Rob Cotton probably thought it was a good idea to take to LinkedIn to accuse THG CEO Matt Moulding of ‘single-handedly’ overseeing the ‘destruction’ of the online retailer’s share price.
Cotton, who stepped down as chief executive of Manchester-headquartered cyber security group NCC in 2017 following two profit warnings, has never been short of an opinion or three.
He was responding to an article in BusinessCloud – which he branded ‘absurd’ – after Retail Gazette compared the pay of the UK’s top retail CEOs.
According to the publication, Tesco CEO Ken Murphy topped the table with an eye-watering £9.2m pay package – around 288 times more than bottom-placed Moulding, who picked up £32,000.
I interviewed Cotton several times during his 17-year career at NCC – including 14 years as CEO – and he’s never lacked confidence.
He’s not a bad man – evidenced by his various charity bike rides which he blogs about – but I always got the impression he didn’t always think through the consequences of his actions.
The problem is Matt Moulding – founder and CEO of THG – is not the sort of guy to let such a barb go unanswered.
Moulding replied: “@Rob Cotton this made me chuckle. Clearly a sensitive topic for you given the noise around your NCC plc exit 🤣.”
It would be wrong to second guess what Moulding was referring to but when Cotton left NCC he reimbursed the company £19,596.70 in relation to expenses claimed.
“For you to criticise any CEO, let alone founders who’ve started businesses from nothing into global giants, is beyond insulting. Good luck finding another CEO role 🤞🏻,” added Moulding.
Traded insults
As the duo traded insults with the regularity of a Centre Court rally at Wimbledon, everybody else waded in with their own opinions until Cotton eventually called a truce.
“I do wish THG all the best,” he wrote. “It could be an astonishing business and thanks for the best wishes but I have never looked for another CEO job!! Let’s close it there, shall we?”
In newspaper parlance such a spat would once have been dismissed as ‘tomorrow’s fish and chip paper’ and nothing more than a bit of harmless brouhaha.
However, judging by the comments to LinkedIn, the court of public opinion may be less forgiving.
Amy Wild, the respected founder of WildEdge Consulting and former CCO of Northcoders, wrote: “Imagine surviving restructures, pay cuts or redundancies only to watch your boss/ex-bosses bicker online about who fumbled the bag more gracefully.
“If I were on either team, I’d be wondering what part of this is meant to inspire confidence. This isn’t ‘alpha’ energy – it’s ‘ego theatre’.”
She later added: “No-one’s immune to public criticism. The urge to defend yourself is very human. But when you’re in a position of influence, you have to ask: What matters more? Winning a LinkedIn war, or leading your team through tough times with confidence and care?
“It’s not about who’s right. It’s about remembering what real leadership looks like, especially when people are watching who’ve paid the price for past decisions.”
So, who won this week’s spectacular disagreement? The answer is probably no-one.
In terms of Cotton it’s easy to forget that as CEO of NCC Group, he steered the company through its move to the London Stock Exchange.
In 2016 he tweeted that NCC Group’s valuation was £1bn and gave a keynote speech at the IoD Annual Convention.
He LOVED being NCC’s globetrotting CEO, once tweeting that he’d visited Dublin, Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York and Manchester in the same week!
He posted photos of himself in his beloved Man Utd kit after playing in a charity football match in a team managed by Gary Neville.
I remember interviewing Cotton when NCC was based in Manchester’s Oxford Road next to the old BBC site.
Snappy dresser
He had a reputation as a snappy dresser, having a permanent tan (he had villa in a Portugal) and using phrases like ‘turnover is for vanity, profit for sanity’.
The one thing I remember about him was how competitive he was.
On the one hand Cotton showed his softer side when he spoke about his son Jack, who he idolised, but on the other he’d call out people (including journalists) for any perceived slight.
Matt Moulding outside THG
He was the larger-than-life face of NCC – which is why his exit from the cyber security business was such big news.
By his own standards, Cotton has been relatively quiet in recent years – until this week when he took a swing at Moulding.
As for Moulding, he’s often cited as the perfect example of the rags-to-riches entrepreneur, especially after THG’s 2020 IPO, which valued the business at £5.4bn and an initial share price of 500p.
Fast forward five years and THG’s share price has plummeted to 25p and a market cap of £362m – which saw it drop out the FTSE 250 list.
Hardly surprising then that so many small investors were queuing up to criticise Moulding after his spat with Cotton.
Executive recruiter Jonathan Johnson wrote: “Would love to hear how Mr Moulding is going to rebuild that share value. I was/am an early investor in THG and now I look at its performance with trepidation as I see my thousands of pounds trickling away. Am I ever going to get the invested sum back?”
Nathan Watkins told Moulding: “Read the room and not the one you’re used to filled with yes men. Many of us long-term investors have lost our life savings consistently investing in THG listening to your sales pitches. It’s long overdue time to deliver. THG isn’t your private company anymore. The least we can expect is for it to be treated that way.”
For what it’s worth, I think Cotton and Moulding have more in common than they might think.
- Chris Maguire can be contacted at [email protected]