BQ North East Isue 13

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ISSUE THIRTEEN: SPRING 2011

TRUE ALCHEMY North to south is the normal career path, but one high-flier found success the other way round

LIGHT TOUCH How designer Kristina Simpson flicked the switch on an illuminating career

ACTING ON BRIBERY Sir Michael Darrington answers the questions on new legislation

200 YEARS YOUNG Watson Burton’s bicentenary encourages the law firm to look forward

STORY TELLER Metro Bank doesn’t have branches, it has stores.

Entrepreneur Anthony Thomson explains the business model and why other banks should follow suit

BUSINESS NEWS: COMMERCE: FASHION: INTERVIEWS: MOTORS: EVENTS

NORTH EAST EDITION

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WE’VE GOT FUNDINGTH COULD HELP YOUR BUSIN SUCCEED.

T THAT LP INESS

At Business Link, we pride ourselves on the support and encouragement we provide to enterprise in the North East, and right now we have funding available to local businesses that can help them achieve success.

If your company meets our criteria, we can provide financial support to supplement your own investment, which could prove vital to the growth, development and long-term ambitions of your business.

So why not take a look at the funds we have available and check to see if your business could benefit from a much needed financial boost.

But be quick, because time is running out fast – you only have until June 17th to submit your application.

We have five different types of funding available for new and established businesses in the North East. In order to qualify for one of them your business must meet the appropriate criteria outlined below.

Intensive Start-Up Support

Your company may be eligible if: • You have been trading less than six months • You are a small to medium enterprise (1-249 employees with turnover less than 50m Euros OR balance sheet less than 3m Euros) • There are barriers to your business’s growth.

Please submit your application by 17th June 2011

Starting a High-Growth Business

Your company may be eligible if: • You have been trading less than six months • You are intending to start trading within six months • You are a small to medium enterprise with the potential to reach £500k turnover by third year of trading.

Please submit your application by 17th June 2011

Innovation, Advice and Guidance

Your company may be eligible if: • You are currently trading as a small to medium enterprise • You are introducing a new or improved product, process or service.

Please submit your application by 17th June 2011

The Flexible Skills Fund

Your company may be eligible if: • You are currently trading as a small to medium enterprise • You would like to undertake Higher Level skills and training, defined as NVQ Level 4 or equivalents and above.

This fund can help your business with: • The development of a product, process or service • Branding and corporate identity • Business and financial planning • E-commerce and E-marketing • Bespoke IT software • Market research • Product testing.

This fund can help your business with: • Branding and corporate identity • Business and financial planning • E-commerce and E-marketing • Bespoke IT software • Market research • Mentoring • Product testing • Marketing (inc. material design and strategy) • Consultancy support.

This fund can help your business with: • Improving existing products, processes and services • The introduction of new technology • Product testing • Market research and planning • Intellectual property or patent protection • Bespoke IT software • E-commerce and E-marketing • Marketing (including material design and strategy) if linked to a new product, process or service.

This fund is designed to encourage Higher Level skills training (NVQ level 4 equivalent or above) for SME employees.

Please submit your application by 17th June 2011

Innovation Vouchers

Your company may be eligible if: • You are currently trading as a small to medium enterprise • You are a registered charity, sole trader or social enterprise in the North East that is not in the retail/personal service sector • The activity you wish to support is new, i.e. existing projects and activities with Knowledge Based Institutes (KBIs) are not eligible for support.

Please submit your application by September 2011

To find out more about funding for your business, email us at enquiries@businesslinknortheast.co.uk or call 0845 600 9 006. Fast.

This fund can help your business with: • Acquiring knowledge and support from universities, colleges and selected private providers • Market research for new products and services • The design and development of a new product or service • The design and development of a new or improved production process • Experimentation, testing and measurements.

clear practical advice

When managing risk and making complex business decisions you need a law firm that understands your point of view. At Watson Burton we take the time to understand your business objectives and work in partnership to help you achieve long-term success.

To discuss your business needs call our legal experts

0845 901 2100 watsonburton.com

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WELCOME

BUSINESS QUARTER: SPRING 11: ISSUE THIRTEEN The media is the message, as Marshall McLuhan the Canadian academic famously once said. And the message is: Getting yourself a grounding in selling space for media can be a good way of becoming a successful entrepreneur. you’ll get the drift as we did when reading about Anthony Thomson and David Harper for this issue of BQ. Thomson sold space for a North East evening newspaper before establishing a national reputation in marketing and now banking.

Metro Bank, of which he is executive chairman, is the nation’s first new bank with branches – or stores, as he prefers them – in more than a century. It’s going all out to challenge the dominance of existing high street banks, he says, by responding better than others to customers’ wishes, and early indications are that the public likes it.

Harper, no school achiever, is nevertheless proving now his entrepreneurial skills in the business of education. Success has come to him via the dance floor and selling space for magazines – again in the North East. All to the good of South Tyneside where his empire is growing.

The North East, to paraphrase a beer commercial, is the one you often have to come back to. Kristina Simpson, a young go-getter like Harper, was desperate to return to her home surroundings from London. The only way eventually was to start up in business for herself. And a successful business it is proving to be, adding colour and mood to other people’s lives.

Two big talking points in business are the prospects for two more Enterprise Zones in our region and the likely effectiveness or otherwise of the Bribery Act, still something of an enigma despite the deferment of its introduction until July for clarification.

Adrian Hill and Fergus Trim are two developers securing the North East maximum benefits from EZs already. So we discuss with them prospects for new sites once they’ve been

identified. We also ask Sir Michael Darrington, both an icon of North East retail in recent years and a propagator of ethical dealing, where he feels some firms and individuals have yet to clean up their act.

Local enterprise partnerships have still to prove capable of picking up the batons snatched from regional development agencies. But on Teesside at least Stephen Catchpole, chief executive of Tees Valley Unlimited, is confident that the private, public and voluntary sectors can work hand in glove to achieve much for their area’s good. Meanwhile, Mike Turner of KPMG, has views on how businesses could benefit from the cutbacks in public spending.

Finally, we lunch with Dianne Sharp, a remarkable business executive, to learn how she finds the crossover from engineering to pharmaceuticals production.

Who says business lacks variety? We hope other readers will agree with this verdict on us: ‘A good looking magazine. I have copies on my desk. I enjoy reading it.’

Anthony Thomson, chairman and co-founder of Metro Bank.

Brian Nicholls, Editor

CONTACTS ROOM501 LTD Christopher March Managing Director e: chris@room501.co.uk George Cheung Director e: george@room501.co.uk Euan Underwood Director e: euan@room501.co.uk Bryan Hoare Director e: bryan@room501.co.uk Mark Anderson Director e: mark@room501.co.uk EDITORIAL Brian Nicholls Editor e: b.g.nicholls@btinternet.com DESIGN & PRODUCTION room501 e: studio@room501.co.uk PHOTOGRAPHY Chris Auld Photography e: chris@chrisauldphotography.com KG Photography e: info@kgphotography.co.uk NR Photography e: info@nrphotography.co.uk Peter Skelton Photography e: peterpsp@photo-psp.co.uk ADVERTISING If you wish to advertise with us please contact our sales team on 0191 537 5720, or email sales@room501.co.uk room501 Publishing Publishing House, 16 Pickersgill Court, Quay West Business Park, Sunderland SR5 2AQ www.room501.co.uk

THE LIFE AND SOUL OF BUSINESS

room501 was formed from a partnership of directors who, combined, have many years of experience in contract publishing, print, marketing, sales and advertising and distribution. We are a passionate, dedicated company that strives to help you to meet your overall business needs and requirements. All contents copyright © 2011 room501 Ltd. All rights reserved. While every effort is made to ensure accuracy, no responsibility can be accepted for inaccuracies, howsoever caused. No liability can be accepted for illustrations, photographs, artwork or advertising materials while in transmission or with the publisher or their agents. All information is correct at time of going to print, April 2011.

NORTH EAST EDITION

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BQ Magazine is published quarterly by room501 Ltd.

BUSINESS QUARTER |SPRING 11

CONTE BUSINESS QUARTER: SPRING 11

THE LAD’S GOT TALENT

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Features 24 METRO RIDE Entrepreneur Anthony Thomson opens bank stores, not branches

42 ZONAL THINKING Stephen Catchpole goes in search of Teesside’s Enterprise Zone

46 THE LAD’S GOT TALENT David Harper talks, listens, and dances his way to business success

BUSINESS QUARTER | SPRING 11

52 ACTING ON BRIBERY

LIGHT AND SOUND

Sir Michael Darrington speaks out and gives his opinion on new legislation

80 200 YEARS YOUNG Gillian Hall discusses Watson Burton then and now on its bicentenary

86 LIGHT AND SOUND How Kristina Simpson switched on and illuminated her design career

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TENTS NORTH EAST EDITION

32 COMMERCIAL PROPERTY

TRUE ALCHEMIST

The landmark developments influencing our built environment

38 INSIGHT Where the living is EZ-EE

Regulars

58 BUSINESS LUNCH Dianne Sharp – by name, by nature

64 MOTORING

58

The Porsche 911 lets it all hang out

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ON THE RECORD Regional funding under the spotlight

10 NEWS Who’s doing what, where, and – significantly – why, in the North East

OH YES, IT’S A GTS

68 KIT Porsche Design – and not a car in sight

72 FASHION The man who could Hackett

78 WINE A Spanish duo wasn’t quite as expected

22 AS I SEE IT The vibrancy of the public service sector must not be underestimated

94 FRANK TOCK Gripping gossip from our backroom boy

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64 BUSINESS QUARTER | SPRING 11

ON THE RECORD

SPRING 11

In the North East we often complain about being ignored in favour of the South East and other, seemingly more prosperous regions, but a tot-up of recent funding rounds suggests we’re being well treated

>> FUNDING >> First the good news...

Procter and Gamble, to create a North East

It’s fortuitous that the North East has seen

consortium in a scientific area of surface

14 of its bids succeed – 28% of all

modification techniques

awarded nationally – in the first tranche of

Durham County Cricket Club, planning at

payouts from the Government’s Regional

Chester le Street a conference venue, 150-bed

Growth Fund.

hotel, 2,000 seat theatre and a hospitality skills

Almost immediately afterwards came two

academy

setbacks. Unemployment in the North East

Cumbrian Seafoods, for help to convert

was announced up by 11,000 while falling

storage space into a new seafood

elsewhere. And despite Britain’s military

manufacturing facility at Seaham

involvements in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya,

Cleveland Potash, getting £15m to develop

100 workers were made redundant at

at Boulby the world’s first commercial

BAE Systems’ tank factory in Scotswood,

production of the mineral polyhalite for use as

Newcastle, as work was siphoned off

an organic fertiliser

to Shropshire. With only 300 workers left and

AV Dawson, support to develop a rail freight

Britain buying American now, the long-term

depot at Teesport

future for the factory that produced battle

SSI, to develop training at Redcar following its

tanks like the Challenger, Chieftain and

rescue of Corus steelworks

Centurion looks bleak.

Nifco, towards its new factory going up

The region’s consolation in the awards is that it

at Stockton

got more than any other region. London and

Lotte Chemicals, to progress its

the South East got nothing despite more than

manufacturing plant at Wilton.

50 bids. The Government expects the North

Altogether 53 North East bids were rejected

East awards will create, or safeguard, 5,216

but will be reconsidered in the second round

jobs directly and 8,367 indirectly.

of handouts.

These initial successes, as expected, went to manufacturing mainly, and with a bias towards green technologies.

The success stories are: Nissan getting investment leading perhaps to 1,000 more jobs at Sunderland Chirton Engineering for growth in offshore and renewable technologies at North Shields.

Turbo Power Systems of Gateshead, to restructure in pursuit of innovation in electric vehicles Duco, to expand production of offshore umbilicals at Wallsend Bridon International, which plans to open a factory at Walker, Newcastle, creating up to 700 jobs in offshore energy and renewables Connor Solutions, which plans more electronics manufacturing on 1.2 acres of undeveloped land at Houghton le Spring

BUSINESS QUARTER | SPRING 11

>> Shopping around can pay as well Businesses in the region also got investment funding of nearly £30m last year through the launch of the Finance for Business North East Fund.

Nearly 1,000 businesses asked about the £125m portfolio of six funds in its maiden year. In the end, 77 investments went into 72 separate businesses across various sectors.

The £14m invested by the fund drew £15m more in private investment.

Andrew Mitchell, chief executive of North East Finance which manages the programme, says: “Demand has been strong, and the standard of investees very high.”

Around 400 jobs have been safeguarded, more than 25 new jobs have been directly

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created and almost 500 new jobs are expected at these companies over the next three years.

NEL Fund Managers, which runs a £20m Finance For Business North East Growth Fund made 15 of the investments – £2,410,000 in total – in 15 companies. Business plans of £30m-plus in total were received.

Barrie Hensby, NEL’s chief executive, says: “The Finance For Business North East Fund has made a difference already. The full impact will be seen over the remaining four years of its lifespan and the years after that.”

He says in some ways the funds have become a first port of call for regional SMEs looking for investment.

>> Who’s getting what Coatings: Monitor Coatings of North Tyneside has secured £400,000 which will bring on new jobs. Another coatings firm, AMD, got £120,000 from NEL Fund Managers.

Three new jobs and two apprenticeships have resulted, with more to follow as new IT and other equipment is installed.

Islamic support: A ground-breaking deal for a Gateshead firm of engineering designers has been recognised as a European deal of the year and a UK first of its kind.

International Innovative Technologies Ltd. (IIT) raised £6.4m from an Islamic bond‚ a sukuk‚ placed with Dubai-based Millennium Private Equity. Newcastle law firm Hay & Kilner helped advise.

Renewable boost: A renewable energy business begun in its owner’s garage five years ago has a £150,000 investment to speed expansion. Revolution Power at Newton Aycliffe designs, supplies and installs renewable energy generation systems across the UK. NEL Fund Managers provided.

Advertising pays: A key investment by business angels from the region into Newcastle based software development company, Adlink Data Communications (UK)

SPRING 11

ON THE RECORD Reading spur: Recite Me Ltd, a Gateshead sofware firm, has won £100,000 in funding to further its support to internet users with reading difficulties. The backing is by Northstar Ventures.

Screen success: A regional screen and media agency’s pilot scheme has helped secure 100 jobs over three years, say analysts Olsberg SPI. Northern Film and Media’s Network Television Investment Programme and Content Fund has also injected almost £2m into the region’s creative industries.

Building steadily: Left to right, Tony Henderson, Koru; David Thomas, NEL; Mark Taylor, Koru, and Jonathan Luke, NEL Rolling out success: Left to right, Alex Buchan, Northstar Ventures investment manager; John Forrest, Re Pet managing director, and Peter Calliafas, AGF

Packaging push: Plastic package manufacturer Re Pet of Houghton le Spring, set up only last year, has secured £1.2m enabling it to cut costs, create up to 25 jobs and further help the environment. Its support has come from the North East Accelerator Fund (Northstar Ventures), and the Waste & Resources Action Programme’s Accelerating Growth Fund investing alongside management. Re Pet’s plastic sheeting for food packaging contains 50-100% recycled content. has seen more than £200,000 in funding secured. Adlink, a sister firm of Newcastle advertising agency Admast, creates software for the advertising industry. The company got £150,000 from Rivers Capital Partners on behalf of the North East Angel Fund, the balance coming through founders and a private angel investor in Adlink.

Cruise guide: A new cruise comparison website is being funded to break into the UK’s top 25 online travel sites.

CruiseCompare.co.uk guides holiday planners

to 10,000 deals in seconds. Founded by Tom Fotheringham, formerly of DFDS Seaways, it has an investment of £90,000-plus from the Finance for Business North East Proof of Concept Fund. This is managed by Northstar Ventures and backed by One North East and the European Investment Bank.

