CEO, Hachette UK

What advice might comedian Miranda Hart offer the group CEO of Hachette UK? He'll be able to ask her sooner than us, because Hodder & Stoughton, one of the companies in his vast empire, has just acquired her new book, Is It Just Me?, envisaged as a guide to life's little hiccups. She might well tell Hely Hutchinson to keep calm and carry on doing whatever he's been doing up to now – because it seems to be working.

Since it acquired Time Warner five years ago, Hachette UK has been the country's largest book publisher, gathering together a vast array of different businesses and imprints. Twenty-five years ago, when Hely Hutchinson co-founded Headline, the possibility that he would one day preside over such august houses as John Murray, Hodder & Stoughton and Little, Brown seemed distant – but he got there.

Hachette UK is, of course, part of the larger Hachette Livre, which is itself a subsidiary of the giant Lagardère. But size does make for some useful bedfellows. Earlier this summer, Hachette Livre acquired a 25% stake in a Moscow publisher owned by none other than Alexander Mamut, the new proprietor of Waterstone's.