Health secretary Jeremy Hunt is about to bank £17 million from the sale of an educational listings publisher he co-founded, according to Sky News.
Hunt co-founded Hotcourses back in the mid-90s – long before he became an MP and took responsibility for the NHS reorganisation.
Since then the business has been a quiet success and the minister is in line for half of the proceeds if a £35 million sale to a private equity group goes ahead.
What made it the worst three years of my life was the working environment, and the expectation put onto the staff by Mr Hunt and the other managers. When a deadline approached, we were expected to work late into the night for no overtime or recompense. There was a general air that we should be grateful for the remarkable opportunity that this endless admin offered.
Already reported in Popbitch... was an incident on September 11th 2001. Now, my memory tells me that it was Hunt who, when we were listening intently to the radio reports of planes smacking into the World Trade Centre and Pentagon, came into the office to demand that we turned the volume down as it was affecting the sales team's telephone calls. Whether it was him or not, it speaks volumes about the management culture of the company.
But Hunt has started a successful company from scratch, provided a lot of jobs and done pretty well for himself.