Early success: Sherpa Business Consultancy in its first year operating in Newcastle has raised £2.2m of funding for the likes of cloud computing specialist Atlas, Dene Films and mobile payment software provider Mobicart.

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Out of debt: Koru Property Services, a Gateshead construction firm, is now debt-free. It secured investments of £350,000 in total from NEL Fund Managers in 2005 and 2006 to expand and tender against larger competitors.

NEL is now exiting, Koru having grown its workforce from five to 50, with a £9m turnover.

BUSINESS QUARTER |SPRING 11

ON THE RECORD >> North East in the rankings Outstanding work performances have won business support firms NCFE and Eliesha double distinctions.

NCFE, the national qualifications provider run as a charity, has gained top honour this year in Service Network’s North East Culture for Success Awards, and has come 30th in the national listing of the 100 best places to work in the public and charity sectors.

Eliesha, the national training provider based in Newcastle like NCFE, won the medium-size class in Culture for Success and has also won, separately, a Customer First national standard award.

Best North East performance in the 100 best public and charity bodies to work for was the 13th place secured by Thornaby’s 25-year-old social inclusion charity The Five Lamps Organisation.

Only two North East firms featured in the 100 best companies to work for: Gentoo, the Sunderland based developer, social investor and landlord, which came 48th, while Business and Enterprise North East the Seaham based business service appeared at 52.

Other winners in the Culture for Success Awards were Ford Components, the South Shields manufacturer in the 100-plus employees class, and Better, the eightstrong Stokesley firm specialising in brand and web design, social media, marketing and communication. It won the category for one-to-20 employees.

>> Pharma firms shine Aesica Pharmaceuticals has leapt from 50th place to third in Deloitte’s Buyout Track 100 of private equity-backed firms with fastest growing profits. Its annual profit growth has been put at 105.4%.for the financial year end 12/09. Only Lovefilm.com, the DVD rental firm and Go Outdoors, a Sheffield firm, are listed higher.

A second North East pharma, Quantum Pharmaceutical of Burnopfield, has come in at 14th with 73.98% growth. A third qualifier

BUSINESS QUARTER | SPRING 11

SPRING 11

>> QUOTE OF THE QUARTER

In 2011, real wages are likely to be no higher than they were in 2005.

One has to go back to the 1920s to find a time when real wages fell over a period of six years.

Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, addressing the Bank of England annual dinner in Newcastle.

from our region, Castlebeck, the Darlington specialist healthcare provider, is in at 72nd but has slipped five places with profit growth of 28.76%.

Chief executive Robert Hardy recently announced Aesica’s first acquisition beyond the UK with a purchase of three sites from UCB at Monheim and Zwickau in Germany, and Pianezza in Italy. The deal doubles the Tyneside firm’s capability and workforce, taking the latter to 1,400. It also marks the start of a strategic partnership with UCB.

>> Starters’ incentive This year, Shell Livewire will combine its £1,000 Grand Ideas Awards and its £10,000 young Entrepreneur of the year Award to improve the offering for aspiring entrepreneurs aged 16 to 30.

If you’re in that bracket and in your first 12 months of trading, you can still apply online for one of up to six monthly Grand Ideas Awards of £1,000. The awards process after the Hot 40 shortlist is announced will remain the same. And the young Entrepreneur of the year will still get £10,000.

However, the top three Shell Livewire Grand Ideas Award winners each month (as per judges’ scores) will automatically go through to the Hot 40 shortlist for consideration of the annual £10,000 young Entrepreneur of the year Award final in November.

Winners remaining will be sifted by a

judging panel to complete the Hot 40 shortlist. So, entrepreneurs must win a Grand Ideas Award to be considered for the Shell Livewire young Entrepreneur of the year Award 2011. www.shell-livewire.org

>> Wider remit young Enterprise North East is merging with its UK counterparts outside Scotland and Northern Ireland – and with the former North East chief executive Catherine Marchant (pictured) as director of relationships and communications for the new set-up.

The non-profit promoter of enterprise in schools, colleges and universities has been hit by funding cuts in the public sector.

Marchant has over 15 years’ experience in the third sector, eight as chief executive of the North East body. She was educated in Durham and Newcastle and lives in County Durham.

Business volunteers and educators inspire more than 250,000 young people aged four to 25 through young Enterprise, which has support from more than 3,500 businesses.

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2733

SPRING 11

INTERVIEW

NIGEL WRIGHT RECRUITMENT, BRINGING TOGETHER HIGH-CALIBRE CANDIDATES AND WORLD-CLASS ORGANISATIONS ON A TEMPORARY AND PERMANENT BASIS.

www.nigelwright.com

2733 BQ Magazine Corp advert April 2011.indd 1

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BUSINESS QUARTER |SPRING 11 4/19/2011 5:24:22 PM

NEWS

SPRING 11

Web business gets into a tangle, new gas orders are secured, aircraft carriers take off, two into one goes easily, airports are up and down, Rock holds steady, a falconer flies, and signs look good on Poles >> DIGITAL, SOFTWARE, IT >> Do you really own your website?

More than two-thirds of North East businesses have been involved in disputes over who owns their website. Research also shows almost one in 10 firms having been accused of imitating a competitor’s website. And almost one in five have had material from their website used without permission. The findings emerged when more than 400 firms around the region took part in a survey run by Crutes law firm.

>> Growing fast Waterstons IT Consultancy, operating from Durham since 1994, has also opened at Kings Cross in London and expects a doubled turnover this year. It has customers already in the South, including Cundall, Vopak, and Tower Hamlets Community Housing – and has recently gained the UK’s largest road fuel supplier, Greenergy, the London School of Economics and Political Science and Balfour Beatty.

Sally Waterston, the firm’s founding director, says headquarters will remain in Durham.

>> Risk-cutter Onyx Group has a new data centre on Teesside, with hosting facilities and an alternative and direct internet connection to Europe, avoiding London where 90% of UK internet protocol traffic currently links and the entire North of England relies on two telecoms routes. This raises risk of disruption and may deter inward investment. The Onyx alternative uses a subsea optic cable.

Onyx also has data centres in Newcastle, Edinburgh and Glasgow.

BUSINESS QUARTER | SPRING 11

>> Flying high Nicky Dent and Michelle Hoult have launched www.butterfly-barn.co.uk to take their growing business Butterfly Barn further ahead.

They launched the interiors and giftware company last year and already the Durham business has won national attention in Vogue magazine.

Dent says: “We decided to start producing our own home wares, and Butterfly Barn was born.

Our vintage inspired products are things we would like to have in our own home.”

The range includes cushions, memo boards, door stops and bunting, all made from UK sourced fabrics.

>> £32m order goes to Amec Two North East firms, Amec and Heerema, have landed big offshore orders.

Amec’s engineers have a £30m contract to prepare a Teesside plant for processing gas from a new field. The Wynyard-based team of 100 is heading the work to upgrade Teesside Gas Processing Plant at nearby Seal Sands. The plant has a contract with RWE of Germany for its exploitation of the recently-traced Breagh field, 60 miles off the North East coast. Work must finish by next April.

Amec is also winning orders around carbon capture and storage and gas storage. Last year its Darlington operation where 400 are

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employed was picked to head a £60m extension of a gas storage facility for EDF Energy at Warmingham in Cheshire.

Heerema’s success at Hartlepool lies in a second contract won as part of a £450m North Sea development for Centrica – on a second gas platform. It progresses the British Gas owner’s intention to invest about £450m on developing the york and Ensign gasfields over three years.

Centrica is already having its platform for the Ensign field assembled, to be installed in June for producing before year end. Work on the second platform is also under way.

SPRING 11

>> From Asia with love Native North Easterner Myk Baxter is relocating his online marketing firm from Thailand to Newton Aycliffe, where he will be closer to his sick mother.

His company – not yet two years old – brings clients from Asia, the Middle East, Australia and Europe. He aims to build business also in his home region and launch online seminars in marketing training.

He has recruited four staff locally and two Dubai-based web developers to service Gulf-based customers.

“I knew I could duplicate our business model back home and also focus on helping both start-ups and companies on a national level here,” he says. www.mykbaxteronlinemarketing.co.uk

Eyes abroad: Left to right, Grahame Maddison, HSBC, James Averdieck, Gü; David Coppock, UKTI; Pat Dellow, HSBC and Wendy Gibson, TV presenter

>> Looking outward The North East’s exemplary interest in selling overseas was underlined when more than 360 firms and individuals recently took

NEWS

part in an international trade week at Lumley Castle in County Durham – to find ways of growing business abroad.

David Coppock, UKTI’s international trade director, says: “Our region has regained the great majority of export value lost since the economic downturn began. The annual rolling total value of goods exported from the region is now £11.26bn.”

Participants included HSBC Business Clubs North East, Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE), Asia Business Connexions and Lloyds TSB. Government steps to help smaller firms sell their products and services overseas have been welcomed. The Forum of Private Business believes a recent Government White Paper on trade and investment offers genuine support. Emphasis of help will be on India, China and other emerging markets.

Property advice with solid foundations.

For property advice built on efficiency, speed and unrivalled knowledge, call Paul Earnshaw on 0191 233 9700 or email info@crutes.co.uk

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BUSINESS QUARTER |SPRING 11

COMPANY PROFILE

SPRING 11

Executives of three widely different businesses have a remarkably similar story to share about HSBC.

BANKING ON SUCCESS

W

HAT do a law firm, a vehicle components supplier and an internationally famous cheesemaker have in common?

The answer – Lee Bramley, Joe Hunter and David Hartley would say – is an understanding and supportive bank.

Amid the talk of firms finding difficulty in accessing finance, these three executives of diverse interests have found it straightforward through HSBC to take their businesses on.

David’s Wensleydale Creamery at Hawes in North Yorkshire, has invested £800,000 in its visitor centre, tripling the size of its cheese shop, introducing a new coffee shop, enlarging the gift shop, and refurbishing the restaurant. He’s also had a cold store built for his internationally famous cheeses, saving storage costs elsewhere.

Supporting the rural economy by being a food producer AND a tourist attraction is core to philosophy, he points out, for the business employs over 200 people at two sites, supports 800 more jobs in the community and, with milk purchase and other support for chain suppliers, contributes about £12m a year to the local good.

“So backing from HSBC benefits many beyond the Creamery,” he says.

The Creamery has been an HSBC customer for nearly 20 years. But Fleet Factors at Middlesbrough and the Endeavour Partnership at nearby Teesdale Business Park - the largest team of commercial lawyers between Leeds and Newcastle - are relatively new customers of HSBC. Yet they too are financially encouraged.

Fleet Factors, a vehicle parts provider for more than 30 years - and described by HSBC Senior Commercial Manager Miles Thornhill as “very innovative and growing”, switched to HSBC from another bank only a few months earlier.

But already Managing Director Joe Hunter says: “HSBC’s service is spot on – making us feel they

BUSINESS QUARTER | SPRING 11

Above: David Hartley, Wensleydale Creamery (left) with Grahame Maddison, Area Commercial Director, HSBC (centre) and Graeme ross, Senior Commercial Manager, HSBC

WE WANT THE BEST OF FIRMS LOCALLY TO BANK WITH HSBC, AND THIS TO US IS ONE OF THE BEST want to partner us, not dictate to us.”

The firm has a £35m turnover from six markets on 30 sites between Kirkcaldy in Fife and Middlewich in Cheshire, and these include Newcastle, Durham and Scotch Corner. Miles at HSBC studied the business and its aim to grow within its existing area. HSBC then supported it with mixed funding.

“Terms were right, and we felt they could better support our development,” Joe says.

There’s now in place a medium and long term strategy, the bank says, with a view to providing more as Fleet Factors grows.

HSBC is also providing working capital facilities for Endeavour Partnership, the law firm formed in 1999 by four experienced lawyers who had spotted

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an opportunity for dedicated commercial practice on Teesside. Now Endeavour has nine partners, 44 fee earners and support staff at Teesdale Business Park. Its services to business include: commercial litigation, commercial property, buying and selling businesses, corporate matters and employment.

Lee Bramley, an Endeavour partner, says: “With the downturn we were seeking facilities to cover a situation where cash flow might go down with the inflow of work. Our bankers then weren’t so helpful. HSBC met our demands absolutely and unhesitatingly.”

He recognises some banks consider sectors in entirety a bad risk presently - even the legal sector where a lot of conveyancing had dried up. But Lee himself had attained an insolvency qualification, and the firm wanted to form a new team in that activity, both contentious and non-contentious.

“HSBC saw our viability - recognised our need for support through the recession, “ he says.

HSBC International Commercial Manager Stuart Henry says: “We had talked over some time with

SPRING 11

COMPANY PROFILE

Quality partnerships the key Grahame Maddison, Area Commercial Director of HSBC’s Tees Valley and the Dales Commercial Centre, says HSBC, being one of the most stable and well-capitalised banks on both the UK high street and overseas, is well placed to lend to a diverse range of businesses.

He says: “Our teams of specialist relationship managers are widely experienced in providing funding to support businesses at different stages of development. Firms require bespoke financial support to move ahead or overcome specific challenges – some of which may be planned for, others unexpected.”

He says HSBC staff, by building quality partnerships, enable the bank to provide innovative solutions based on strong understanding of customers’ individual needs.

“Our experience of local and overseas markets, a strong network of business contacts, unparalleled financial expertise and our quality range of products and services give opportunities for growth, whatever the challenge,” he says.

“We’re always delighted to welcome new and existing customers to our dedicated commercial premises - many of which offer state-of-the-art business development facilities. Our business relationship managers ensure their availability to listen. So you can spend less time in our business and more in yours.”

this well known company, and opportunity arose to tender for its banking. It has been nice for our bank and we’ll continue building the relationship.

We want the best of firms locally to bank with HSBC, and this to us is one of the best.”

Sometimes, too, the bank opens doors to new and fruitful experiences. Back at Wensleydale Creamery, David Hartley found the bank not only upping overdraft facilities, and making two loans of about £1.7m in new money available, but also whisking him off personally to new horizons – Mexico and Hong Kong.

In an outstanding year for his business his new Jervaulx Blue cheese had been acclaimed as being among the UK’s best speciality foods in the Guild of Fine Food’s Great Taste Awards. The

Above: Lee Bramley, Endeavour Partnership (right) with Grahame Maddison and Stuart Henry, International Commercial Manager, HSBC

Above: Joe Hunter, Fleet Factors (left) with Miles Thornhill, Senior Commercial Manager and Grahame Maddison, HSBC company won a regional business of the year title, and reached the national finals of an HSBC competition to find the UK’s most innovative and forward thinking companies.

HSBC Senior Commercial Manager Graeme Ross says that, besides helping the firm grow over 18 months, the bank increased capital facilities to cover peak Christmas sales. “They’re an excellent organisation,” he says of the Creamery.

David found meanwhile that his overseas trips, awarded for achievements in HSBC’s competition, enabled him to see how some foreign firms work, and to meet very senior people in the bank, as well as entrepreneurs and leaders of other businesses – “one of the best networking events in my experience,” says the Managing Director who led an HSBC-supported buyout of the Creamery by

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management back in 1992.

All three of these customers cite “high quality” of HSBC skills in relations management, a level approach, and advantages of understanding gained with being able to deal with the same banking team throughout.

Grahame Maddison Area Commercial Director heads up the team at Tees Valley and the Dales supported by International Commercial Manager Stuart Henry.

Grahame Maddison: 07717484075 Stuart Henry: 07717484161

BUSINESS QUARTER |SPRING 11

NEWS

SPRING 11

The Sage Gateshead

>> Talking the talk Two international conferences are coming to Tyneside. The International Ethological Congress (IEC) and the European Academy of Childhood Disability (EACD) will be held at The Sage in Gateshead on August and October 2013 respectively, following winning bids

by NewcastleGateshead Convention Bureau against competition from as far as Australia.

The conferences will bring around 1,700 delegates in total to the North East.

