Steve Rigby joined his father’s business at 17. Today, he leads a nearly £4 billion group – and champions the case for long-term ownership.
Steve Rigby has described his business education as beginning around the family dinner table.
His father, Sir Peter Rigby, had started the company in 1975 with £2,000. Steve chose not to go to university and joined the business at 17, learning it from the inside instead.
What followed was not simply a succession story.
Over more than three decades, Rigby helped build and invest across the group as it grew beyond its technology roots. Today, Rigby Group operates across technology, finance, real estate, hospitality and aviation, while SCC remains its flagship business, supporting five million users in 50 countries.
But while the scale is important, Rigby is interested in the model behind it.
As Chair of Family Business UK, he has become an advocate for an approach to ownership built around long-term investment rather than short-term return. Through the Rigby Foundation, that same horizon extends to social mobility and opportunities for young people in the West Midlands. And as Chair of Project MADE, he is applying it to a ten-year plan for advanced manufacturing across the region.
Rigby inherited a family business. His argument now is that the most valuable thing a family business can inherit from one generation to the next might be time; the freedom to invest, adapt and build for what comes after you.
