The Sunday Times 100 list of Britain’s fastest-growing private businesses includes lead generation specialist TGG as well as fashion brands

A Greater Manchester marketing and lead generation specialist has been named as the North West’s fastest-growing private company.

TGG, based in Altrincham and trading as The Genius Group, has been named the third-fastest growing company in the UK in the Sunday Times 100 list of Britain’s fastest-growing private businesses. It’s also the highest North West entry. The company reported an average annual growth of 269.94% over the last three years, and made £210.5m in sales in 2025.

Digital and creative marketing firm TGG was founded by Chris Niebel, 41, and Mark Shephard, 60, in 2017. It has seen huge growth in its work generating leads for law firms that specialise in claims for mis-sold products such as motor finance, running campaigns on platforms such as TikTok and Facebook, while its Valid8 business specialises in checking applicants’ IDs, credit files and car finance history.

Fashion and sportswear brands are also well represented in the Sunday Times 100 ’s North West list. Manchester fashion retailer Murci is ranked second, followed by Wilmslow’s Run North West and Liverpool’s Montirex.

The list is published today online at thesundaytimes.com/100 and available as a supplement with the print edition of the newspaper this Sunday, June 7.

Chris Niebel, founder and CEO at TGG, said: “We’ve achieved this growth by consistently looking for opportunities others have overlooked and by creating genuine value for both consumers and our partners.

“I always believed we could build something significant. What I couldn’t have predicted was the incredible team, partners and technology that would help us achieve that vision.

“As someone who comes from a working-class background, I’ve always believed that success should be shared. We work hard to create an environment where people genuinely enjoy coming to work and feel part of something bigger. Whether that’s through employee experiences, team events, access to our Co-op Live suite, Old Trafford hospitality, personal development opportunities or other staff benefits, we want our people to feel valued for the contribution they make.

“Giving back has also become an important part of who we are as a business. My wife, Roxsan, leads many of the charitable initiatives we support and together we’ve helped raise and donate hundreds of thousands of pounds to causes that are close to our hearts.

“I’m particularly proud that we’ve built this business in Altrincham – we believe businesses have a responsibility not only to create commercial success but also to make a positive impact on the communities around them.

“Being recognised by The Sunday Times as one of Britain’s fastest-growing private companies is a huge honour, not just for what we’ve achieved as a company, but for what we’ve achieved as a team.

“Our focus has never been on volume alone; it’s been on delivering measurable outcomes and building long-term trust.”

The North West is the most successful region outside London, with 14 firms in the top 100. Some 45 of the firms are based in London, with 10 in the South East, eight each in the East of England and the Midlands, five in Yorkshire and the Humber, four in Wales, three in the southwest, two in Scotland and one in the North East.

A record 33 firms of the 100 firms nationally have female founders or CEOs, including Michelle Laithwaite of FuelHub and Megan Rossi of Bio&Me.

Some 72 of the top 100 firms were founded in 2015 or later. The oldest firm is Leeds-based Wilson Power Solutions, which was founded in 1946 and is now in its third generation. The list’s youngest companies were founded in 2022 – including the top-ranked firm, podcast producer Goalhanger.

Jon Yeomans, business editor of The Sunday Times, said: “Celebrating five years of The Sunday Times 100 shows the amazing variety of British businesses, led this year by the media producer Goalhanger taking the number one spot. The biggest trend over the last five years is the rise of consumer brands, with food, drink, fashion, and beauty companies now making up nearly half the list.

“Several businesses who have featured in the past, such as Huel and Applied Nutrition, have continued to grow and find huge success, from launching on the stock market to being bought out by global giants.”

Mohammad Kamal Syed, head of Private Bank and Wealth Management UK and Crown Dependencies at Barclays, said: “Britain’s fastest-growing private companies are built by founders with ambition, resilience, and a clear vision for the future. As founders scale, achieving the right outcome is about more than value – it’s about securing the long-term success of the business and its people.”

He added: “Our continued support for The Sunday Times 100 reflects our commitment to backing Britain’s entrepreneurial businesses at every stage of their growth and celebrating the innovation and impact that they bring to the UK economy.”

