When it comes to history, Smiths Group can hold its own against the grandest names of the FTSE 100. Founded as a clockmaker in 1851, it supplied the cockpit instruments that guided John Alcock and Arthur Brown on their maiden transatlantic flight in 1919. Sir Edmund Hillary wore a Smiths watch as he conquered Everest in 1953, and Smiths’ embryo transfer catheters played a vital role in the conception of the first test-tube baby in 1978.
When it comes to the recent past, however, Smiths has been more laggard than pioneer. The industrial conglomerate, which makes products ranging from airport security scanners to connectors used in Nasa’s Perseverance Mars rover, has underperformed peers such as Halma and Spirax-Sarco by a wide margin. Convoluted efforts to