Management Today

About Management Today

For sixty years, Management Today was one of the most recognisable voices in British business journalism: a monthly magazine aimed squarely at the people who run companies, from board directors and founders to the rising managers who hoped to become them. Published in London by Haymarket Media Group, it combined CEO interviews and leadership analysis with practical advice on strategy, careers and management craft, and it gave British business two of its most durable institutions — the annual Britain’s Most Admired Companies survey and the 35 Women Under 35 list. In September 2026, after six decades of continuous publication, Haymarket retired the standalone Management Today brand, folding its content and its archive into the sister title In.Comms. What follows is a profile of the magazine as it was: its history, its editorial character, its famous lists and surveys, and the legacy it leaves behind.

Management Today was launched in 1966 and spent its entire life as a Haymarket title. It was aimed at executives, entrepreneurs and senior managers across British industry, covering leadership, business strategy, workplace culture, reputation and careers. At its peak it was one of the best-read monthly business magazines in the country, and its end came not because readers had deserted it but because Haymarket chose to consolidate its business titles around newer digital brands.

History and Founding

Management Today was born out of one of the defining partnerships — and break-ups — in British publishing history. In 1957, Michael Heseltine, later a Cabinet minister under Margaret Thatcher and Deputy Prime Minister under John Major, founded a publishing business with Clive Labovitch, a friend from university. The two started with the Directory of Opportunities for Graduates and in 1959 relaunched Man About Town, an influential men’s magazine. The partners split in 1965, with Heseltine taking his half of the business and renaming it Haymarket Press. Management Today, launched the following year, was among the first titles of the new company — the magazine that would remain a Haymarket flagship for the next sixty years.

The timing was deliberate. The mid-1960s were a moment of professionalisation in British industry: the management consultancy and business-school movements were taking hold, and there was a growing appetite for a publication that treated management as a serious, discussable craft rather than an inherited art. Management Today set out to be that publication — a monthly journal of leadership and strategy written for the people actually doing the managing. Its own later marketing would describe six decades of “incisive business analysis”, and the magazine’s longevity made it one of the longest continuously published monthly business titles in Britain.

Editorial Focus and Audience

Management Today’s editorial formula stayed remarkably consistent across the decades. Each issue mixed long interviews with chief executives and founders, practical guides to the problems of running a business, in-depth features on management trends, and extracts from new business books. The magazine’s signature was breadth: where some business titles drilled into a single sector, MT ranged across the whole of British commercial life, from FTSE boardrooms to start-ups, with a tone that was serious but readable and aimed at busy executives.

Its target reader was the British manager — the executive, director or entrepreneur who needed to understand strategy, leadership and organisational life. Controlled circulation and subscription brought it to senior figures across industry, and its content was pitched at the level of the generalist leader rather than the functional specialist. In its later years the title organised its output around six content streams: Entrepreneurs, Leadership Lessons, Reputation Matters, Future Business, Women in Business and Your Career, a structure unveiled with a mobile-friendly relaunch of its website in 2016, its 50th anniversary year.

Britain’s Most Admired Companies

The most famous thing Management Today ever published was not a scoop or an interview but a survey: Britain’s Most Admired Companies (BMAC), the annual peer review of corporate reputation that appeared in the magazine every December. The study dated back to 1990, when it was first published in The Economist; from 1994 it found its long-term home in Management Today, where it ran for more than three decades.

BMAC was, and remains, one of the most in-depth corporate reputation surveys in the UK. Conducted with Professor Mike Brown — of Birmingham City Business School and later Leeds Business School — and for many years with the reputation specialists Echo Research, it canvassed the opinions of hundreds of board-level representatives, analysts and City commentators each year. Britain’s largest public companies and leading employers, across around two dozen sectors with up to ten companies per sector, were asked to rate their rivals on a dozen or more criteria — quality of management, financial performance, quality of marketing, corporate governance and others — on a scale from zero to ten. Respondents were also asked to name their most admired leader in a free vote across sectors.

The results were revealed each year at a gala awards dinner at Claridge’s in London, hosted by Haymarket’s owner Lord Heseltine, and published in Management Today and the national press. Winners over the years included ARM, named Britain’s most admired company in 2016. The study built a longitudinal dataset of some three million observations, and its methodology — a peer review of reputation as seen by a company’s closest critics, its competitors and financial influencers — gave it a credibility that corporate PR could not buy.

