Big companies like Mitie, Capita and Serco are highly profitable.
One challenge for Mr. Richardson is to convince voters that he can leverage his national and world experience to help a state that lags most others in vital areas like per capita income, job creation, teacher salaries and health insurance for children.
The list includes household names in the business like Capgemini, Capita IT Services, CSC, Dimension Data,, Fujitsu Ltd., Lenovo, Tieto, and T-Systems, as well as smaller players like DorukNet, Outsourcerylike VTC Digilink and Wortmann.
And private firms - like G4S, Capita, Mitie and Serco - involved in delivering services that would once have fallen solely to the police should fall under the IPCC's watch.
For generations we evaluated development by economic indicators like per capita income.
And given the many billions of pounds of contracts awarded to the likes of Serco, Capita, MITIE, ATOS and G4S - along with the big accounting firms - by all Whitehall departments and much of local government, that is not going to change in a hurry, if ever.
He will hold a hearing exploring whether traditional economic measures like per-capita income accurately capture people's sense of well-being.
(This is the range in which a quality of a team's management matters, along with other factors like per-capita income in the region and a team's appeal outside its immediate metropolitan area).
There is some speculation that the likes of Serco or Capita could also step into the ring.