>> B&E expands Business & Enterprise Group – previously Business & Enterprise North East, and Business & Enterprise UK – has widened its remit.

It has acquired Business-to-Business (BtoB), an events organiser also working in international trade, supply chain management and procurement. It has offices in London, Newcastle and Coventry with clients that include NPower, Sainsbury’s, Gatwick and Heathrow Airports, the MoD, UKTI and Department of Education.

BtoB, centred in London with 36 staff, will retain its identity, well established products and brands, but will be a wholly owned subsidiary.

Business & Enterprise Group, which will continue to operate from Seaham, also now has a contract to deliver leadership and management advisory service in the North West, and has acquired NDI UK. The Business Link regional advisory service, which supports thousands of North East businesses a year, will close on November 25 and become a national Business Link with

BUSINESS QUARTER | SPRING 11

web-based offering and contact centre.

Alastair MacColl, chief executive of Business & Enterprise Group, says: “The Business Link service is still very much open for business.”

The regional advisory service will still offer support and guidance for new and existing customers across the North East. The North East of England Investment Centre will continue to provide a range of financial support and remain a resource for the region after the November closure.

And after November 25, Business & Enterprise Group will still support North East businesses.

>> Rebanking on success A&P Tyne’s ship repair and fabrication yard has switched banks – from Royal Bank of Scotland to Santander – as it tools up to work on Britain’s new aircraft carriers.

The firm has had its second new owner within 18 months, having most recently been acquired by Atlantic and Peninsula Marine Services, a North West consortium of directors formerly with Cammell Laird.

A&P was part of Cammell Laird until the latter fell into receivership in 2001.

A&P has now had a new £3m West Quay built in concrete at Hebburn. Structures, including sections for the carriers after final assembly on the quay, can now be driven directly off the new quay on to barges or other seagoing vessels. The development

by Southbay Civils of Wallsend and design company WA Fairhurst, completes the second of a three-phase, £9m investment in the yard.

A steady workflow recently has enabled A&P to raise the full-time workforce by 20% to 240, plus 300 agency employees.

NOF Energy member Shape Personnel of Darlington is a main supplier.

A&P is refitting the P&O Ferry, Pride of york, and the Technip multi-purpose vessel Deep Constructor. With work also on the destroyer HMS Bristol, it expects about £40m of business this year – £10m up in a year.

Group revenues run to £100m through facilities also on Teesside and at Falmouth.

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>> Brighter for some Levels of business distress have remained similar to the first quarter of 2011 and show a marked fall, year on year of 8%, according to business rescue and recovery specialist Begbies Traynor.

But latest casualties include housebuilder McInerny Homes, Principle Leisure Group and The Works. McInerney Homes, which has offices in Durham and developments throughout the North East, is in administration following a struggle to refinance.

The firm’s revenues of £39.8m in 2009 were a big fall. Fourteen out of 161 staff were immediately laid off by administrators KPMG. Others may go to other firms within the parent company.

The Washington-based Principle Leisure Group, whose interests include Popolo bars in Newcastle and Establishment bar in Sunderland, has entered administration.

Begbies Traynor says that apart from cash flow difficulties, the management was weakened by the death of director Joseph Peel.

Branches at Newcastle, Durham, Stockton and Middlesbrough are among 85 closed as discount bookseller The Works makes 450 staff redundant in a restructure following a spell in administration. Peter Savill of administrators Kroll says the rundown is a step towards selling the business.

Officers Club, the Cramlington-based menswear chain has gone into administration for the second time in less than three years. A quick deal with retail chain Blue Inc saved just under half of its 102 stores. Blue Inc gets 46 stores and 396 employees in a deal put at £5m, with around 500 jobs lost. Founder, David Charlton, earlier placed the company in administration then bought back 118 of its 150 stores on the same day.

• Buy-ups of insolvent businesses still account for much of the region’s merger and acquisition activity despite a fall in 2010, according to Experian Corpfin research.

>> Broking breaks out Brewin Dolphin now focuses on its core business of wealth management – provider of 95% of its £250m annual >>

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COMPANY PROFILE

In the Zone.

There have been claims that any new Enterprise Zone, as announced in March’s budget, will amount to nothing but “an onshore tax haven”.

The incentive for new, jobs and investment for the two North East zones will be discounts to business rates or enhanced capital allowances. It is true to say that there will be no upfront cash for these companies to locate and operate in the zones but tax will still be payable on profits and national insurance /income tax will be payable by staff.

The Coalition Government clearly doesn’t have the disposable income right now to offer the level of grant funding we have seen in the past. It also claims to have learned its lessons about displacing businesses from one area to another as companies chase cheap rates and start up incentives.

These new and improved Enterprise Zones – a key driver of the government’s pro-growth agenda – look to secure economic growth through local decisions and furthermore promise to implement radical planning reform. Setting them within the geographically defined areas that local enterprise partnerships (LEPs) follow puts power on our doorstep. Is asking the North’s two LEPs to each decide on the location and innovative structure of their own zone an example of localism? Any corresponding fall out within the LEPs will be offset after only 5 years by the anticipated business rate growth for the zone being shared between the authorities. We must grasp these opportunities in the North Eastern and Tees Valley LEP areas. Attracting the right inward investment

up front will be crucial to the success of the zones and the continued growth and economic regeneration of the North East as a whole.

David R Smith is director, government & public sector, PwC, Newcastle, tel: 0191 269 3316, email: david.r.smith@uk.pwc.com

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BUSINESS QUARTER |SPRING 11

NEWS

SPRING 11

income – after selling its Newcastle based corporate broking arm to senior staff and a Spanish financial firm, N+1.

The new venture N+1 Brewin is based in Newcastle and staffed by 55 members of Brewin’s corporate advisory and broking division, including 25 in Newcastle. Brewin Dolphin employs 300 in Newcastle altogether.

Graham Summers, managing partner-elect of N+1 Brewin, said the new set-up would enhance service by combining N+1’s European asset management expertise with skills of the team in the UK.

>> They’re on a roll Two entrepreneurs are seeing their innovative parking systems rolled out across Europe, thanks to a deal struck with help from a growth firm. Three years ago, Ken Riley and David Carr set up Park and Slide in Blaydon, to market slides and turntables that enable drivers to fit two large vehicles into a standard garage.

Despite strong interest from overseas parties and the backing of an American manufacturer, the products were largely restricted to the US and Canada. But Gateshead firm Sphera Consulting stepped in. Result? The devices will be sold in the UK and more than 20 European countries this year. www.innovatecv.com

>> More ride the ferry DFDS Seaways saw a year on year 4.3% rise in passenger numbers between Newcastle and Amsterdam in 2010.

>> Air threat to exports North East exporters will suffer if the Government does not rethink Air Passenger Duty (APD), the North East Chamber of Commerce warns.

It says the levy is having a disproportionate impact on the region’s businesses and it is calling for differential rates for regional airports, in place of current “blanket” charge.

Travel agents and British Airways also oppose the duty, which is hiking fares.

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Chancellor George Osborne announced in his Budget that the inflation-rate rise in the controversial APD on airport departures would be delayed for a year until next April.

Taxes are imposed on private jets instead.

But plans to replace APD with a per-plane scheme – apparently illegal under international law – have been shelved. First introduced in 1994, APD has been raised regularly, a hike last November putting rates up as high as £170 a passenger on long-haul flights.

However, passenger figures are picking up at Durham Tees Valley Airport, despite an additional local tax. Airport director Mike Morton says percentage rises in passenger numbers and flights in January were among the highest for any UK airport.

“We are starting to head in the right direction,” he said.

It’s one down further north though. Low cost airline easyJet has abandoned its scheduled services between Newcastle and Stansted. It will also operate only three aircraft on its summer routes from Newcastle Airport this year due to a fall-off in foreign travel.

Eastern Airways, which employs 50 staff in Newcastle, has been named Newcastle Airport’s most punctual scheduled airline for the fourth time in five years. It has reintroduced its Newcastle to Bergen non-stop daily weekday service for the summer season.

>> Fewer debts, fewer jobs at the Rock Northern Rock’s so-called bad arm of banking – the one with old mortgages and toxic loans – is back in the black, having cut costs and slowed the speed of rising arrears.

Northern Rock Asset Management, as it’s called, made an underlying pre-tax profit of £277.4m for the year to December 31, against a £313.4m loss before. It has been managed by UK Asset Resolution since last October alongside state-owned Bradford and Bingley which also made a profit against a loss earlier.

The other half of Northern Rock is Northern Rock plc. It holds savers’ deposits and new mortgages and showed a

16

£232.4m loss last year, but is reported to be progressing. It has announced the first issue of bonds backed by its own mortgages since its collapse in 2007. This is seen as a step towards a sale.

The cross-party Commons Treasury Committee thinks returning the Rock to its mutual roots would add credibility to the Government’s wish to reform banking. Deutsche Bank AG won a tender to help the recovering Northern Rock get free of its reliance on taxpayers’ support.

The bank, which overstretched itself in the global property fiasco, was rescued by taxpayers early in 2008 after savers withdrew billions of pounds, forcing an intervention. Northern Rock at peak employed 6,500. With another round of pay-offs under way, jobs at Northern Rock plc will be nearer 2,000.

>> Star of the show Warner Brothers has given CA Group of Evenwood a starring role to rebuild Leavesden film studios, Watford. The County Durham construction firm, specialising in carbon neutral buildings, has a multi-million order to work on the studios once home to Harry Potter, Batman and James Bond.

Building for the £100m investment has to be completed by year end and CA Group is recruiting 25 more workers. Its previous projects include new stadiums for Brighton and Hove Albion FC and Salford Reds rugby league club, as well as distribution centres for Argos and Marks & Spencer at Derby and Darlington respectively.

>> National catch A new national firm, Quorn Foods, has chosen Stokesley as headquarters.

Formed after a £205m acquisition by Exponent Private Equity from Premier Foods, the firm manufactures on Teesside.

Most of its 580 employees will be in the North East. Quorn was originally developed

by ICI, the former chemical titan of Teesside.

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COMPANY PROFILE

Enterprising thoughts.

Enterprise and growth are now stated government objectives and seen as the way forward as they seek to stimulate and create a growing economy.

More importantly for the North East, this means that enterprise, entrepreneurialism, self employment (whatever you want to call it) is the way in which the economy will replace the public sector jobs lost as a result of the reduction in public finances.

By anyone’s standards it is a fundamental shift in the dynamics of the economy – more so for the North East as we have seen the reliance on the public sector for jobs grow over the years until it now represents 60% of our workforce. It will be a tall order, but then the North East is a changing economy itself. Growth in the private sector is above the national average – so are exports. We remain a centre for manufacturing

and engineering excellence (one of the few parts of the UK to retain those sectors) and at the cutting edge of Science and Software. The recent announcement by Hitachi to locate at Newton Aycliffe is further proof that the North East is emerging once again as a key location for business – so why not stimulate our own new enterprise?

Despite the serious impact of public funding reductions, the regions ten Enterprise Agencies, remain committed to supporting new, young and established businesses start up, develop and grow. Those agencies also cover the entire region.

So, if you wish to develop a business idea, or if you find yourself facing redundancy and want to explore self employment as an option, contact your local Enterprise Agency who will be eager to help. At times like this, self help in our region couldn’t be more important – so make use of it and

help create new and enterprising opportunities from the North East for the North East.

It is clear that with a shift in the dynamics of the economy, there needs to be an equally fundamental shift in culture. Enterprise Agencies such as EDBS can help you make it happen – get in touch!

By Peter Chapman, Chief Executive

www.edbs.co.uk Tel: 0191 586 3366

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BUSINESS QUARTER |SPRING 11

COMPANY PROFILE

SPRING 11

Companies from across the region, large and small, from an array of sectors gathered to celebrate the culture that forms the foundation of their success at a major business awards ceremony in Newcastle.

SERVICE NETWORK CELEBRATES COMPANIES WITH AN OUTSTANDING ‘CULTURE FOR SUCCESS’

S

ERVICE NETWORK’S landmark Culture for Success Awards received a record number of applications from companies eager to demonstrate the vital role that culture plays in their success.

After several weeks of consideration by a panel of judges, the winners were announced at Service Network’s Culture for Success Awards held at Northern Stage.

Overall Winners NCFE, were praised by the judges for the ‘undeniable buzz’ to the whole organisation, which they believe stems from truly engaged and motivated staff that are all driven to achieve success for their business and deliver exceptional customer service.

The national awarding organisation based in Newcastle city centre has, over the past 12 months, increased their work with schools nationally from £1.2 million to £2.4 million. In the North East this means that they now work with over 70 schools who have delivered a range of their qualifications in diverse areas from enterprise to nutrition and health.

David Grailey, Chief Executive of NCFE, said: “As an organisation we continually improve our internal systems and are committed to updating our products on a regular basis, to ensure that we meet the desire and needs of our customers and learners.

“Our most important ingredient in all of this is our people, who we value very highly and who have helped to make NCFE one of the top national qualifications providers in the UK. It is their commitment, innovation, and sheer hard work that makes NCFE a success.

We are extremely proud that wherever we go in the

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UK our customers continue to praise the exceptional level of customer service they receive.”

All entrants are judged against four key criteria: staff development, customer service, business growth, and contribution to the region; and are judged in categories according to their size.

Category winners recognised on the night were Better, Eliesha Training and Ford Aerospace and Component Manufacturing.

Neil Warwick, Chair of Service Network said: “The Culture for Success Awards are about the culture of a business and how that culture breeds success. They are about the people that work in the business, what they bring to that business and in turn what the business brings to the region.

These Awards showcase the success of these businesses and highlight the achievements within our region. There’s no denying that the North East has had a hard time during this recession but when you see the buzz at this year’s Awards Evening and get a feel for these companies, you can see that we really have something worth celebrating.”

Better, Teesside based brand communications agency and winner of the Small Business Category, has a very clear idea of the culture they are

THE CULTURE FOR SUCCESS AWARDS ARE ABOUT THE CULTURE OF A BUSINESS AND HOW THAT CULTURE BREEDS SUCCESS

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developing. They believe in creating a transparent culture, one that will work, both internally for staff but also, and just as importantly, for their customers. The judges felt that the team demonstrate real passion for their business, true integrity and are proud to wear their hearts on their sleeve. Better, who have been operating for over two years, have already built up an enviable client base, winning contracts against much larger agencies. The company is now successfully working on new collaborative projects to ensure a sustainable business model for the future.

Better’s Managing Director, Mark Easby who collected their Award on the night commented, “We entered these awards because they aren’t purely focused on business performance. Moreover they are a celebration of the team that works extremely hard to ensure the culture within Better continues to put staff and the customer at the heart of our business. Our pride in receiving the award reflects our pride in our people and the job they do for our customers. It’s our team’s award ultimately.”

Eliesha Training, winner of the Medium Business Category, was praised by the judges as a “brilliant example” of an organisation successfully working together as one team with an impressively inclusive culture. This national training company, with Head Offices in Newcastle and Cardiff has recently secured a large contract, which required the team to deliver up to 600 courses nationwide, running concurrently in 11 regions over 10 months.

Julie Flanagan, Managing Director of Eliesha Training commented following their success, “This Award is recognition of the excellent work of

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COMPANY PROFILE

Winners and companies Highly Commended at the 2011 Awards all our staff and the trust our customers have placed in us. As we operate across the whole of the UK we hope we have been true ambassadors of what the North East stands for-hard working, creative people, proud of our culture and our ability to innovate, trustworthy, resilient and reliable with a reputation for consistently delighting the customer.”

Ford, comprising Ford Aerospace and Ford Component Manufacturing based in South Shields is a family business that has been around for more than 100 years. To keep ahead of the competition and win further business, Ford has invested £1m in the last 12 months on new machinery, software and systems which will allow them to be more efficient with regards to capacity and production planning as well as managing finances and customers in a more robust, effective manner.

