Riding the roller-coaster:

In Conversation With... Charlie Hoult 

Horizon scanning is in the Hoult family’s business blood, but few could have foreseen the sort of crash that took Charlie from the top of his roller-coaster ride leading the Loewy Group’s £50million business to a high-profile and painful exit that left him with a fortune to rebuild in 2008. That said, when you’re a man like Charlie, the only way is up.

Three years on and Hoults Yard, a sprawling kingdom of office and storage spacedeveloped by his father from a legacy of earlier Hoult businesspioneers is being successfully repositioned to attract high-growth business owners from the region’s digital and creative industries sector and Charlie is also looking for the next ‘big thing’. 

Building on the successes of the London-based Metrocube Charlie is not ‘your average’ landlord – he’s now sweating the Hoults property assets to take rental advantage of the wave of successful digital businesses being spawned by north east creative thinkers and offers accommodation (and edgy mod cons like international graffiti artists and increasingly popular ‘raves’ ) to 50 businesses employing 400 people. However he wouldn’t call himself an serial entrepreneur if that was ‘all’ he was doing. So he has interests in other businesses (most prominently Futureheads – a London-based recruitment agency) and keeps his London networks alive through running the Castaway event series. This is a man who’s done start-up(several); leveraged buy-out(Incisive Research); angel investment(Wilson Harvey and MetroCube – his London incubator) and the big VC world of institutional investors(Loewy) and exit – all before he was 45! He’s also written a book, run First Tuesday in London, was a gossip columnist on the Evening Standard and has four boys under 10. With the re-positioning of Hoults Yard Charlie may be perfectly placed to spot the next big thing – he’s cut his business teeth in London and New York and knows from experience (good and bad) about marketing innovation. 

Can Newcastle emerge from its outperformance in cultural spending through the creative destruction of the public sector as the global player it was 125 years ago – Charlie certainly hopes so! 


This event will take place on Wednesday 25th May, 5.30pm for a 6pm start at Newcastle Business School, Northumbria University, City Campus East, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 2SW

Tickets are priced at £20.00 + booking fee + vat. 

For more information please contact: c.windebank@bridgeclubnorth.com 

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