Championing Women in Business

Management Today’s other great institutional contribution was to the visibility of women in British business. From 2001 the magazine championed women in business in print, and its annual 35 Women Under 35 list became the country’s longest-running and most prestigious ranking of young female business talent. The list celebrated thirty-five women under the age of thirty-six each year — entrepreneurs, executives, financiers, engineers and creatives — with the finalists profiled in the magazine’s summer edition.

Former winners and alumnae included Martha Lane Fox, the Lastminute.com founder; Karen Blackett; Stella McCartney; Sarah Willingham; and Dido Harding. Alongside the list, the magazine later ran the Inspiring Women in Business Awards, recognising talented businesswomen of all ages and the employers driving equality. The project reflected the magazine’s editorial conviction, stated on its own pages, that the gender achievement gap was “bad business” and that the stories of remarkable businesswomen could help the next generation of female talent reach the top.

Ownership and the Haymarket Story

Management Today was a Haymarket title from first issue to last. The company that launched it in 1966 as Haymarket Press became Haymarket Publishing and, in 2007, Haymarket Media Group — a rebrand reflecting its growing presence in online media and live events. For a period the magazine was produced by Haymarket’s contract-publishing arm for the Institute of Management, reflecting the title’s deep roots in the management profession.

Haymarket itself was an unusual beast in British publishing: a large, family-influenced private group built by a working politician. Michael Heseltine returned from politics to take the helm after 1997, buying back large minority shareholdings, and the group was later managed by his son Rupert. Through all of it, Management Today sat alongside stablemates such as Campaign and Autocar as one of the group’s defining business-to-business brands — the one that carried its name into boardrooms.

Notable Editors and Voices

The magazine’s editorial chairs reflected its standing. Matthew Gwyther was editor through the mid-2010s, presiding over the 2016 website relaunch and the 50th anniversary; in its final years the title’s editor-in-chief was Claire Warren. Around them Management Today assembled a roster of editors-at-large and contributing editors drawn from the top ranks of British business writing and commentary — figures such as Chris Blackhurst, Andrew Davidson, Jeremy Hazlehurst, Richard Reeves and Rhymer Rigby as editors at large, and contributing editors including Christine Armstrong, Stephen Bayley, Jeremy Bullmore, Miranda Kennett, John McLaren and Stefan Stern. The magazine’s photography, including the work of portraitists such as Harry Borden and Julian Dodd, gave its CEO interviews a distinctive visual signature.

The End of the Standalone Brand

In September 2026 Haymarket announced that, after sixty years of delivering leadership content, business strategy advice and expert analysis, Management Today would close its doors as a standalone brand. The decision was part of a consolidation of Haymarket’s business titles: the best of Management Today’s content — its interviews with high-profile leaders, its management consultancy coverage, its in-depth articles on transformation, innovation, reputation, culture, artificial intelligence, sustainability and women in business — would be permanently housed within its sister title In.Comms.

In.Comms, launched by Haymarket in August 2025 as a platform and community for in-house communications professionals and a sister title to PRWeek UK, became the new home of the MT archive: more than six decades of award-winning leadership advice, business strategy and executive profiles, gathered into a dedicated content hub. The back catalogue of the magazine’s “Leadership Lessons” podcast — more than a hundred episodes — moved across too, along with its Classroom series of articles on leadership practice by leading academics. Existing subscribers were invited to migrate their accounts to the new platform.

Cultural Impact

Management Today’s influence on British business culture ran deeper than its circulation figures suggested. The Britain’s Most Admired Companies survey turned corporate reputation into a measurable, competitive sport and gave boards a peer-reviewed mirror in which to see themselves. The 35 Women Under 35 list, over more than two decades, created a visible pipeline of female business talent at a time when few institutions were doing so. And through six decades of CEO interviews and management analysis, the magazine chronicled the transformation of British business — from the conglomerate era of the 1960s through privatisation, the dotcom boom, the financial crisis and the digital age — in the voices of the people running it.

Recent Developments

The magazine’s final chapter was brief. The September 2026 announcement marked the end of the standalone Management Today after exactly sixty years in print and online. Its website, managementtoday.co.uk, now serves as the In.Comms-hosted MT content hub, where readers can explore the full archive. The Britain’s Most Admired Companies study continues under the stewardship of Echo Research and Professor Mike Brown, and the women-in-business lists remain among the most-cited talent rankings in British business — a reminder that a magazine’s most lasting work is often the institutions it leaves behind.

Readers can explore the magazine’s archive at its official website, managementtoday.co.uk, now the dedicated Management Today content hub within In.Comms.