Victoria Beckham tops British managers list

LONDON - Agence France-Presse

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Former pop star and model turned fashion impresario Victoria Beckham has come top in a yearly ranking of Britain's 100 best managers for her "finely tuned business acumen".
      
"The entrepreneur formerly known as Posh Spice is queen of the catwalk now," Management Today magazine said of the 40-year-old mother of four, who is married to football icon David Beckham.
      
Beckham has grown her business over the past five years from a 1 million (1.3 million euro, $1.6 million) a year turnover to 30 million and from three employees to 100.
      
She launched her label in 2008 and opened a large boutique in the upmarket Mayfair area in central London last month.
      
The list, which came out on Sunday and was reported in British media on Monday, included 15 women -- up from 11 identified in the 2011 edition.
      
There are also nine names from Britain's South Asian community, including in the number two spot brother-and-sister team Amit and Meeta Patel, who own a pharmaceutical business.
      
Mahmud Kamani of the online fashion site Boohoo.com came third.
      
The magazine said the 100 managers named had proved to be "real job creators", adding 61,556 employees over the past five years for a total of 158,189 people -- far outstripping the rate of employment growth in the British economy.