Among the chief executives I’ve met this year, I’ve easily been most impressed
by Nick Bolton of OMG, a venture providing sophisticated ‘image understanding’ products for the entertainment, life science, defence and engineering industries.

Unlike many of his peers, Bolton is funny, engaging, intellectual and often visionary, adopting a sober tone only when delivering his firm’s financials – the last set showed turnover up 20 per cent to a record £19.6 million and pre-tax profits up £1.84 million (also a record).

Bolton is also a team player in word as in deed. At my last meeting it was a divisional director who did most of the talking about the company – a rare event in these days of egomaniacal CEOs and overbearing finance directors.

But the most impressive thing about Bolton is the way he has used his firm’s cutting-edge technology in core areas as the launch pad for other, more daring initiatives – without sacrificing the bottom line.

OMG’s core business is Vicon, which provides motion capture technology to the film, computer games and life sciences market. Stable, growing and still innovative, it accounts for the bulk of sales and almost all the profits.

The technology of this arm has been leveraged into the defence sector via a division called AIG. In essence, it has products to enable unmanned aircraft to better track targets. Deals worth around £0.5 million from the MOD have been bagged.

The technology has also been used to create a digital mapping venture division called Yotta. This arm bought DCL, one of the UK’s largest highways surveying businesses (and a profitable one to boot). So now, DCL will profitably conduct surveys of roads and motorways for highway agencies, local authorities and infrastructure management groups – and simultaneously capture vast mapping information for the potentially explosive Yotta arm.

The next year is likely to see Vicon outperform as usual, DCL progress and the other two gather pace. At the current 60.5p (market cap £38 million) the market continues to value the speculative businesses at nothing, and value the other market-leading ventures conservatively. Oh, and OMG also has a cash pile of £6.2 million. Buy.