With ongoing training programmes and staff incentives in place, Ford believes that people are their core asset and their employees not only stay with Ford throughout their careers but encourage their families to become part of the team. Ford was the winner of this year’s Large Business Category.

Highly Commended at this year’s Awards by the

judges were Cinnamon Property Lawyers, Shared Interest and St Oswald’s Hospice.

The Culture for Success Awards 2011 was supported by overall sponsor Hilton Newcastle Gateshead, overall winner of the Awards in 2010.

Category sponsors for this year’s Awards were CCS Mobile, Cintra HR & Payroll and Gateshead College.

AWArD WInnerS 2011 Small Category Winner: Better Highly Commended: Cinnamon Property Lawyers Medium Category Winner: Eliesha Training Highly Commended: Shared Interest large Category Winner: Ford Aerospace and Ford Component Manufacturing Highly Commended: St Oswald’s Hospice

For further information about the Awards or the winners visit www.service-network.co.uk, call 0191 244 4031 or e-mail talk@service-network.co.uk

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oVerAll WInner nCFe

BUSINESS QUARTER |SPRING 11

NEWS

SPRING 11

>> Dancing with a punch A ball at Newcastle’s Civic Centre has raised more than £30,000 for the Asian Fund at the Community Foundation. The event bringing Asian and business communities together also welcomed former Indian wicket keeper Farukh Engineer as special guest. A boxing glove signed by Mohammad Ali raised much of the £30,000 total from an auction.

>> Swell breakthrough The Washington firm Northern Hydraulic Cylinder Engineers (NHCE), forced to reinvent amid the demise of shipyards and collieries, has a deal with BP to provide a winch device for wind farms. It also provides the means of stabilising cranes at sea. It has a £1.3m turnover and employs 17 people.

>> Insurance firm grows Henderson Insurance, with offices in Newcastle and Stockton, now also has a new division, Henderson Employee Benefits, based at the Leeds former headquarters of Denney O’Hara (Life and Pensions) Ltd, which Henderson acquired last year.

The new division of 26 staff combines the bought business with Henderson’s previous Healthcare and Employee Benefits arm.

>> Debt collecting spreads A debt-collecting firm entering its second year plans to expand outside the North East and launch new matrimonial and corporate investigations services. Newcastle-based Graphite Debt, Investigation & Recovery Services has been set up in partnership by Simon McKenzie, Mark Reed – who owns Newcastle Business Village – and Martin Stephenson, a corporate finance consultant.

>> Flying start Danny Cox, of Berwick has gained an unusual apprenticeship with the Barn at

BUSINESS QUARTER | SPRING 11

Beal. Danny, 18, is training to be a falconer alongside head falconer Andy Howey, who will help him learn how to train and care for the 12 species of birds kept at the visitor centre. Danny was recommended by the North East Apprenticeship Company at Gateshead.

• The company has introduced an online CV service for young apprentices and employers.

>> Mutual advantages Darlington Building Society has returned to profit and released £50m worth of mortgage finance, generating more than 250 applications in two months.

And the region’s largest mutual, Newcastle Building Society, plans to lend more than £125m to borrowers in the North East this year. This higher sum follows popularity seen in several 90% loan to value, first-time buyer products. Its remortgage products are helping too.

Its branches spread from Berwick to Stokesley, and requests are also coming through its contact centre.

>> Forecast fine Fashion trend forecaster Joanna Feeley has boosted the presence in Manhattan of her Newcastle company Trend Bible. She has formed a strategic relationship there.

The Heaton firm’s international client list already includes US home interiors specialist Pottery Barn, also TK Maxx, JCPenney, Wal-Mart and Macy’s department store. Feeley says: “Out of 18 countries Trend Bible reaches, more go to the US than elsewhere. A firmer presence in New york puts us in an even better position.”

>> PAYE change opposed The Government looks sure to cause unnecessary upheaval for businesses of all sizes when it shakes up the way employers comply with its pay-as-youearn (PAyE) scheme, business bodies

20

in the North East warn. North East Chamber of Commerce (NECC) is urging HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) to reconsider its plans to bring in “real time” collection of PAyE payments. The North East branch of the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) is also concerned about the threat to thousands of smaller firms in the region.

Changes are coming from spring 2012 in the belief that benefits of £360m annually will accrue. But business leaders doubting the calculations believe firms’ cashflows will suffer just when they can ill afford it.

NECC believes the aim is to support the Government’s new universal credit welfare system – a burden that should not be heaped on businesses, the organisation says.

Michal Czubinski sets his sights on big business, thanks to a finance course

>> Michal’s the clubbing kind Michal Czubinski is planning a club for Polish business people in the North East.

He came to the region three-and-a-half years ago to work on a large sign-making contract, then secured a contract to develop signage and marketing materials for a Polish retailer.

Now Czubinski, 33, has studied finance through Business and Enterprise North East (BE-NE) and has his own graphic design company, Mate Creative, with a friend in Gateshead, where he also lives with his fiancée.

He says: “I had little knowledge of basic finance. The course has given me confidence. Besides the company, I am looking to set up a network of help and support for other Polish businesses here.”

SPRING 11

NEWS

>> Energy booster

>> Into the listing

>> Simpler tax

Responsive Engineering of Gateshead has raised the workforce by 50 and may move to larger premises following its progress in the energy sector. It employs 150 and had £10m revenues in its last financial year. It aspires to £20m by 2015.

Sunderland-based Lateral Advertising has been ranked seventh among 100 top agencies outside London, listed by the Recommended Agency Register, a national, independent organisation that helps firms source and select suppliers.

To make trading easier and cheaper for firms operating in more than one EU country, the EC has introduced a set of common tax rules enabling them to complete one consolidated tax return for their EU earnings as opposed to completing a separate return for each country they trade in.

>> Beware ‘refund’ scam

>> Food, glorious food

A new range of scam e-mails that looks to be from HM Revenue and Customs but which aims to steal individuals’ bank account details is doing the rounds, Robson Laidler accountants warns.

HMRC says it only contacts about refunds by post. Anyone getting one such e-mail should forward it to phishing@hmrc.gsi. gov.uk then delete. HMRC has shut down 99 rogue sites over the past three months.

Food manufacturing is growing at Derwentside with 100 more jobs planned at Intersnack UK. The Tanfield Lea firm expects to hoist turnover from £75m to £90m after acquiring two fruit and nut processors. And Tanfield Foods at Consett, which has 125 employees making ready meals, expects to double its turnover to £30m following a Swiss venture capital firm’s take-up of 49% of the business.

The age of the electric car has arrived There’s a greener, cleaner way to drive.

With steeply rising fuel prices and the uncertain future of fossil fuel dependence, now is the time to consider your options.

>> Jobs assured Workers at County Durham glassmaker Romag have been assured about their jobs after Wearside housing developer Gentoo bought the firm out of administration.

About 161 workers there turn out solar panels and bullet and shatter proof glass.

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BUSINESS QUARTER |SPRING 11

AS I SEE IT

SPRING 11

Every cloud HAS a silver lining

The public sector in the North East offers a vibrant market opportunity for firms with appropriate levels of innovation and ambition that can help transform public service delivery, says Mike Turner

The current public sector recession is proving painful as spending cuts aim to eliminate by 2015-16 the UK’s structural deficit – the part that would exist even with our economy operating full-out.

Moves to cut significantly a deficit estimated by the European Commission to be up to 12% of GDP in this financial year were always destined to prove challenging. There could hardly be a greater contrast to the profile of public spending over much of the last decade.

Significant growth was then the norm.

But according to the Office for National Statistics, public sector productivity declined by more than 3% between 1997 and 2008, while among providers of private sector service it improved by more than 20% over the same period.

So the public sector recession can be viewed as a platform for greater efficiency, productivity and financial self-sufficiency, ultimately resulting in better outcomes for local residents.

Implications of the spending cuts daily become clearer and more profound. The challenge is twofold – for the public sector to provide effective, efficient and appropriate services, and for private sector to address the knock-on impact on the supply chain.

As the public sector shrinks and becomes poorer in cash terms, its supply chain will continue to have difficulties finding alternative contracts. Indeed, there may be more financial collapses of organisations within this supply chain. In parallel, some public services will be greatly reduced or cancelled as organisations

BUSINESS QUARTER | SPRING 11

prioritise their available funding. Given the scale of the public sector in the North East, our region is arguably at more risk than some.

However, with these challenges come opportunities for the public, private and third sectors, and the interface and cooperation among the three will be critical to the solution. This is a central theme of the Government’s determination to diversify the public sector economy.

The shape of public service delivery is set to change considerably over the next few years, with the public sector delivering less itself, and commissioning much more from the private and third sectors. Further, where services are delivered by the public sector, there is an expectation of increased joining up and the removal of duplication.

Momentum behind this approach is growing and increasingly evident, as local government starts to outsource its activities with more pace and ambition. More prisons are being run by private contractors. GP consortiums – effectively SMEs – will run much of what happens in the Health Service.

Police forces are procuring larger proportions of their back and middle office functions from the private sector, and finding work for the unemployed is now big business in the UK for commercial contractors. Across the public sector, the drive to “spin out” services to employee-owned mutuals is increasing.

Perhaps as a result, the march of private equity into the UK public sector is very loud and, even in difficult market conditions, we see new entrants to the public sector provider

22

market. The first step to successful collaboration is, of course, to recognise where opportunties for service improvement or business growth exist.

The more difficult agenda then is to turn that into new forms of service delivery that will provide sustainable public services and substantive new business growth. First, payment by results is fundamental. The public sector must ensure that service providers are incentivised and rewarded for delivering successful outcomes. Businesses that rise to this challenge, and place their income at risk unless results are achieved, will take the largest share of the market. The more sophisticated the offer, incorporating for example some features of the social impact bond model, the higher the chances of success.

Businesses should pursue the opportunity presented by diversifying within the public sector. Some existing players are trying to manage their risk of exposure in one area by exiting the public sector completely. This is often a mistake. Many current private sector business models, skills and services can be profitably transferred in and out of various parts of the sector, with no need to effect such exits. The public sector stands to gain from the experience and expertise of providers, developed across a range of services, at a time when managing risk and quality is imperative.

All sectors must embrace the move to take key parts of the public sector out of wholesale into retail, putting purchasing power directly into the hands of individuals. Prime examples of

SPRING 11

this presently are IT firms getting large footholds in adult social care, helping councils to implement the move to give vulnerable adults their own personalised budgets for care, instead of the current wholesale system of budgets being spent by the council on their behalf.

Resources must be focused on areas that will survive political change at Westminster and locally. All the political parties are, for instance, committed to integrating health and social care pathways and services. This large-scale reform agenda will go on at pace in one way or another for at least 10 years, regardless of who is in power. The public, private and third sectors must all play their part in the success of these long-term agendas.

Finally, the private sector will need to provide the majority of any investment necessary for public sector reform. All parts of the public service supply chain should take advantage

www.bq-magazine.co.uk

now, before the moment passes, of the enormous amount of bank, equity and other finance available to invest in businesses providing services to and for the public sector.

Supply of such finance is currently well ahead of demand, as too few businesses are moving sufficiently fast into this market. However, this situation will not last indefinitely.

Certainly times are difficult for the public sector in our region and nationally. Inevitably, some public sector organisations will struggle to manage the spending cuts. Some businesses implicated will continue to suffer.

But the resilient and resourceful public sector in the North East also provides a vibrant market opportunity for those businesses with appropriate levels of innovation and ambition, to play their part in transforming the future of public service delivery. n Mike Turner is principal adviser in KPMG’s Newcastle public sector advisory practice.

Collaboration: Mike Turner, KPMG

www.bq-yorkshire.co.uk

ISSUE THIRTEEN: SPRING 2011

AS I SEE IT

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true alchemy North to south is the normal career path, but one

live debate Growing and maintaining the export momentum

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How Yorkshire is lapping up ice-cream success

Amanda Hamilton’s healthy off-screen life

high street tv Andrew Malcher sells to people who like buying

hunt for style The designer with an eye for old movies

all cut and dried

tram now standing Richard Jeffrey, the man tied to Edinburgh’s tracks

high-flier found success the other way round

moo-ving ahead

How designer Kristina Simpson flicked the switch on an illuminating career

acting on bribery Sir Michael Darrington answers the questions on new legislation

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Blythswood Square is Scotland’s most fashionable hotel – just don’t call it boutique, says Peter Taylor, the man behind it ISSUE THREE: SPRING 2011: SCOTLAND EDITION

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Peter Harrington develops computer simulation games – for real ISSUE EIGHT: SPRING 2011: YORKSHIRE EDITION

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Metro Bank doesn’t have branches, it has stores.

Entrepreneur Anthony Thomson explains the business model and why other banks should follow suit

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Minding peas and queues in the food industry

200 years young Watson Burton’s bicentenary encourages

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Over 30,000 MD’s, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs receive BQ Magazine each quarter. If you are reading this statement then yourteller potential clients will be too. We publish separate editions in Yorkshire, the North East and Scotland. story COMMERCE: FASHION: INTERVIEWS: MOTORS: EVENTS

model and why other banks should follow suit Entrepreneur Anthony Thomson explains the business Metro Bank doesn’t have branches, it has stores.

BUSINESS NEWS: COMMERCE: FASHION: INTERVIEWS: MOTORS: EVENTS

BUSINESS NEWS: COMMERCE: FASHION: INTERVIEWS: MOTORS: EVENTS

simulation games – for real Peter Harrington develops computer

don’t call it boutique, says Peter Taylor, the man behind it Blythswood Square is Scotland’s most fashionable hotel – just

square 1 business magazine x 3 regional editionsace = a venturer great formula to reach new business. the law firm to look forward Watson Burton’s bicentenary encourages

root

200 years young

all cut and dried now standing For more information on how BQ Magazine could work for you across the Northtram of England and Scotland acting on bribery high street tv hunt for style call us on 0191 537 5720 or email sales@room501.co.uk light touch questions on new legislation Sir Michael Darrington answers the

Minding peas and queues in the food industry

Richard Jeffrey, the man tied to Edinburgh’s tracks

Andrew Malcher sells to people who like buying

The designer with an eye for old movies

How Yorkshire is lapping up ice-cream success

moo-ving ahead

Amanda Hamilton’s healthy off-screen life

Growing and maintaining the export momentum

live debate

Where do Scottish tourists go from here?

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the switch on an illuminating career How designer Kristina Simpson flicked

high-flier found success the other way round North to south is the normal career path, but one

true alchemy www.bq-magazine.co.uk

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queen of detox the live debate

ISSUE THREE: SPRING 2011

BUSINESS QUARTER |SPRING 11

ENTREPRENEUR

SPRING 11

in association with

BREAKING THE BANKS It’s a mighty leap from selling ads for Newcastle’s evening newspaper to launching a bank going all out to crack a perceived ring of complacency encircling some of the nation’s high street institutions. But early returns suggest Anthony Thomson has a lot of support.

He talks exclusively to Brian Nicholls Anthony Thomson the missionary banker who once sold advertising space for the Evening Chronicle has been back to the North East and preached his gospel of success.

Despite scepticism greeting his announcement last year of a new bank to compete with the high street establishment, facts and figures bearing witness to his testament, indeed exceeding his own expectations, are coming through.

Metro Bank doesn’t have branches; it has “stores”, considering itself a retailer rather than a bank. And all stores so far are in the London area, though that doesn’t preclude customers in the North East. Accounts opened

BUSINESS QUARTER | SPRING 11

have exceeded projections set in the bank’s submission to the Financial Services Authority.

The first store opened on July 29. Holborn surpassed its opening account target for a year in the first month. Three other stores – all opened by October – had beaten their year’s target by the end of December.

The bank, acknowledged as the country's first new branch (store)-based bank in more than a century, raised its original £75m requirement at £7.50 a share by the time of launch. Four months later, to support rapid expansion, it raised another £52m at £9 a share, a 20% uplift.

“Around 90% of that money came from

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SPRING 11

ENTREPRENEUR

existing shareholders,” Thomson points out.

