mecca Bournville, before moving to north-west England and later attempting a management buyout of a food manufacturer.
Failing in that mission, he landed the job of finance director in the home shopping division of retail company GUS in the early days of the internet.(Its logistics arm would eventually become Yodel.) It was later sold to the Barclay family, who made him chief executive of the business, then named Shop Direct.
Hancox went on to run several consumer businesses and took TV retail specialist Ideal Shopping private. After a stint in non-executive roles he admitted he had made a mistake in giving up on full-time positions “a bit too early” at 51. Then in 2019 he was asked by the Barclays to run Yodel.
If not a poisoned chalice, it was hardly a plum gig. Its current incarnation was formed when the Barclays bought logistics company DHL’s parcels unit in 2010, combined it with the former GUS online shopping venture and rebranded it. When Hancox arrived, Yodel had never made an annual profit, or paid out a dividend.
In a competitive courier market, it struggled to make gains against rivals with muscly overseas owners such as Amazon Logistics and Evri (formerly Hermes), or the former state monopoly Royal Mail.
But the job was turned on its head when Britain entered lockdown, sparking a surge in demand for delivery of online shopping by Yodel and its rivals. The business, whose parent company is registered in Jersey, posted its first pretax profit, of £17.6m on revenues of £676m, for the year to 30 June 2021, delivering 40m extra parcels for a total of 187m. A slip back to 173m followed in 2022, but this financial year a record 194m have been notched up.
Accounts for the last 24 months are yet to be filed – Hancox says he has moved Yodel’s financial year in line with rivals, to aid industry comparisons – but he expects to be “close to breaking even” over the past 12 months.
Last year, a dividend to the Barclays was publicly mooted – did that happen? “It didn’t,” says Hancox. “We had the cash available. The Barclay family have been huge supporters of Yodel. They don’t see Yodel as their cash cow for taking dividends. It’s not been their most successful investment but when there is cash, they reinvest it … It’s a really competitive space and hard to make money.”
So could the Barclays sell off Yodel to raise much-needed funds? He says there have been informal inquires about buying the business “in my time here”. “If anybody was serious, we would entertain them … The right offer has not yet come along, but it might do.”
Hancox’s strategy is straightforward: “Remain cash-generative and grow in line with the parcels market.” (Yodel has about a 6% share, and travails at Royal Mail have encouraged online retailers to push work its way.)
The company’s improved form has been helped by pandemic-spurred hobbyists – and latterly budget-conscious consumers – selling to each other. “There’s now no stigma attached to buying secondhand clothes – these marketplaces have used the green agenda to their advantage,” he says.
“So the pandemic started it, the cost of living has fuelled it and the sustainability argument too. There’s lot of reasons to recycle, repair and resell.” Picking up parcels through local collection points, such as petrol stations, has also proved popular as office workers have returned, he adds.
The executive counters hard against the biggest criticisms levelled at the business. Asked about Yodel scoring poorly on customer service research, Hancox retorts: “These surveys are not representative. Retailers pay us [to hit service levels] – if we didn’t, we would lose clients.”
Online, some employees have claimed that managers “treat you like animals” and that the per-parcel rate for drivers is low in an industry with a poor reputation. “We have no issue recruiting drivers and don’t have a massive churn,” he says, adding that individual problems are investigated. “I don’t think we have a rates or a productivity issue. If we’ve got some challenges asking people to work harder and faster – well, guess what? I bet your manager asks you to do that and mine asks me to do that.”
He adds that an audit team checks on its drivers’ behaviour and an app to track deliveries allows them to build in toilet breaks, after several instances of couriers urinating on customers’ homes.
“I have a lot of sympathy with drivers – I’ve done driving jobs in the past … What we all have to understand is that self-employed people are very driven and the last thing they want to do is stop and take a toilet break – they want to go as fast at they can.
“It is sometimes necessary for us to be a little bit more strict over the importance of taking a break.”
CV
Age 57
Family Married with two grownup children and two grandchildren.
Education Sheldon Heath school, Birmingham, and then qualified as an accountant.
Pay Undisclosed. “It’s complicated. I am paid a salary but I don’t want to say how much or how the incentives work. I am very happy with my relationship with the Barclay family.”
Last holiday Turkey.
Best advice he’s been given “Ask questions and don’t make assumptions – and make sure you have an elevator pitch.”
Phrase he overuses “Tara-a-bit.”
Biggest career mistake He says he has made lots of individual mistakes but has no regrets about any of his career choices.
How he relaxes By playing and watching sport and dog-walking.
