The authors say that rather than making the qualification compulsory the challenge is to provide a "clear and attractive alternative" for students who achieve good grades in GCSE maths but do not currently go on to study AS or A-level mathematics.
In the process of buying and turning round more than 30 companies, he realised that a third of the employees he encountered were illiterate and two-thirds could not do basic mathematics.
"Just as some people have taken a perverse pride in not understanding mathematics, so we have taken a perverse pride in the fact that we do not speak foreign languages, and we just need to speak louder in English, " he said.