“That was a real vote of confidence – that they were prepared to buy more shares and at an appreciated figure so quickly after launch.

A lot of discontented bank customers have been keen to turn to us.”

All the funding, then, is shareholder funds or customer deposits; Metro Bank spurns market borrowing and wholesale funding.

“We can grow deposits much faster than loans,” he says. “We anticipate we shall be about 75% loans to deposits as the business develops.”

Thomson, who recently addressed the Entrepreneurs’ Forum at Gateshead, has

25

explained how his marketplace opportunity arose out of four “myths” which he says existing banks perpetuate: Myth 1: The only thing that matters to people is rate. Thomson says: “Banks have us convinced rate is everything. But value is what really matters to people. They don’t buy the cheapest car or the cheapest suits.

They want something that represents good value to them.”

Myth 2: The branch is dead. Thomson retorts: “The banks’ view is that branches are very expensive, that it’s much cheaper to interview the customer by telephony or internet. So they try to discourage people from using the >>

BUSINESS QUARTER |SPRING 11

ENTREPRENEUR branch. Our view is that the user should choose whatever channel they want. You should be the judge based on where you are, where you work and where you’ll be at weekends.”

Myth 3: Nobody switches accounts. Thomson’s view: “Banks would have us believe it’s a mature market and no-one switches. Yet we’ve seen the number of people who do switch double in 12 months from 4% to more than 9%. More importantly, 40% of people say, given a real alternative, they would move.

Myth 4: The only way to make profit is by cutting costs. Thomson states: “In a service business that’s largely people and banks are always trying to reduce the headcount. But we believe banking is a growth business – give great service and it will be repaid by more customers who will give you more of their money and stay with you longer.”

Short of the bigger bank names thwarting further progress, Metro Bank’s original goal of 200 branches within a few years might have to be revised up. Open seven days a week (8am to 8pm), it offers all you’d expect from a high street bank – current accounts, savings, loans and mortgages to personal customers, and facilities businesses expect.

True it has only five stores to date: Holborn, Cromwell Road, Fulham Broadway, Tottenham Court Road just opened, and Boreham Wood, the first venture outside London. But Kensington High Street will have one around the time you read this, and one opening a month is expected for the rest of this year.

Thomson said confidently: “We think we can build 200 to 250 broadly within the M25 over the next decade. That would give between 7% and 10% of the Greater London banking market – about £24bn of assets.”

Boreham Wood at 14 miles is the furthest from London. Regional bases may be far off yet.

Thomson explains: “We’ll open some stores outside the M25 in very strong commuter areas. But when the next major conurbation will be, I don’t think we’ll be able to look to that for the next three years. We’ve got to get a move on, though.”

Will it attain its 2015 objective of a balance sheet showing £4.1bn in assets and nearly £300m in equity?

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SPRING 11

Connecting: Sir Peter Vardy, left, with Anthony Thomson, two North East business builders

Banks have us convinced rate is everything. But value is what really matters to people. They don’t buy the cheapest car or the cheapest suits. They want something that represents good value to them He says: “One can’t be absolutely precise, but on the basis of the first six or seven months trading, the growth rate is greater than we anticipated in pretty much all dimensions of the business.”

It is possible even now, though, to become a customer living in the North East. It will involve a brief visit to an existing outlet. But, as the Financial Times has pointed out, 93% of accounts are opened at a store level anyway.

Distance dealing is possible thereafter.

“People assume because our branches are so high profile that we are a high street bank.

Well, we are. But our view of life is that you, the customer, should decide the channel you want to use, where and how. So our job is to give you the best experience, be it in-store, through telephony, internet or mobile phone.

The choice is yours.”

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ISA accounts are being opened from various parts of the country.

“Using the phone,” he says, “a human will answer on the third ring, and understand your banking needs and demands there and then.

We’ve only one data base, one bank operating system. All information we need to answer your queries is in the same place. You are not handed over to other people.”

Are employees happy to be known as retailers or storemen, rather than bankers?

“Absolutely,” Thomson says. “It’s all about the culture we create. I’m often asked, ‘Would we buy any of the branches being sold by existing banks like Lloyds and RBS?’ Absolutely not. I wouldn’t want to buy their problems.

“And you can’t build a differentiating culture by acquiring or merging with other businesses.

You have to build from each store up. We

SPRING 11

recruit people, train them and invest time in them and our staff really love working here.

We know that from a recent staff survey.”

Despite his reluctance to involve with other banks, he has no issue about recruiting staff from them.

He explains: “There are some great people trapped in broken models – people who work for other banks and want to give great service, but the culture doesn’t allow them. We’re pleased to take them on.”

The reason so few switched horses at the outset, he says, is that Metro Bank believes that people should be rewarded for giving great service, not for selling things. “None of our customer-facing staff have sales targets or receive sales commission. I believe if you give people service targets, what they do is sell, and you are left with the 1,000 complaints the banks get every day. If you reward staff for giving great service, that’s what they do.”

ENTREPRENEUR

To assess service standards the bank mystery shops in each of its stores daily. It has customer panels giving feedback. It invites customers to write in.

“We also do independent research,” he adds.

“It tells us 97% of our customers are very satisfied or satisfied, and 84% would recommend us to a friend. That’s why eight out of every 10 new accounts opened with us daily are referrals.”

He considers a smile is an employee’s most important asset. So are there still plenty of smiles nine months or so into the business?

“When we recruited the first 60 customerfacing staff, we interviewed 3,500 applicants.

We were looking for people who smiled because if they’re not going to smile at their job interview when are they going to smile?

“We’ve all been into businesses – not just banks – where one is clearly an unwanted intrusion in the day of the person behind the

counter. There are smiles on the faces here.”

Metro Bank’s philosophy sounds a little like that of Handelsbanken, the Swedish bank whose inroads into the North East and elsewhere were detailed in our previous issue of BQ. Had he considered that bank’s practices in setting up Metro Bank?

“I’m fairly familiar with it,” he says. “But they are business. We are 50% retail and 50% commercial. It’s very different also in that we have very high visibility, very high footfall locations and do a lot of things for retail customers as well as commercial customers. From what I know of them, though, this commitment to a service ethos is not dissimilar.”

The 50-50 split in customers is a short-term objective, and the bank has talked of lending 75% of savers’ deposits in the long term. But presently deposits are growing faster than loans. Thomson says: “Retail grows much >>

Reading about them is valuable.

Connecting with them could be invaluable.

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BUSINESS QUARTER |SPRING 11

ENTREPRENEUR faster than commercial because it’s much easier to open a retail account. If you’re a business you may have other shareholders and shares held in offshore trusts, and it can take several months to open an account.

“A consumer here can open an account in 15 minutes. Most banks, if you go in wanting to open an account, will make you an appointment for the following Wednesday.

Here, within 15 minutes you can take away your printed chip and pin debit card if you wish.”

Is the bank lending to businesses?

“Absolutely,” he says. “One challenge we find is that businesses are valuing service even more than consumers. They are moving to us for better customer service – not necessarily because they want credit.

“I don’t think businesses are so intent now on staying with a bank they’ve been with all along, any more than consumers. A Deloitte report three months ago said 38% of people would move, given a real alternative. Our job is to be that alternative.”

As a small bank, it doesn’t have advertising budgets to match bigger banks so relies on local area marketing and public relations. This, Thomson says, has been “extraordinarily successful”.

The bank’s overdraft rate, personal loan charge and annual interest paid on instant access savings were initially announced as 15%, 10% and 0.5% respectively. As we write they stand at 15%, 10% and – hey look – 0.5% up to 1% from April 14. Is that competitive?

Thomson replies: “The bank prefers to give superior service and convenience at a slightly higher charge than give market-challenging interest rates.

“Customers realise people cannot be at the top of the rate table all the time. And they don’t just want the cheapest car or the cheapest suit. They want what they consider is best value for their money.

“In banking, what they want is value, consistency, and transparency. They hate this headline rate of 5% on your current account and when you look at it it’s on the first £1,000 and for the first six months, you have to transfer your salary and blah de blah de blah...

Customers want a better banking experience.

Our job is to give that.”

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SPRING 11

Anthony Thomson: the person Anthony Thomson is chairman and co-founder of Metro Bank, chairman of the Financial Services Forum and a non-executive director of Teamspirit. His co-founder and vice-chairman is Vernon W Hill II, founder and former chief executive of Commerce Bancorp, America’s 18th largest bank and the model for Metro.

Thomson launched Metro Bank with 27 years’ previous experience in financial services. He co-founded City Financial Marketing in 1987 and, as group chief executive, led it to become Europe’s largest communications group in financial services.

Having sold the group to Publicis in 1997, three years later he founded the Financial Services Forum, an independent body of members comprising more than 300 senior executives versed in financial services marketing.

An accomplished guitarist and avid cyclist, he also raises money for charity.

Vernon Hill opened four new banks before establishing in 1973 Commerce Bancorp. He also runs funds investing in banks and set up a website in the US called Bankstocks.com with a Wall Street banking analyst. He told BBC News at the first Metro Bank opening: “I’ve opened 500 similar locations in America.”

Thomson, now 56, remembers Gosforth Grammar School days as a time of good rugby and he went on to sell advertising space in Newcastle for three years or so from 1972 but was clearly destined via marketing for greater things. How difficult has it been to enter the banking ring?

“I am a marketeer by background,” he agrees, “but also an entrepreneur. This is my third substantial business. I sold City Financial

Marketing Group, to Publicis in 1997; my second – the Financial Services Forum – I still have and chair, and Metro Bank is my third.”

Sir Peter Vardy, chairman of the Entrepreneurs’ Forum and a notable builder of businesses himself, felt like many who heard Thomson that he was inspirational.

“A North East born entrepreneur starting the first new bank in 150 years is amazing,” he said. n

Businesses are valuing service even more than consumers. They are moving to us for better customer service – not necessarily because they want credit

In association with the Entrepreneurs’ Forum.

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To find out about membership and how you and your business can get connected to the wisdom and inspiration of hundreds of North East entrepreneurs, visit www.entrepreneursforum.net or call our team on 0870 850 2233.

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07.04.11 16:59

COMPANY PROFILE

SPRING 11

Record entry for this year’s property ‘Oscars’

UNIVERSITY SCHEME TRIUMPHS AT RICS NORTH EAST RENAISSANCE AWARDS

T

HE region’s most impressive buildings and new developments were celebrated at a glittering ceremony held in Newcastle when the winners of this year’s RICS North East Renaissance Awards were announced.

The awards – organised by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) – are held annually to showcase the very best projects that the North East has to offer, from multi-million pound commercial developments to renovations that are a labour of love and everything in between.

Despite continuing economic challenges to the sector, 2011 proved to be an incredible year with yet another record number of entries (82) flooding in from across the region. This included several major university projects, public sector schemes, new housing, new schools, new shops and new offices as well as a ‘green’ pet hospital.

Watched by almost 500 property professionals at Newcastle’s Civic Centre, Northumbria University’s Sport Central, in Newcastle, was the star of the show scooping two major awards. The £30m new-build project took the Community Benefit award – one of the eight specialist categories – and the overall accolade RICS North East Project of the Year. It was also Highly Commended within the Sustainability category.

A leading edge, sports, research and learning facility, at the heart of the university campus Sport Central boasts Olympic standard facilities including a 3,000 seat arena, sports halls, swimming pool, indoor running track. RICS judges said the building performs a real community benefit role, linking the university into the wider city centre community.

Jennifer Welch, Durham-based Operations Director

Jennifer Welch, operations Director for rICS north for RICS North, said: “Sport Central is a very worthy winner of both awards. It beat off competition from all over the region in the Community Benefit category, which was so strong this year that judges shortlisted 12 rather than the usual eight projects.”

An overall shortlist of 60 projects was chosen by the independent judging panel from the 82 originally entered. The final winners of the eight categories came from all areas of the region – County Durham, North Tyneside, Northumberland, Teesside and Tyne & Wear. The full list of winners and those highly commended is: Community Benefit – Winner, Sport Central, Northumbria University, Newcastle. Highly Commended, Space to Learn, Hartlepool.

Building Conservation – Winner, 28 to 30 The Close, Newcastle. Highly Commended, Mansion House Chambers, Newcastle.

Design & Innovation – Centuria South, Sport and Health Sciences Centre, Teesside University.

Highly Commended, Sunderland Station, Sunderland.

Regeneration – Winner, Transforming Hendon, Sunderland. Highly Commended, Contemporary

SponSorS AnD SupporTerS oF THe rICS norTH eAST renAISSAnCe AWArDS 2011 Were:

BUSINESS QUARTER | SPRING 11

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Structures in Ouseburn Parks, Newcastle.

Sustainability – Winner, PDSA PetAid Hospital, Sunderland. Highly Commended, Sport Central, Northumbria University.

Residential – Winner, Amytis Gardens, South Shields. Highly Commended, Castle Garth, Bamburgh.

Commercial – Winner, Quorum Business Park, Newcastle. Highly Commended, St Andrew’s Way, Eldon Square, Newcastle.

Tourism & Leisure – Winner, Contemporary Structures in Ouseburn Parks, Newcastle. Highly Commended, Palace Green Library, Durham University.

Project of the Year – Sport Central, Northumbria University, Newcastle.

Chair of the RICS North East judges, chartered surveyor David Furniss, a director at BNP Paribas Real Estate in Newcastle, said: “Once again the North East has seen an exceptionally high standard of design and construction and I am delighted that these projects have had the opportunity to be championed and celebrated.

“Despite uncertainty within the sector the Renaissance Awards continues to be a beacon of inspiration within the North East property industry, highlighting the fact that the region will continue to deliver exceptional build projects year-on-year.”

The regional winners from four of the North East award categories – Sustainability, Regeneration, Community Benefit and Building Conservation – are automatically entered into the national RICS Awards, where they compete against other leading projects from across the UK. This also has an international element as it accepts entries from around the world.

SPRING 11

COMPANY PROFILE

Community Benefit

Sustainability

Winner, Sport Central, Northumbria University, Newcastle

Winner, PDSA PetAid Hospital, Sunderland

Building Conservation

Residential

Design & Innovation

Commercial

Winner, Amytis Gardens, South Shields

Winner, 28 to 30 The Close, Newcastle

Centuria South, Sport and Health Sciences Centre, Teesside University. Middlesbrough

Regeneration

Winner, Transforming Hendon, Sunderland

Winner, Quorum Business Park, Newcastle

Project of the Year

Tourism & Leisure

Sport Central, Northumbria University

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Winner, Contemporary Structures in Ouseburn Parks, Newcastle

For more information about RICS visit the website www.rics.org To find a chartered surveyor near you visit www.ricsfirms.com or call the RICS Contact Centre T +44 (0)870 333 1600 For information on sponsorship opportunities at the RICS North East Renaissance Awards 2012, please contact Catherine Hible, Business Development Manager, RICS North T +44(0)1925 853 840 M +44(0)7800 544 831 E chible@rics.org

BUSINESS QUARTER |SPRING 11

COMMERCIAL PROPERTY

SPRING 11

Science appliance slows, Tesco gets a yes and a no, Fed up for sale, leisure sector soars, Stockton interest widens, Big Jack’s wee boy buys a pub, The Cornmill celebrates, and the mail gets through >> Triple bypass for Science Central Future vision: Science Central district is being developed within the Newcastle area photographed here, and highlighted presently by St James’s Park

The Science Central district projected for the heart of Newcastle has suffered a triple blow.

A funding hole of £8m, caused by the Government’s scrapping of one of the three stakeholders, One North East, has yet to be filled following a failed bid to the Government’s Regional Growth Fund. And now chief executive Peter Arnold, wishing to explore and develop new ideas elsewhere, is leaving at the end of May after four years in charge.

However, a design team is working on the next phase of development for the former Scottish & Newcastle brewery site central to the 24 acres in total.

