On the money with Gavin Hinks

’But my jaw really dropped when the winner was chosen this series. Using ‘gut instinct’, Sir Alan picked Yasmina Siadatan, a 27-year-old restaurateur from Reading, over Kate Walsh, a licensing development manager for a major coffee chain.

I couldn’t help but feel Sir Alan went for Siadatan for being a ‘risk taker’ while he fixated on the idea that Walsh was ‘robotic’ because she seemed unflappable (working in a news room, give me unflappable any day).

Now entrepreneurial types may disagree but two things turned me against Siadatan. Firstly, in the final task she had to produce a box of chocolates. Great branding, everyone agreed, but they tasted rubbish. Quality control is important.

Then there was the interview stage the previous week. Claude Littner, former CEO of Amstrad, unearthed the accounts for Siadatan’s restaurant. When challenged she revealed she didn’t know the accounts were a public document. His questions soon revealed she wasn’t even sure of the difference between gross and net profit.

Young as Siadatan is, surely to be on the show as being among the cream of the UK’s young business people, and working in a restaurant of all places, she should have known that quality product is paramount and that you will never know where your performance is if you don’t know what gross and net profits are. In these difficult times, when everyone is strapped for cash, knowing the difference between those two things could be the difference between survival and calling in the administrators to explain it to you when it’s, er. . . too late.

Sir Alan must have his reasons, but the choice may reveal as much about him as it does about Siadatan. Oh, and he’s working with the government. Terrific.

Gavin Hinks is editor of Accountancy Age
Watch the final episode at bbc.co.uk/apprentice