The Telegraph profiles Brian McBride, managing director of Amazon.co.uk, who joined the company last January but has just completed his sixth financial quarter at the online retailer. "Six quarters are like six years in another industry," said McBride, formerly with T-Mobile. His business acumen is no accident: after years of tut-tutting from Wall Street and The City about Amazon's practices, with too-low profit margins and seemingly haphazard expansion choices, the company opted to bring someone in with professional management experience.

One of the chief reasons for Amazon's vastly improved performance, McBride says, is the "major investment in technology over the past two years". Improvements have included giving customers a clearer idea of products online by allowing them to see it from different angles and to change its color. But McBride believes there is still plenty of growth left in selling Amazon's traditional "media" offering of books, DVDs and CDs online because most people are still buying their books in shops. Of the general retailing market, he says: "Online gets a lot of noise, but it only accounts for 5 or 6pc of the total market."