A planning application that also embraces residential, retail and leisure is with the city council.

1NG, NewcastleGateshead’s city development company, is leading delivery of the project, and a consortium headed by FaulknerBrowns Architects is tackling a detailed design for a gateway building and surrounding site infrastructure. Also involved are Mott MacDonald, Faithful + Gould and Land Use Consultants.

Newcastle Science Central (NSC) is envisaged as the city’s future home of science and sustainability, attracting a possible 1,950 additional jobs, and hopes of £255m being attracted from the private sector. Development there already includes a new business school for Newcastle University and neighbouring student accommodation by developer Downing – also completion of a 160-bed hotel due this summer by Northland Properties of Canada. Engineers with £400,000 from the Government are also boring there in pursuit of a new energy source – geothermal heating. Newcastle and Durham Universities are drilling 50 times deeper than the height of Newcastle’s iconic Grey’s Monument. A constant flow of hot water at 90°C is the goal near the shaft of the old North Elswick Colliery, later built over by the brewery.

During his tenure at NSC, Peter Arnold has helped entrepreneurs to develop science-based start-ups. NSC was established by a partnership of Newcastle University, One North East and Newcastle City Council.

Twenty Chinese managers studying the development of science parks recently visited the site.

If latest proposals are accepted, further building would result early next year and the next phase completed some two years later. A question being asked is: If NSC’s aspirations are realised, what will be the fate of work going on now in medical clinics, research laboratories, offices and biotechnology labs at the Centre for Life, a mile or so away? Would that continue there or be relocated, and if so, what would fill the vacuum?

BUSINESS QUARTER | SPRING 11

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SPRING 11

COMMERCIAL PROPERTY

>> Ageing with Tesco Tesco is getting its controversial supermarket alongside a campus for ageing and vitality on the site of the old Newcastle General Hospital. Newcastle Council approved the retail aspect of the £100m scheme put up

by Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

About a third of the 1,000 jobs predicted to arise on the site are expected to be in the store.

>> Business generated First tenants have been secured for the speculatively-built Generator 2 extension to Metnor Group’s Generator Studios in Trafalgar Street, Newcastle.

Digital agency Orange Bus and technology firm Foster Finlay Associates 165530 TWDCin.Eutech 180x120 1/4/08 have moved

Artist’s eye: How some of Gateshead’s new homes may look

>> £347m on houses A £347m development programme of around 2,400 new homes, a mixture of private and social housing, is to be carried out in Gateshead by a joint venture partnership of Evolution Gateshead – a consortium of Home Group and Galliford Try – and Gateshead Council.

The houses will be built on 19 different sites, greenfield and brownfield, which are owned by the council or about to be acquired. They include Birtley Northside, the former rail freight depot on 12:11 Page 1and sites in Rowlands Gill, Chopwell, Bensham and Saltwell.

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Supporting Information

BUSINESS QUARTER |SPRING 11

COMMERCIAL PROPERTY >> Software move Owner David Frame has moved South Tyneside software developers DEF Software and DEF Apps to premises seven times bigger as DEF Software’s order book nears £300,000.

Further recruitment is also expected at the new location on Monkton Business Park, one-and-a-half miles from the original Boldon office.

>> Brewers’ retreat A former home of Newcastle Breweries – and, before that, Federation Brewery – is up for sale with a £6m-plus price tag.

The brewery, latterly in the hands of Heineken UK, ceased activities a year ago, ending 82 years of producing Newcastle Breweries beers on Tyneside.

Gavin Black & Partners, the Newcastle agents inviting interest, say the 17-acre site beside the A1 at Dunston might suit alternative activities of distribution and logistics, retail, leisure or mixed use.

Newcastle Brown Ale is now, in fact, brewed in yorkshire.

Geoff Hodgson, who was chief executive of Federation Brewery when it was sold, was recently appointed Tyne and Wear’s new High Sheriff by the Queen.

He had been sales and marketing director of Newcastle Breweries before his Federation appointment. He was also managing director of Northumbrian Taverns until its sale in 2006. Now he owns Till Services Ltd on Tyneside, launched after the sale of Northumbrian Taverns.

Hodgson has been a board member of One North East (2001-2007), and has served on the North East Tourism Advisory Board since 2004, becoming chairman in 2008. Oxford educated, he is 49 and lives in Gosforth.

>> Monumental sale Newcastle’s Monument Mall has been sold for £28m to estate giant Hammerson as part of a £208m deal. This is Hammerson’s first appearance on the city’s central property scene. The purchase comes as part of six assets bought from St Martins Property.

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>> Discounting grows Discount retailer Poundland has relocated to a 10,900sq ft unit at Captain Cook Square Shopping Centre in Middlesbrough. It previously had 3,000sq ft there.

The shopping centre, opened in 1999, provides more than 220,000sq ft of retail space and includes TJ Hughes, TK Maxx and Wilkinsons. Sanderson Weatherall LLP acted jointly with DTZ for the centre’s owners Aviva Investors on the Poundland deal.

>> Battlefield withdrawal The long, tortuous and costly harangue over the future of Sunderland’s key Vaux site is at last winding down with confirmation that the city now owns it.

A final exchange of contracts was agreed in February 24 by the city council, regional development agency One North East, and the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) on one side and reluctant vendor Tesco on the other.

The aim of the redevelopment will be to create a new business district giving more city-centre jobs and offices, plus a diversity of use to benefit shoppers and residents. Tesco, >>

For high-ups: The popular Attic Bar on Newcastle’s Mosley Street has been sold

>> Knees-up time Further demand is expected for prime licensed and leisure space suited to parties and families in wake of the Attic Bar on Newcastle’s Mosley Street changing hands.

Agents Sanderson Weatherall predict a trend after brokering a freehold deal settled above asking price. The buyers are the Malhotra family of Newcastle, developers and owners of hotels, care homes, pubs and other leisure venues.

They have acquired four buildings in Grey Street and are planning to develop a boutique hotel that would connect to Attic and also to Balmbras, the former music-hall pub in Groat Market.

Another Grey Street sale, 29-33, disposed of by McAleer & Rushe Group for £3.25m, may have attracted investors who are now expected to be drawn to prime assets outside central London in coming months, according to Lambton Smith Hampton (LSH).

Other major deals have included Capita Asset Services’ sale of Castlegate Shopping Centre in Stockton for £27.85m and Keel Row Shopping Centre in Blyth for £9m.

Darron Barker, head of LSH Newcastle, says: “The North East’s commercial property investment market appears to be settling into a new stride.

“Many believe 2011 will be the optimum time to buy. There are investors with appetites to capitalise on opportunities should quality stock be released.”

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COMMERCIAL PROPERTY owner of the site since 2001, had been holding out to redevelop a mixed site also but with a Tesco superstore prominent.

Instead, it was given planning permission last year for a superstore development at nearby Roker and now both developments will go ahead.

Money to buy the Vaux site has come from the city council’s development partners, the Homes and Communities Agency and One North East.

But there has been criticism about the duration of the dispute.

One source close to the deal has suggested to BQ that the city may have lost up to £30m so far in property income and non-generation of revenue. This figure was disputed by Sunderland Arc, which was involved too.

Tesco spokesman Doug Wilson said: “Tesco remains committed to making further major investment into the city and we can now move forward with our exciting plans for a new store at the Sunderland Retail Park.”

The 26-acre site was sold for £22m with the HCA paying £20m and Sunderland Council and One North East £1m each. The HCA is the national housing and regeneration agency for England, with an annual investment budget of more than £5bn. The HCA was formed in 2008, a non-departmental public body.

Eye catching: Janet Rogers has artwork featured at NETPark

>> NETPark expands Work is under way on a £6.5m extension to NETPark, the North East Technology Park at Sedgefield. Up to four more units will result for businesses that have either outgrown their Incubator there or wish to relocate from elsewhere.

The Incubator now features work by three local artists: Bridget Kennedy, Steve Sproates and Janet Rogers.

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>> New look hotel The former Imperial Hotel at Jesmond in Newcastle, which was ravaged by fire, is now The Holiday Inn and nearing the end of a £3.5m refurbishment which, over two years, has been restoring it to a new attraction in the in the region’s hospitality business.

Run by the Cairn Hotel Group, the 116 bedroom building will now offer better conference and event facilities, and will include Fratello’s, a 75-cover Italian restaurant and a terrace bar. It will have 100 staff.

>> £320m boost for Stockton A £320m transformation of Stockton is under way.

Retail prospects in the presently rundown town centre will get a lift through council plans for a £20m facelift over five years.

The famous High Street, the widest in Britain, will particularly benefit. New spaces and links to the river for shoppers are to be provided, giving easier access and parking.

Castlegate Shopping Centre is to be further developed, the Market Hall refurbished and the High Street façade and Riverside Road elevation revitalised.

Meanwhile housebuilding has begun in phase one of a £300m regeneration of the nearby riverside area, a short walk away.

More than 4,500 jobs are promised in Northshore Development Partnership’s revamp putting offices, houses and shops on 23 hectares beside the Infinity Bridge.

Durham University Queen’s Campus is also being expanded.

The former heavy industrial and shipbuilding site has undergone major remediation, supported by Stockton Council and the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA).

>> Preparing for growth Rutherfords department store, a mainstay of shopping in Morpeth for more than 150 years, plans to expand by more than 30%, introducing another 8,000sq m of floor space when retail picks up, says owner and managing director Richard Rutherford.

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Drink to that: Ian Beaumont, project director at DurhamGate, left, with David Faichney of Barnes Construction, on the Marstons site

>> Raise glasses A two-storey pub and restaurant will open in September near the entrance to DurhamGate, an area being redeveloped near Spennymoor. Marstons plc, a FTSE 250 company, is behind the build creating 45 full and part-time jobs. More than 370 new homes are to be built there, also offices, a hotel, retail and leisure facilities.

About 2,000 jobs are predicted.

>> Early success Only 18 months into business, a Tyneside start-up of building surveyors has beaten major national companies to the job of project monitoring Nifco’s new £8.5m factory planned for Stockton.

Some 300 workers, an increase of 120, will work there, following an upsurge in motor part requirements from Nissan. Silverstone Building Consultancy works from Dean Street in Newcastle. Completion is expected in eight months.

>> Opening time The son of a football legend has put £400,000 into reopening a pub his dad enjoyed nearly 60 years ago.

John Charlton, son of World Cup winner and ex-Newcastle manager Jack Charlton, is behind the revival of the new Charlton’s pub in Cambois, near Ashington, where his father was born and brought up. The pub had been closed for two years.

“The best move I ever made.�

Join the world-class companies based at Quorum Business Park in Newcastle. Here you’ll find free sports facilities, on-site events, plenty of parking and subsidised public transport, all less than four miles from Newcastle city centre. No wonder businesses at Quorum attract and retain so many of the best people.

www.quorumbusinesspark.co.uk

INSIGHT

SPRING 11

The living is EZ-ee No better place than the North East exists to illustrate the value of Enterprise Zones to economies in transition. Brian Nicholls talks to Fergus Trim and Adrian Hill who make the most of opportunities EZ status offers It would have been crass of the Government not to apportion new Enterprise Zones to the North East.

The region over three decades has demonstrated the value of EZs to an economy.

See today the waterfronts of Newcastle, Sunderland and Hartlepool. Stockton and Middlesbrough improvements go on.

Sunderland has Doxford International Business Park, Gateshead the Metrocentre – Europe’s biggest retail and leisure complex.

Difficulties an EZ sometimes causes don’t detract from this.

With two of the first 10 new sites being allotted to Teesside and Tyne and Wear – and more perhaps among 11 to be further announced next year – a sizable area of our region will be advantaged. Even pre-Budget, Newcastle stood out in Centre for Cities estimates as one of only three Northern places among the country’s top 10 where private sector jobs have grown over a decade.

Another office report shows Newcastle as one of the best value cities in the UK for occupancy costs, with only Cardiff less expensive. Globally it sits between Denver and Cardiff.

Fergus Trim and Adrian Hill at Quorum and Cobalt Business Parks are key figures in Tyneside’s acceleration.

Trim, driver of Quorum’s EZ success on Newcastle’s outskirts, is a prime achiever in the city’s recognition alongside Preston and

Wakefield. In 18 months recently more than 240,000 sq ft of office space at Quorum has been let, bringing in six tenants and more than 2,000 of the 10,000 new office jobs expected there eventually.

Combine this with the performance of neighbouring EZ Cobalt in North Tyneside and the two now account for 13,500 jobs out of 28,000 ultimately expected. Without them, big names like Orange, Hewlett Packard and OSB, the world’s largest oil shipper headquartered in New York, might not be on Tyneside now.

Over 15 years, a tenant with 50,000 sq ft at Quorum will pay £40m less than in central London, since rents of £16.95/sq ft can be offered flexibly, and with five years’ rent-free occupation.

There’s also the quality. Adrian Hill at Cobalt can point to high energy performances in buildings there, cutting running costs and carbon footprint. Its data centre campus represents the region’s highest grade of technical real estate. Indeed, says Hill, its BREEAM “excellent” rating makes it one of only a handful of “green” data centres in the UK. The new EZ zones will be manufacturing-led, as per Chancellor George Osborne’s vision of “makers on the march”. Occupants will get up to 100% discount on rates (capped at £275,000) spread over five years, and could

Our large investment in accompanying amenities and communities probably has as much to do with attracting tenants as any EZ status

BUSINESS QUARTER | SPRING 11

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receive tax breaks on capital. Super-fast broadband is promised.

Planning restrictions are eased, and local authorities retain any increase in rates for 25 years to re-inject into development. The newlyformed Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) must propose sites.

Trim believes the new EZs will help deliver regional growth and complement EZ offices.

Hill says if they’re on prime sites geographically they’ll also benefit from good transport links.

Trim reckons high-tech manufacturing stands to gain particularly from the capital allowances being aimed more at plant and machinery.

Hill says besides a strong tradition of manufacturing existing, they’ll benefit from the region’s work ethic, its people being industrious, flexible, and having many of the nation’s lowest attrition and absentee rates.

“A new EZ can also help prevent a loss of companies critical to the region by providing state-of-the-art facilities,” he says – as with Procter & Gamble which, free to relocate anywhere in the northern hemisphere, chose Cobalt.

Might the developers of Highbridge and Quorum bid for a manufacturing zone? Hill says Cobalt still benefits from significant cost savings of its present EZ status, which are passed to firms arriving.

Trim says: “We’ll be very interested to see where a new EZ is located.”

He reckons the main difference in incentives between existing and new EZs may be the limiting of capital allowances to plant and machinery.

“Incentives to occupiers include rates exemption as previously, though low rents and long rent-free periods no longer seem likely.

Additional funding for infrastructure and public transport to ensure a zone’s success

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Behind Quorum Fergus Trim: Born at Harlow, raised in Edinburgh and Bishop Stortford. Trim, 41, qualified as a chartered surveyor with Wilks Head & Eve. Became a top UK authority on rating of football grounds. At Weatherall Green and Smith (later Atisreal, now BNP Paribas) became a director and departmental head. Led teams acting for IBM, Hewlett Packard, EMC, Barclays and Aviva. Dealt in 28 countries. Before Quorum, headed the South East office agency department. He and his wife Susan have relocated from Surrey to the Tyne Valley with their three children, aged between nine and four. Will he return to London? “That’s not the intention.”

Quorum Development Partners: A joint venture between Tritax, a London creator of niche commercial property investments at home and abroad since 1995, and Grantside of york which, since 1993 has provided more than 1.5m sq ft of space for public and private sector, valued beyond £350m.

may need to come from Tax Increment Finance raised by the councils in the LEPs.” Meanwhile, £180m has been raised so far towards Quorum developing an ultimate 950,000 sq ft by early next year. At Cobalt, 10,000 jobs out of 18,000-plus eventually expected exist now. There, the total

investment and completion date are open-ended. yet EZ mechanism has critics. The Centre for Cities says earliest EZs cost £26,000 a job in today’s money. The Work Foundation has reservations, as too a third think tank, the Centre for Local Economic Strategies. It feared the Government’s pressures on the public sector being extended here too. But the Chancellor has made clear local authorities will still benefit.

