She turned £6k into a £1bn business

She turned £6k into a £1bn business

July 21, 2026 · 46 min

About this episode

Mia Drennan shares her journey of turning a £6,000 investment into a £1 billion business through innovative loan administration.

£6,000, 399 meetings and one idea. Mia Drennan, founder and CEO of GLAS, turned a gap in bank-led loan administration into a global platform for servicing institutional debt that manages over $850 billion assets under management. GLAS, Global Loan Agency Services Limited, is now valued at over £1 billion. On this episode of the Business Leader Podcast, host Sir Richard Harpin unpacks how she bootstrapped her way to a successful business without giving up a single share until 2022, how she scaled it internationally and how to encourage more female-founded unicorns. Subscribe to the Business Leader Podcast and sign up to our free weekly newsletter at businessleader.co.uk/newsletters .  Business Leader is a membership community for ambitious CEOs and founders of mid-sized UK companies, designed to help them grow with purpose through strategic support, peer-to-peer learning, expert coaching, and high-impact events. Sign up for our Business Leader newsletter here . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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