The top 14 firms in the North West

1 TGG

Description: Legal claims services

HQ location: Altrincham

Annual sales growth over three years: 269.94%

Latest sales: £210.5m*

2 Murci

Description: Fashion retailer

HQ location: Manchester

Annual sales growth over three years: 140.34%

Latest sales: £9.3m*

3 Run North West

Description: Running shoes retailer

HQ location: Wilmslow

Annual sales growth over three years: 139.48%

Latest sales: £11.4m*

4 Montirex

Description: Sportswear brand

HQ location: Liverpool

Annual sales growth over three years: 103.95%

Latest sales: £129.8m*

5 CAPO

Description: Fashion brand

HQ location: Accrington

Annual sales growth over three years: 99.44%

Latest sales: £14.2m*

6 P. Louise

Description: Beauty products retailer

HQ location: Stockport

Annual sales growth over three years: 98.84%

Latest sales: £111.0m*

7 FuelHub

Description: Meal delivery service

HQ location: Warrington

Annual sales growth over three years: 98.69%

Latest sales: £6.4m*

8 Just Bee Honey

Description: Honey manufacturer

HQ location: Manchester

Annual sales growth over three years: 78.89%

Latest sales: £9.4m*

9 Bio&Me

Description: Food brand

HQ location: Chester

Annual sales growth over three years: 77.44%

Latest sales: £15.9m*

10 FutureMeds

Description: Clinical trial site management

HQ location: Liverpool

Annual sales growth over three years: 73.37%

Latest sales: £37.6m*

11 Claimsline Group

Description: Claims handler

HQ location: Manchester

Annual sales growth over three years: 72.04%

Latest sales: £21.6m*

12 Car.co.uk

Description: Low value car marketplace

HQ location: Preston

Annual sales growth over three years: 62.51%

Latest sales: £26.6m*

13 Think Hire

Description: Temporary energy provider

HQ location: Oldham

Annual sales growth over three years: 54.54%

Latest sales: £15.1m*

14 Adanola

Description: Fashion brand

HQ location: Manchester

Annual sales growth over three years: 54.48%

Latest sales: £102.7m

*Figures supplied by company to the Times

CG Power continues to strengthen its manufacturing footprint, with the company recently inaugurating its S3 unit in Nashik. The expansion is expected to double switchgear production capacity from 9,000 units to 18,000 units, marking another milestone for a company that has emerged as one of the market’s biggest multibaggers over the past five to six years.

While the capacity expansion underscores strong demand trends in the power equipment segment, Sandip Sabharwal believes investors need to look beyond the headline growth story and focus on valuations.

“The new capacity is for switchgear, which is just a part of their business. Overall, CG Power has been doing well, and both the key business segments of the company have been firing,” Sabharwal said.

However, he cautioned that companies such as CG Power, Hitachi Energy and GE Vernova have witnessed a significant rerating, pushing valuations well beyond traditional measures of fair value.

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“The key challenge in buying many of these companies, which include something like CG Power, Hitachi Energy, or GE Vernova, is that their valuations have run way ahead of any sort of fair value you can ascribe to these companies. All these companies are trading at price-earning ratios much above 100 times, with sort of blue-sky projections of earnings growth for the next few years, which many analysts are justifying to give buy recommendations at these prices,” he said.
Sabharwal added that investors who entered these stocks at lower levels have little reason to exit, but fresh buying at current valuations may not be prudent.”So, I would say that all these companies, including CG Power, are at a stage where, for someone who holds them, who bought them early enough and holds them, and some of these stocks we also hold from earlier levels, there is no reason to sell. But at these price levels, I would not venture out to buy these companies.”

Power Equipment Stocks Already Pricing In Future Growth
The sharp rally in transmission and distribution (T&D) stocks has sparked debate over whether the market is fully appreciating the scale of infrastructure investments expected over the next few years.

Sabharwal disagrees with the view that the market is underestimating the opportunity.

“So, I do not think the street is behind the curve because the valuations more than reflect whatever is going to come in the future. I would say the street is rather ahead of the curve, where the valuations being ascribed to these companies are not justifiable under any sort of growth projections,” he said.

According to him, current stock prices imply extraordinarily high earnings growth assumptions over a prolonged period.

“For these valuations to be justified, these companies need to grow earnings by 50-60% for the next 10 years consecutively, which is very tough. The next couple of years might still see decent growth, but beyond that, the growth obviously will slow down.”