In regional circles, Adam Serfontein, managing director of Hanro Group, argues that Tyneside’s existing EZs, being outside the main conurbation, starve the city centre of office development and lettings. His argument for restricting EZs to industry seems to have registered in Downing Street.

Multi-millionaire Duncan Bannatyne who is planning new headquarters for his hotel and leisure group in central Darlington and Sir Ian Wrigglesworth of Bluehall Properties, want more EZs in the region but agree they can distort the development market. That’s recognised also by Stephen Catchpole, managing director of Tees Valley Unlimited which, as an LEP, must locate Teesside’s new EZ. However Fergus Trim maintains: “EZ’s main purpose has been to create jobs. I think we’ve succeeded there.”

Even if £26,000 a job initially was correct, given the present jobs threat, perhaps this equivalent of one or two years’ salary per job is not outrageous judged against sums used to save bank jobs. Of the six companies Trim and his on-the-spot team of three recently attracted to Quorum, all are private sector, as per Government preference. Five have been significant inward investors behind many of the 3,500 jobs there so far, underlining Quorum’s claim of being speculatively the country’s most successful EZ park at present.

Quorum by 2006 – two years after its start – had drawn the like of IBM, National Grid, serviced office provider MWB and HM Revenue and Customs. New funding mustered in 2008 has got eight more buildings (26,000 sq ft to 105,000 sq ft) under way. In April 2009 Trim arrived from London to attract occupants.

Q9 was almost complete, since when 252,406

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INSIGHT

sq ft of offices have been built and mostly occupied. By next April, Trim says, Quorum will be “done and dusted” – 16 units. The prime Q12 just completed (90,000 sq ft) has been one of the biggest speculative office builds outside central London recently.

Its three floors, full height atrium and a piazza and water feature dominate the park’s main avenue. A national headquarters is the quarry here.

Meanwhile, a work-starved construction >>

Behind Cobalt Adrian Hill: A director of Highbridge Properties, developer of Cobalt. Has been associated with the park since its inception 11 years ago, initially as an agent. Originally from Whitley Bay, he’s a chartered surveyor previously with international property agency Cushman & Wakefield (once part of Healey & Baker).

Has been named a Top 10 UK agent. Has advised on most varieties of commercial development. Since last year, when he joined Highbridge, has been responsible for Cobalt’s development. Married with a 14-year-old daughter.

Highbridge Properties: Formed in 1988, it focuses on out-of-town office parks, industrial/warehousing and data centres.

Has developed in yorkshire, Lancashire, Nottinghamshire and the Midlands – over 10m sq.

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INSIGHT

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Happy workplace: Perks for office workers have never been more cheering as those at a recent free comedy show appreciated at Cobalt

I know of no business park, not even nationally, with facilities like Quorum industry benefits. On Quorum alone, more than 1,000 workers have been on site since 2008. Employees at both parks enjoy a work-life balance at discount.

Trim says: “Our large investment in accompanying amenities and communities probably has as much to do with attracting tenants as any EZ status. The South-East has some very large and successful business parks, but I know of none, even nationally, with facilities like Quorum.”

A £180m investment to date, tree-lined Quorum includes shops and a restaurant, a nursery, barbecue area and facilities for tennis, football, boules and netball, workers getting free membership of the sports club, half-price bus travel and other discounts.

The park’s 24 bus services an hour include a shuttle to the local Metro and bus interchange – also an express bus between Newcastle’s

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Haymarket and Blyth. Cobalt’s transport network includes 411 through bus journeys daily, including some to Northumberland Park Metro station. Highbridge has put hundreds of thousands in tax savings into subsidising transport.

Half of Cobalt’s workforce live within five miles. All, regardless of address, can have Cobalt Community membership which, through two on-site co-ordinators, provides subsidised travel, access to more than 40 on-site social and sporting activities including football and netball, free access to pool bikes, and shopping and leisure discounts.

Trim explains: “Most businesses are about people. We offer a great commercial package and make an offering staff will appreciate, hence slogans like ‘the best move I ever made’ and ‘a better place to work’.”

Trim pitches intensively in London. Five lettings over 12 months were led and advised from outside the region, and he finds no strong Southern prejudice now against locating north of Potters Bar. “In tough times our advantages are attractive,” he says. “So our main competition is also in the North – Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds and Glasgow. We must align our key strengths and stress we have critical mass to compete with these other cities.”

Tesco Bank, Quorum’s star attraction, was won against Leeds, Manchester and Liverpool.

Other occupants include construction giant Balfour Beatty, AIM-listed Ebiquity, Home Group, Insure the Box, Aesica Pharmaceuticals, MWB, a serviced office provider for small businesses, and the European base of OSB. But Cobalt Park may be the one eventually in the Guinness Book of Records. Since 1998, when its first occupants were Fujitsu and LS Trillion, it has become the UK’s largest office park and may yet be Europe’s biggest. To date 1.8m sq ft are developed, with 700,000 sq ft more to come.

Eventually Cobalt will comprise 2.5m sq ft.

Orange its biggest employer to date, has 2,100 staff in two facilities. Other private sector occupants include – besides Orange and Hewlett Packard – Procter & Gamble, Santander, G4S, EDS, Balfour Beatty, Newcastle Building Society, Just Learning, Village Hotel, Ramsey Health Care. Formica,

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long established at nearby North Shields and also Newton Aycliffe, has chosen Cobalt for a European headquarters.

Occupants from the public sector include North Tyneside Council, Northumbria Healthcare NHS Trust and Jobcentre Plus.

Fujitsu’s premature withdrawal is well documented, less so the fate of LS Trillion.

But as Hill points out: “Some companies that came either changed their names or have been taken over. AccuRead was acquired by G4S and GE Money was bought by Santander.

What’s important is that the same people continue to work in the new organisations.”

Cobalt is also the nation’s first office park with a Tesco Express. With this, and the larger retail stores and cinema at neighbouring Silverlink, it could with a church or two and apartment blocks, be more suburb than workplace, especially given its road network – open 24 hours.

As we go to press, speculation is high that Tyne and Wear’s EZ will be at Wallsend for the budding offshore wind industry or beside Nissan at Sunderland, on land marked for commercial development. Teesside’s EZ might be turned to digital advantage. n

No promises EZs can’t guarantee jobs for life, as up to 300 Convergys staff know. They’ve been told to relocate from Quorum to South Wales if they wish to stay with their employer.

Nor is EZ status a quick fix for some rundown areas such as East Durham – Dawdon, Seaham and Peterlee. Over half the space at Bracken Hill, Peterlee, has been vacated after Orange switched to elsewhere in the region.

But the slaughter of coalmining, with outrageous social outcome, politically demanded EZs in East Durham. Now the county council has signed a 20-year lease for 30,000 sq ft of offices at Seaham. It says this, as an East Durham base, could save the council £10m a year.

Sunderland SPRING 11

INTERVIEW

a good place to do business

Set on the bright, light north east coast at the mouth of the River Wear, Sunderland is a special city.

It’s full of surprises. You may have heard of its hard working, friendly people; its football team at the Stadium of Light and its Nissan car plant.

What may surprise you is that Sunderland boasts a dramatic coastline, active port, acres of green space and impressive heritage.

Sunderland is a city that embraces change, new people, new technologies and new friendships. It has space for living, learning and enterprise.

Contact the Business Investment Team on 0191 561 1210 or email us at business.investment@sunderland.gov.uk www.investinsunderland.com

For a breath of fresh air and space to grow, Sunderland really is the business‌

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INTERVIEW

SPRING 11

Happy Valley Teesside has a lot of work to do but the award of an Enterprise Zone is a big encouragement, Stephen Catchpole tells Brian Nicholls

Stephen Catchpole, the recently-appointed managing director of Tees Valley Unlimited, says that while companies have to select their own business positives from the Budget, the good news for Teesside overall is its award of

BUSINESS QUARTER | SPRING 11

one of the enterprise zones in a new round of 11, ostensibly for manufacturers.

Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) such as Tees Valley Unlimited (TVU) are new, but winning an EZ has long been a Teesside goal.

Representatives of TVU and its local authority partners lobbied the Treasury hard last summer; TVU having already existed in another realm for around eight years.

Catchpole says: “We lobbied with open eyes, learning particularly from the early ones in the 1980s – some of which were successful, but in reality achieved displacement of activity. Some of that caused difficulties for town centres in retail and even office areas. We’re keen to ensure the next one doesn’t displace. We want to create an EZ concept for the 21st century.”

Prospective sites remained confidential as BQ went to press. But Catchpole does say: “We’re

42

finding out if manufacturing is the only use that can go on them.”

The zone could be within any area of TVU’s five partner boroughs – Stockton, Middlesbrough, Redcar and Cleveland, Darlington and Hartlepool. It could even straddle more than one.

“We must ensure with the public and private sectors that we’re united, whatever our approach,” says Catchpole, who had returned from a cruise to the Canaries to learn of publicity in his absence, suggesting fallout over choice of site.

He insists: “I’ve not been here long. But I can say one of the great benefits to working here is an atmosphere of co-operation. It’s one reason why the Government approved us as an LEP. As the boroughs and the private sector have worked together for some time, that

SPRING 11

Our success in RGF1 may be partly due to us having already had a relationship with many of the companies. We weren’t starting from scratch on the proposals

gives a bedrock, which is why I’m 100% confident.”

TVU helped firms with their bids for a share of first payouts from the Regional Growth Fund (RGF1) and, says Catchpole, the fact that Cleveland Potash, SSI, Nifco, Lotte Chemical at Wilton and AV Dawson’s new rail freight terminal at Middlesbrough all succeeded, means Teesside did extremely well – “a reflection on the strength of our bids and the work our partners put in on them”.

Now TVU minds are on RGF2 whose bids close on July 1 and the feeling is that smaller businesses may be helped more this time.

The initial payout from the fund was around £200m more than originally projected.

Catchpole reckons that will now leave £1bn or less in the fund, which might therefore be allocated in the second round, eliminating rounds three and four.

“We’re girding our loins for another decent run,” says Catchpole. “While round two will include company projects – like round one – it may also be about putting together programmes. A project is for the individual company. A programme can be for many companies, particularly SMEs, so we’re looking at generic schemes to bid, say business support – the sort we feel will have comprehensive business backing. If successful, that money could be held by us, our partners, or a combination. Smaller firms could apply to us for moneys or activities in kind.

“This would get over the first-round hurdle whereby every bid had to be for £1m, ruling out SMEs. There had been talks about banks getting together to put forward packages that SMEs could feature in. As far as we’re aware, little of that has happened. I think round two was always going to be where you could put programmes together. We don’t rule out

working with our local banks on packages.

Firms could still come to us individually.

Hopefully, some things we propose will again be innovative, practical and attractive to government.

“Teesside SMEs’ biggest issue is access to finance. It’s holding back their growth. Maybe RGF2 offers a route, bringing in experts.”

Is Catchpole confident that public, private and voluntary sectors can work harmoniously within a LEP? “I can, hand on heart, say ‘yes’,” he says.

“Our success in RGF1 may be partly due to our organisation having already had a relationship with many of the companies. We weren’t starting from scratch, either on the proposals or on forming a relationship.

“I think we were the only LEP supporting our bids with an overarching statement of why those bids meet our economic aspirations. So we not only support each individual bid, but also give the fund’s adjudicating panel an overarching statement wrapping them together and explaining how they meet our economic policies. “you couldn’t do that in the frenetic build-up to RGF1 unless you already had good relations and a good track record in partnership.

Judging us against a brand new LEP is probably a bit unfair because in many ways we have been something of a LEP for years.”

Did Tees Valley’s LEP have the equivalent of a 10 metre start for a 100 metre sprint, then?

Well, yes, except that beyond that sprint a marathon looms.

“We must now find new ways to keep in front,” Catchpole admits.

The main criticism against the Government’s replacement of regional development agencies (RDAs), such as One North East, by LEPs like TVU is that by comparison they have “no

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INTERVIEW

money and no power”. The largesse the Government is doling out through them is only about a third of what the agencies had.

TVU itself has taken a hit. In 2010-11 it had a £9m budget, mostly from One North East and the Homes Community Agency. Since April 1, that’s been slashed to £2m.

“We’ve had to go through a very painful staffing review,” Catchpole says. “That’s brought us down from 85 to a core staff of 31 with about eight jobs now on a 12-month transition. If we get no more money, those posts will disappear.”

The £2m comes from the five participating boroughs. Catchpole says: “While it’s a quarter of what we had, it’s still significant. Other LEPs don’t have that. We’ve cut our cloth accordingly. The input from the private sector is time, energy and influence. We’ve put together a fairly robust statement of ambition.

From that flow strategies and activities we feel appropriate to the area. We, like everyone, must get used to much less public support in finances. >>

In Person Stephen Catchpole, 57, was previously chief executive of Wolverhampton Development Company, an urban regenerator he set up in 2007.

He helped secure more than £10m of state funding for transport infrastructure, led creation of a £37m student village for Wolverhampton University, and oversaw planning of an art and creative industries centre – all at the peak of recession. He strengthened links between the aerospace industry and the local supply chain.

A trained solicitor, he has also been chief executive of district and borough councils, chief executive of Greater Peterborough Chamber of Commerce and chief executive of Cambridgeshire Learning and Skills Council. He has also been commercial property director at Trafalgar House Developments. He is married and has three children.

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INTERVIEW

SPRING 11

“While we’re not yet able to move away from that completely, we are trying to rebalance the economy so there’s more justification for private investment.”

Straitened or not, Catchpole believes two LEPs can work together to the region’s good in place of an RDA. He says, half-jokingly: “As an outsider, I find this obsession with each tribe in the North East peculiar. I understand it and am sure it has all been good fun. But, long term, the entire North East, indeed the North East coast and part of the Northern area, must make a viable proposition together at times to ensure a level playing field with other parts of the world.

“We’re competing globally now. If some inward investment doesn’t go to Gateshead it isn’t going to come to Middlesbrough. If something doesn’t go to Hartlepool it isn’t going to be snatched by Newcastle. The world’s not like that, particularly in new industries like offshore wind and renewables.

The wind doesn’t just blow up the Tees or the Tyne. It blows along the entire coast.”

Indeed, TVU through Catchpole latterly joined the lobby successful in bringing Hitachi’s train manufacturing to Newton Aycliffe in the North East LEP’s parish. As he points out, it’s a “stone’s throw” from Darlington where some employees may eventually come from.

“I’m looking to co-operate also with Leeds and Humberside,” he says, “and to get them to co-operate with us. With Scotland too – we share coastal strength in offshore energy. SSI’s steel manufacturing is in Tees Valley but you can’t tell me it won’t benefit the rest of the North East and North.

“It’s ludicrous to think of a local economy today as being within a mile or two of where immediate jobs are. you have supply chains that are incredibly complex. Hitachi’s will be enormous, like Nissan’s.”

While there’s a third body, a North East Economic Partnership (NEEP) co-ordinated by Andrew Sugden of North East Chamber of Commerce, Catchpole believes the region’s two LEPs will be “perfectly capable” of talking to each other. But yes, there’s room for a facilitator.

Catchpole says: “It helps sometimes to have a forum where you’re not actually three but one and one with some assistance – a forum not

BUSINESS QUARTER | SPRING 11

to guide but to help. There will be issues and times of talking things out that way, rather than by just two individual bodies.”

Catchpole reminds how TVU must ensure that in the world-class industries Teesside is involved in – chemicals and petrochemicals – it must continue to attract foreign investment.

“There are no British companies in that area at the moment,” he points out. “We must attract others and enable them to operate globally as competitively as possible.”

