One might be forgiven for suspecting that Graham Love, QinetiQ's (pronounced 'kinetic') chief financial officer, is having a bit of a mid-life crisis. Before joining the UK government's scientific think-tank a year ago to help with its privatisation, Love displayed a passion for going fast. Not only did Love spend his few precious months between jobs getting his motorbike licence, he also set up his own company - Racing Green Cars - which buys, sells and maintains old Jaguars (his self-confessed obsession) as well as modifying new ones so that they go even faster. 'It means I have the use of about 30 Jaguars,' beams Love.

QinetiQ, a plc fully owned by the UK government, consists of the Ministry of Defence's non-nuclear research, technology, test and evaluation establishments. The bulk of the assets belong to Dera, the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency. It is one of Europe's largest research organisations, powered by several thousand of the brightest scientific brains - a quarter of its 8,000 employees have PhDs. As a government agency under the rigorous auspices of the MoD, QinetiQ was responsible for developing technology that we now take for granted, including the jet engine, liquid crystal displays and flat panel speakers. More recently, though, QinetiQ has been moving away from its origins in defence research by increasingly applying its resources to commercial areas including telecoms, healthcare and transport.