He reiterated that existing shareholders can continue holding these stocks, but new investors should wait for meaningful corrections before considering entry.

Wockhardt‘s Zaynich Approval Excites Markets, But Near-Term Upside May Be Limited
Pharmaceutical major Wockhardt has been one of the standout performers in recent weeks following excitement around the approval of its antibiotic candidate, Zaynich.

While acknowledging the significance of the development, Sabharwal believes the market may have become overly optimistic about the immediate commercial opportunity.

“So, the market got excited because of the approval, which obviously it should have because it is a great achievement. The scale-up, the pace of the scale-up, and the extent of opportunity initially could have been misunderstood,” he said.

He noted that while the long-term potential remains substantial, commercialization and market development will take time.

“Longer term, obviously, the opportunity is there, but it will take time for the market to build up, and many short-term investors could lose patience in the near term also.”

Sabharwal maintained that the stock’s recent rally has already factored in much of the near-term benefit from the approval.

“My view was that it more than factors in whatever has happened for the near term. The near term could be the next three to six months. It will be very tough for the stock to move up further immediately just based on this product approval.”

He expects the stock to consolidate before any fresh upside emerges, depending on the product’s commercial success and subsequent developments.

Airline Route Cuts Reflect Industry Pressures
The aviation sector is also facing challenges as airlines scale back certain international operations amid elevated fuel costs and weak seasonal demand.

Sabharwal pointed out that the industry is entering a traditionally softer travel period during July and August, making route rationalization a practical response to prevailing conditions.

“So, in any case, we enter a lean season of travel in July and August, and in this period, given the high fuel prices and the fact that the routes tend to be competitive on pricing, many of these companies are cutting down on these operations.”

While the development is not positive for the industry in the short term, he believes stronger players are likely to emerge with enhanced competitive positioning.

“So, it obviously is not a positive development by any standard of imagination, but tougher times make the stronger companies stronger.”

Sabharwal highlighted InterGlobe Aviation, the parent of IndiGo, as one of the beneficiaries of this trend due to its strong balance sheet and substantial cash reserves.

“What this actually does is that, given their huge cash reserves and resilience of the balance sheet, this actually makes InterGlobe Aviation stronger for the long run.”

He added that while the stock may remain volatile amid fluctuations in crude oil prices and geopolitical developments in the Middle East, the company’s long-term outlook remains favourable.

“The stock will keep on being volatile, moving up and down based on how the underlying crude prices are moving and tracking the Middle East conflict, but the longer-term prospects will remain strong.”

Transaction advised on by Brabners Deal Advisory

Trafford Park engineering group CPM has been acquired by German group Langer + Laumann (L+L) in a move that will create a Europe-wide specialist in lift and elevator repair and maintenance.

L+L, backed by Nordic private equity investor Norvestor, has taken a majority stake in Complete Plant Maintenance Engineering (CPM), whose subsidiaries include Northern Drives & Controls (NDC), NDC Inc, NDC Deutschland & NDC Spain.

CPM serves an international client base, with key focuses including elevators and solar panels. Its services include 24/7 electro-mechanical repair, replacement and maintenance services for specialist electronic drive systems.

L+L, based in Steinfurt near the Dutch border, focuses on elevator aftercare including elevator door drives and control unit kits for repair, modernisation and maintenance.

The combined group will have revenues of some €40m and will offer “a one-stop offering for the modernisation, repair and maintenance of critical elevator systems”.

CPM’s co-owners David and Jordan Griffin will continue to lead the business alongside Norvestor and L+L management, and have reinvested into the combined group.

David Griffin, founder and managing director at CPM, said: “We started CPM in 1993 with a clear focus on responsive, around-the-clock engineering support, and that’s still what defines the business today. Joining Langer + Laumann is a natural next step – it gives us access to a broader technical capability and a stronger European platform, while preserving the service-led culture our team and our customers value.

“Selling a business you’ve built from the ground up is never a small decision, but we couldn’t have asked for a better partner to take it forward. Jordan and I are reinvesting because we genuinely believe the best chapter is still ahead.”

