Lance Uggla is used to being the public face of Markit, the data provider he founded 15 years ago in a St Albans barn. Perhaps the biggest price of his latest move — joining with another chief executive to create $18bn data and analytics company IHS Markit — was eschewing the limelight for more than a year.

That spell on the bench is over, and with his counterpart at IHS, Jerre Stead, retiring after 38 years of running publicly listed companies, Uggla is back at the forefront. He has stepped up from president and chief operating officer to chief executive and chairman.