Hilary Cropper of FI Group is a rarity among quoted company bosses - a female chief executive. On paper she is worth £26m, but being a woman has nothing to do with it, she says.
Hilary Cropper once toyed with the idea of giving it all up. Nothing very remarkable about that you may think. Except that Cropper is a superwoman - and superwomen do not do that kind of thing.
While she will hate being labelled with the "S" word, in the world of quoted companies where 99 bosses out of 100 are men, Cropper, the chief executive of FI Group, the £650m information technology business, stands out. She made headlines last week when she exercised a big chunk of share options and boosted her paper worth to £26m.
The giving-it-all-up episode was years ago, she says, and well before FI was anywhere on the horizon. But that night she had a dream (the way she tells it, nightmare would be a better description) that seemed to last all night and featured endless piles of ironing and her having to do it.
It was enough for her to dismiss the idea of quitting and press on with the business of juggling a busy life packed with three young children, a husband with a demanding job in telecoms, nannies, cleaners and her own career that was taking her ever higher up the management ladder at ICL.
"I had better not answer that," she says, when I first ask whether she has ever thought about chucking it all in. Neatly dressed in a dark trouser suit, with her arms crossed and sitting tightly in the corner of the sofa in an office (not hers) in FI's headquarters in Hemel Hempstead, she is reticent.
"I will answer if you promise you won't print it." I duly promise and she tells me the about how she and her husband ("he is very supportive, he's wonderful . . . oh, ok you can print that") once discussed whether she should throw in her job and about how the ironing nightmare soon put paid to the notion.
Later, FI says I can print it if I really want. The reason she was sensitive about it, they tell me, is because she does not like to labour the "woman thing".
For the record, Cropper is not chief executive of FI because she is a woman. No one who knows the story of how she led an employee buy-out of the business in 1991, floated it in 1996 with a market value of £70m and then built it into a business valued by the stockmarket at £650m today, would suggest it was anything other than ability that got her there.
There are lots of things about FI and its chief executive that are remarkable - the high proportion of employees who own shares in the business (40 per cent), the staggering increase in its share price in the two years since flotation (235p to £19.25 on Friday), the number of blue chips on its client list - but still the most unusual is the woman thing.
Much of this is about history. For FI had a curious beginning. It was founded in 1962 by Steve Shirley who was, or rather is, a woman whose real name was Stephanie. "In the early days you had no credibility as a programmer if you signed letters as Stephanie," says one FI adviser.
Shirley was a highly skilled computer programme developer but needed to work from home so she could look after her disabled son. She built a programming business employing other women who also wanted to work from home.
By 1985, when Cropper was headhunted as chief executive, the company was almost entirely run by women. "One of my objectives when I arrived at the company was to change that," she says, "because too much of either sex is not a good thing." Now the split is about 50/50.
She dismisses as "rubbish" all the usual stuff you hear about women bringing a certain management style to the boardroom which differs from that used by men.
"I think an organisation that is predominantly male will sometimes have a very macho, aggressive and competitive style about it which is not helpful to business. Increasingly the organisations that do well and outperform are those that do not have those characteristics.
"Where you get a more even balance between the sexes that very aggressive behaviour tends not to exist. Interestingly enough, the men then behave in exactly the same way as women."
Cropper, 57, is comfortable talking about the business and about the importance of motivating staff through share ownership - one of her pet topics - but when it comes to telling her own story of how she did it, she is less forthcoming. She answers all my questions, but sticks to the bare bones; brought up just outside Macclesfield, the elder of two daughters, father an accountant, mother "highly organised" but not a role model in terms of her career. "I don't think anything really prepared me for running a company other than just doing it," she adds.
It was her father who suggested the emerging world of computers and she headed off to Salford University, sponsored by a local IT firm, to do a sandwich course that gave her a mathematics degree and experience of the working world. An apprenticeship as a computer programmer followed at an electrical engineering business now owned by GEC, followed by a stint in the US. By the late 60s she had been headhunted by ICL where she stayed for 15 years, rising to become the company's most senior female executive before taking the call from Shirley inviting her to join FI.
When Cropper talks about her career there is no feeling that this has been a long hard climb to the top, nor that she set out to end up here. She was ambitious, she says - which is something people who have worked with her comment on - and lucky, but as early as her mid-20s she had discovered that management was the route for her.
"Everyone in the industry was young. That made it very stimulating and it is why I think so many of us got the chance to do things so early on that in a more mature business you probably would not be doing until you were in your 40s"
Outside FI, Cropper holds several directorships. She is a non-executive director of Barclays, a governor of the University of Hertfordshire and a director of London First.
"It came as no surprise that she was asked to join the Barclays' board. I think she is probably destined for the board of the Bank of England," said one City executive who knows her.
At London First she has recently taken on a project to encourage businesses to get involved with the capital's young unemployed. Stephen O'Brien, chief executive, says one of her big contributions is "empathy with the community". "Lots of our conversations are about how to reform the transport system and she always manages to get business leaders to think about how decisions will affect Londoners."
Outside work, Cropper has a handful of interests: collecting antiques for her home near Oxford, collecting modern art, gardening, tennis and the odd bit of mucking out for her husband's horse. She says two of her golden rules are that weekends and holidays are sacred; take them all and do not allow work to interrupt.
Sitting in FI's foyer, it is hard not to notice just how many women work here. Do all companies have quite this much greenery in reception, I try to remember? And do most companies have potpourri and scented hand cream in the ladies loo? The taxi driver has already told me about all the women who work here and how it must "be a great place for the blokes".
One thing is certain. As far as Cropper is concerned, being female has neither held her back nor makes her remarkable as a company boss. "Sometimes I wonder if the reason more women haven't got to the top is because they hold themselves back," she says. "What makes me remarkable is that I led a buy-out and floated the company and it is still 40 per cent owned by the employees. It is that participative culture which is driving a wonderful performance."
James Wellesley Wesley, managing director at Granville and one of FI's flotation advisers, says the company has become the "definitive model for employee share ownership schemes".
While Cropper may not give much away about her family, she does let slip that her husband has recently opted to take early retirement. Any chance she might follow? I ask.
"Retiring early?" she squawks. "Oh God no, I'm having far too much fun."
