Thank you for downloading this podcast from the BBC. In this edition of the bottom line,

Evan Davis and his panel discuss executive decisions and stress. Hello and welcome to the program.

Now what do chief executives do? They make decisions, right? Well, today we have three of them with us,

as usual, but we've asked them each to think of a recent decision they've made so we can analyse the thought process they've gone through.

Plus, a subject possibly related to that, we'll talk about stress.

But before any of that, let's first meet the three guests, and first up, Nicola Horlick, one-time city superwoman chairman of a new venture, Rockpool investments in the city. And Nicola, you've been putting a lot of money into movies, I think. Yes, that's right. We've been doing that for a number of years now. And I think people are pretty skeptical at the outset. How can you make money in film? It's generally an area that people think you can only lose money. But actually it's a huge industry. And there were 1.3 billion cinema tickets sold in the US alone last year. So the idea that you can't make money is nonsense. We found a way to do it. But it's a classic industry where you would expect to lose small amounts on quite a lot of investments and then

score very big on a few? Well, not the way we're doing it. What we are doing is helping mainstream

producers, so people with a very good track record of getting films made to develop their movie

projects. And if you work with the top producers who know how to get their films financed,

then the success rate is actually very high. So at the moment, in our first vehicle, we've got

eight films. You know, I would say they're all looking good. I think they'll all get made.

These are quite early stage, so we won't have heard of them yet. Some of them are very close to

actually going into production and some of them

have been out there in terms of names but more in the trade press so you wouldn't have

heard about them yet. But it is a business where it takes a long time. You know, you start

developing something that might take 18 months, then you film it and then it's at least another

year to 18 months after that before the film actually is in the movie theatres.

Now last time you were on the programme,

you were running something called Bramdine Asset Management.

Now at Rockpool, what's happened?

You founded both of these things.

Bram Dean still exists, but it's basically a shell, a holding company.

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