Brabners Deal Advisory led on M&A advice for CPM’s shareholders, with head of deal advisory Paula McGrath and Nicole Turton negotiating the deal’s price, structure and heads of terms. The team also managed the due diligence process.

Brabners’ corporate legal team, led by partner Daniel Hayhurst and Emma Norman-Jones, advised on the disposal and shareholders’ reinvestment into the combined group, working alongside German law firm, Noerr Partnerschaftsgesellschaft mbB.

CPM has a long relationship with Brabners, with the law firm’s partner David Maples working on the firm’s original management buyout in 1993.

Paula McGrath, principal, and head of Brabners Deal Advisory, said: “CPM is exactly the kind of business European private equity is hunting for right now: a reliable, founder-led industrial with international reach, recurring service revenues and genuine technical depth.

“We’ve worked with David and the CPM team since the original MBO, so we came into the sale process with a deep understanding of the business and what made it attractive to international buyers. That continuity helped us move quickly through what was a complex, cross-border transaction and protect what mattered most to the shareholders. We look forward to watching the business’ continued development under its new structure.”

The conviction of Andrew Left for securities fraud does more than punish one short seller. It forces a re-reading of a decade of stories in which the people on the receiving end of short campaigns were assumed to be villains and the people writing the campaigns were assumed to be truth-tellers. Barry Honig’s case is a useful test of that assumption.

Start with what is not in dispute. Honig is an active early-stage and microcap financier — someone who put capital into very small companies that could not raise it through conventional channels, took large positions early, and helped build several of them. That is a real and legitimate function in small-cap markets, and the track record is concrete. He was an early backer of Interclick, the ad-tech company Yahoo acquired for about $270 million in 2011; served as co-chairman of ChromaDex, now Niagen Bioscience (Nasdaq: NAGE); and was an early investor in companies that pivoted into bitcoin mining — the businesses that became Riot Platforms and MARA Holdings, carrying market values of roughly $9 billion and $4.9 billion, respectively, as of May 2026. The companies critics once branded worthless did not behave like worthless companies.

His defenders make a straightforward argument that deserves a hearing. The tools Honig used — discounted private placements, convertible structures, sizable control stakes — are ordinary microcap mechanics, not in themselves evidence of a scheme. They contend the SEC’s theory took routine financing and recast it as manipulation, and that the agency’s beneficial-ownership and “acting as a group” rules are technical enough that a loose network of co-investors can be swept into a single “control group” narrative that overstates how coordinated anyone actually was. Reasonable securities lawyers disagree about exactly where that line falls. It is a genuine, live debate, not a settled question.

Honesty requires stating the other half plainly. In 2018 the SEC charged Honig as the alleged organizer of pump-and-dump schemes in three microcap companies, and in 2019 he settled — accepting a bar from penny-stock investing, without admitting or denying the allegations. That is not a vindication, and his advocates do him no favors by calling it one. What it is, is a civil resolution in which he never conceded wrongdoing and the case never tested his conduct at trial.

Where his conduct was tested, the result is more telling. In litigation brought by the biotech company MabVax, its former chief executive swore that four specific statements in a 2015 article were materially false — the heart of a “pump and dump” claim against Honig. Under cross-examination, those four statements turned out to have been lifted almost verbatim from an investor presentation the same executive had created and delivered himself, weeks before the article appeared.

That is the kind of fact that actually moves a reputation, because it is specific, documented, and survives scrutiny. It does not prove Honig was right about everything, and it should not be stretched to. It proves something narrower and sturdier: that at least one loudly repeated fraud allegation against him collapsed the moment it met the evidence — which is precisely the pattern the Left verdict suggests is worth taking seriously rather than waving away.

None of this requires believing every short seller is a criminal, or that Honig is beyond criticism. It requires only the thing the past decade often denied him: the presumption that the story told about a man is not the same as the truth about him, and that the person writing the story may have had a position to protect. After Citron, that presumption is, at last, a reasonable place to start.

Sourcing: SEC v. Honig (S.D.N.Y., 2018 charges; 2019 settlement and penny-stock bar); MabVax litigation record and cross-examination transcript (via counsel, Sheppard Mullin); public M&A and corporate records; Bloomberg (Left verdict). Financing-versus-manipulation framing is presented as Honig’s and his defenders’ argument.

This article was written by

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