So TVU is working with the North East Process Industry Cluster (Nepic) and the Centre for Process Innovation (CPI), bodies progressing those industries. Another goal is to ensure the general economy of its five participant boroughs, and particularly the main towns, grows too.

“Their economies have taken a bit of a bang,” he says. “But there are certain growth sectors where we see improvements. It’s our job to build on that.”

Middlesbrough has felt the biggest bang, scarred with the third-worst rating out of 354 council areas in the Government’s index of multiple deprivation. There, unemployment is almost twice the national average, and 14% of townspeople are on benefits, no doubt prompting TVU’s view that, hand in glove with job creation, local people must be upskilled or reskilled to benefit.

Catchpole wants an avoidance of Birmingham’s path over the last 14 years. Its city centre has improved beyond recognition, but only a mile-and-a-half away there are districts devoid of contact where locals lack skills to work there and income levels even to shop there. One of Teesside’s assets, Catchpole has noted, is the good working relations Teesside and Durham Universities share with training colleges, also some excellent specialist training providers.

TVU, which considers Durham Tees Valley Airport a key strategic asset; has met with the Canadian owners and plans to work towards its revival.

“I think the owners have realistic plans to improve performance and profitability there,” he says. “I’d say they’re very optimistic and we must stand shoulder to shoulder. We’re going to work hard with them.”

This will include an intensified campaign

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against present levels of airport charges and promotion of the airport and its door to the world at large, which its Schiphol service in particular represents.

“For whatever reason that message has not reached enough people in enough numbers,” Catchpole says. “Global recession has hit foreign travel. But of the top 100 companies in Tees Valley 60% or 70% are foreign-owned.

There’s a need for foreign travel.”

Catchpole, a Londoner, told North East Chamber of Commerce members at their Tees Valley agm recently that London and the South East promote themselves even when there’s nothing to promote. “Here,” he said, “there’s an inbuilt modesty which is very fetching but gets you nowhere.” n

Picking up Brighter trends for Teesside’s economy accompany TVU’s shift into top gear: Resuscitation of Teesside Cast Products - and Teesside’s steel industry generally - by Thai giant SSI represents a £290m investment that safeguards 700 jobs and creates 800 others.

Soaring demand for Nifco’s car parts, partly through Nissan’s growth at Sunderland, brings 120 more jobs and a new £8.5m factory to Stockton.

A £320m regeneration of Stockton’s High Street and waterfront gets under way.

Altogether 112 new small businesses have now been set up under the UK Steel’s £600,000 Regeneration Fund.

Logistics and supply chain specialists AV Dawson plans a £2.6m rail terminal at Middlesbrough’s Riverside Park to serve increased traffic on the River Tees.

DigitalCity is creating six businesses a month.

Stan Higgins, chief executive of Nepic, says 2,500 more jobs can be created on Teesside if talks succeed in bringing a proposed plastics recycling facility, a biomethanol plant and a waste-to-power generator - combined investment, £1.5bn.

SPRING 11

COMPANY PROFILE ADVERTISING FEATURE

NATWEST BUSINESS BANKING SUPPORTS DRIVING AGENCY START-UP NatWest’s Business banking team in the North East is headed up by Michael Burrow and can help small businesses get off the ground.

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NE such company recently supported is Drive2Recruit, a driver recruitment firm founded by three North East women who decided to start their own business after years of working in the industry for other companies.

The start up is being supported by £10k of funding and banking facilities from NatWest and the team project a turnover of £375k in their first year.

Paula Spedding, Lesley Donaldson and Claire Henderson have formed the company in Gateshead and are offering recruitment solutions to companies looking for temporary and permanent drivers and other logistics staff.

The trio have a combined 30 years of experience in the industry with Paula having previously run her own business. Lesley worked for a driving agency for 23 years and Claire has had four years of experience working as a recruitment consultant in the driving sector in the Newcastle and Sunderland area.

Paula Spedding, Director of Drive2Recruit Ltd said: “It’s really exciting to be setting up our own business, all of us have different skills and experience we can offer the company and we all get on so well.

“We love the fact we are three women entering a traditionally male orientated industry and we are all well used to dealing with HGV and van drivers as well as transport companies.”

Graham Elder, Senior Business Manager for NatWest said: “Paula, Lesley and Claire have got a real enthusiasm for the industry they work in and that’s one of the most important things to have when starting a business. These are exactly the types of people we are looking to support as a bank.

“I’ve been delighted to help them start this ambitious project and I look forward to watching the business grow in the future.”

Graham elder, natWest and paula Spedding, Drive2recruit

I’VE BEEN DELIGHTED TO HELP THEM START THIS AMBITIOUS PROJECT AND I LOOK FORWARD TO WATCHING THE BUSINESS GROW IN THE FUTURE It’s not just traditional funding that the bank can help with either. NatWest has introduced a number of initiatives and practical guides to provide guidance on managing cash flow, dealing with bad debts and spreading the risk to protect your business.

These include the launch an Online Business Review tool which is designed to provide support materials to help SMEs review their growth aspirations and the SME Business Hub which offers free support online to help entrepreneurs avoid the pitfalls of the economic climate and plan for future opportunities. The information is available online without the need to go to a branch and businesses can access interactive business reviews, economic reports and practical guides by visiting www.natwest.com/support.

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Security may be required. Product fees may apply. Over 18s only ANY PROPERTY USED AS SECURITY, WHICH MAY INCLUDE YOUR HOME, MAY BE REPOSSESSED IF YOU DO NOT KEEP UP REPAYMENTS ON A MORTGAGE OR OTHER DEBT SECURED ON IT

For more information please contact: Michael Burrow natWest Business Banking regional Director, north e: michael.burrow@rbs.co.uk

BUSINESS QUARTER | SPRING 11

THE LAD’S GOT TALENT

He left school with no certificates but now through other talents and work experiences he owns a fast-widening group of firms bedrocked by education and job training. David Harper tells Brian Nicholls how it has come about His laughter fills the glass and chrome reception area even as he enters HarperCo offices, apologetically telling how a traffic snarl-up has delayed him. Effusive David Harper, whose cheerfulness must be cherished in these trying business times, could brighten even worst-case scenarios.

He’d have been a soul-lifting MC aboard the Titanic for example – coaxing couples to last-waltz on its listing ballroom floor, former dancing champion that he is.

His nimbleness at the immaculate Monkton South Business Park in South Tyneside instead,

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is evident more in his head than in his toes now as he leads HarperCo to £10m sales in its first decade – and maybe £100m by 2014, though he doesn’t underestimate the challenge. The workforce has just risen by 42 to 100 though, and he’s relying on a mixture of growing the existing businesses, diversifying their products, and making strategic acquisitions and partnerships.

HarperCo already prospers diversely. It can hack bureaucratic procedure down from 12 weeks to one day for instance. And its skills in training and consultancy can draw clients such

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as Asda, Harrods and DHL. No Titanic this, despite its motley management crew.

Besides Harper, the former UK Latin American dance champion, there’s group finance director Mark Hargreaves – novelist, erstwhile male model and chartered accountant – who hates numbers but was a notable managing partner of Grant Thornton in Newcastle for some years.

There’s contracts manager Graham Howard, fast-rescue and lifeboat coxswain, one time safety manager of a Norwegian cruise liner, and for 30 years before, a marine engineer >>

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BUSINESS QUARTER |SPRING 11

ENTREPRENEUR in nuclear ballistic missile submarines. There’s also contracts manager Stephen Dean, eager to meet Muhammad Ali, preferably outside the ring.

But these are their experiences and idiosyncrasies, not their skill sets that Harper – himself still only 30 – values in driving the business forward in training, vetting and screening, digital learning, lean production and consultancy in carbon efficiency.

Harper left school with no paper credits. But he’s twice been apprenticed, once to House of Fraser and later, through mentoring by other North East entrepreneurs. He met the first, George Hayden, in 2001 when Hayden was about to grow a national training firm also involving Gateshead College, Express Engineering and former North East Business Executive of the year Chris Thompson. Harper had experience enough to take on development and sales.

That company, Talent Training, which is now lead operation for HarperCo, sold apprenticeships years ahead of Labour and Coalition governments. By 2007 Harper had been managing director for three years, now earning half the equity.

He virtually acquired 50% of the business. The firm by then was contracting directly with the Government to deliver base learning solutions in the private sector. Asda, Harrods, Argos, and the NHS all came in then. Growth continued for the next two years under the then government’s Train to Gain scheme.

In 2009 Harper saw his “golden opportunity”.

He bought Hayden out, recalling in his cleanly cut Glasgow accent: “I had visions to take it to a bigger scale again. The market was changing. I thought some strategic acquisitions could exponentially grow our turnover and size. We had seen how the Government then was procuring services.

“I now had Talent Training and a chance to branch into other opportunities. I met Mark Hargreaves, an absolute gem in this company now. I asked, ‘How do I find opportunities to invest in and take part in?’ He said when the business was ready people and opportunities would come anyway. Sure as hell, I was involved with one of them only yesterday.”

Others came in between. So HarperCo was created as an acquisition vehicle, not only to

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buy out a partnership but also to introduce a trading vehicle, a holding company to make investments and engage with organisations in need of growth and leverage.

“I’ve effectively created new start-ups,” Harper explains. “We’re not a venture capital house, but my passion is finding fledgling businesses, rare opportunities and people with real talent, then working with them to grow their organisation.

“For example, I came across a business in Glasgow, Junction 18 – very niche, very specific. They delivered and developed e-learning solutions. I was impressed. The firm was using computer games and technology to deliver learning because, typically, learning can be mundane – left screen, right screen, next step... you know.

“They were using 3D interactive technology to make it exciting. Often small businesses have great product, great ambition, but don’t know how to take it to market. I negotiated with them and set up HarperCo Digital and growing that very successfully.

“We in turn can diversify our offering, and with the technology go with the market.

Ideally, we grow a company like that to a certain size, make it attractive and one day find a potential buyer. We either buy the company or set up a new business with it, a joint venture. Ours is a flexible model working for the other party and for us also. HarperCo Digital is a joint venture.”

Harper also studied in his forte – education – the need to monitor staff working with young people better.

“Applicants have to be checked against criminal records,” he says. “The system as it stood took up to 12 weeks to get a record back. I thought that unacceptable. NHS employees and supply teachers couldn’t start till they’d been cleared. Also the services suffer. I spent time with interesting people who’d spent 10 years developing technology that could interact with government agencies.

The labour and manual process could be taken out; technology put at the heart instead. We can now deliver checks within one business >>

Let’s share the risk David Harper learned to spot talent and make the most of it through Chris Thompson. He must have been a listener because Thompson says of David now: “He’s a very successful entrepreneur himself with a group of his own successful businesses – a very ambitious and passionate man with a big vision, and an inspiration to other young entrepreneurs.”

With his sunny disposition, he feels it’s his job as chairman to deal with bad news of the day so colleagues can focus on positive developments. An admitted perfectionist, he aims to simplify, simplify, simplify.

“We too often complicate business with procedures and systems,” he says. “We’ve got to get back to basics daily. Plain talking. It’s about ethics also – power of the handshake, somebody’s word far greater than any legal contract.”

He commonly asks new customers: “Why don’t we sign terms in which you pay when we achieve something for you, not turn up and do something on a flip chart for a day. Or tell you what you already know. We can add value and make a difference. When we’ve done that I think it’s reasonable to ask for payment.”

That way, he says, HarperCo shares the client’s risk and seeks a solution – not products, or selling things, but adding value.

“Today we’re all doing more for less money,” he says, “so our job has to be to help achieve more with existing resources. That’s how we win big national contracts. We’ve never not been paid.“ Does it impress, though? Glen Boyce, an executive of logistics group Schenker, thinks HarperCo is probably the most exciting people development project he’s been involved with during his 24 years in industry. Councillor Michael Clare, South Tyneside’s lead member on jobs, enterprise and regeneration, says the council was delighted to welcome so dynamic and forward-thinking a company.

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SPRING 11

day – a complete file on clients’ desks, and more cost-effectively.”

HarperCo did it by acquiring The Vetting Solutions Centre in Hemel Hempstead, now rebranded as HarperCo Vetting.

“Their great product has been taken to a market where they can shout about it,” he says.

When HarperCo recently decided to relocate from Newcastle, South Tyneside was the only local authority in the region so pro-active in understanding his aims.

“They really supported us to find the right location and infrastructure,” he says. “Now, we’re proud to say we’re growing our business from South Tyneside because the borough has a real spirit, a real buzz and a community of business people eager to support each other.”

Businesses, having learned from past mistakes, no longer axe training and development in hard times.

“They recognise that if they want to achieve more with the same staff on less they have to upskill or multi-skill,” he says.

They’re also realising that apprenticeships help find them future leaders. HarperCo practices what it preaches and has eight apprentices.

Talent Training, specialising in apprenticeships, remains the biggest activity and Hargreaves, besides being group financial director, has been running Talent Training as managing director. Now a successor is nigh, freeing him to grow the group instead. Two acquisitions are in the sights.

David Harper’s service flair surfaced as a youngster in the Maryhill district of footballmad Glasgow where one of his parents supported Rangers, the other Celtic. He remembers: “I was in the middle and thought, ‘I’m not going to follow football – too complicated’.”

Instead, on match days he traded outside nearby Firhill, home of Partick Thistle – better known to Billy Connolly as Partick Thistle Nil. He offered to mind fans’ cars for a quid.

“I was never one of the boys who damaged the cars of fans declining the service,” he hastily adds. The family moved to Prestwick when he was 14. By then he clearly wasn’t academic.

“I never engaged with school or education then,” he says. He left before he was 16.

ENTREPRENEUR

Luckily his parents had got him involved in dancing.

“I started training... thought I was brilliant as teachers and trainers in Scotland told me I was of a certain standard. I came to England for a trial with a world champion then realised how bad I was. It was cut-throat. My coach in England said, ‘Son, you can’t dance but train hard and you could be very good’.

“I had an option as my mum and dad drove me back; pretend I was very good and stay in Scotland, living in that little pond, or work hard and achieve something. I trained hard and achieved international standards and national championships. That took five years of blood, sweat and tears, training like an athlete. It brought me to Newcastle to dance with a champion and compete in world

Here is home HarperCo may also open in Surrey to cover the South, and in Glasgow, where it has two businesses interests and where Harper, “single and focused on business”, keeps Scottish roots through a flat overlooking Firhill.

His parents think a move from Prestwick might appeal, and his sister, a paramedic, already lives in the North East. He himself lives in Gosforth, calls himself “a real foodie” and after trying restaurants worldwide says his favourite is still Newcastle’s Café 21.

“A girl there said to me last week, ‘you’re here more than me. And I work here.’”

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championships. I won an international championship. Dancing took over much of my life. Somebody asked: ‘Do you ever see yourself not dancing?’ I said ‘Never’. But you turn corners and things happen.

“Having achieved this standard, I decided I had to start earning money. Dancing was costly.

My mum and dad believed in me and backed me. They remortgaged their house three times to support me. They handed me £200 a week – a lot of money from two people on minimum wage.”

He worked for Kentucky Fried Chicken briefly to help repay them, but he had to move to Newcastle to train daily. So at 17 he entered a retail apprenticeship at House of Fraser in Gateshead.

“I took dancing as far as I could,” he says.

“The arena became quite political. you have to pay to get on. It became untenable. But passion for dancing and music will always be in my heart.”

He later saw an advertisement saying: “Are you Scottish? Can you sell?” Answers of “yes” and “I think so” got him his first “proper” interview.

“I hadn’t a suit to wear,” he says. “I went in a bright green shirt and Mickey Mouse tie. The guy took a punt. He must have seen a willingness, even a rawness.”

Thus Harper sold advertising for Mansfield publishers W and J Linney, within an office in Sunderland.

“Selling space is the best training ground you could wish for to gain commercial awareness in sales,” he says. “If you can sell advertising you can sell most things. It was high pressure, high volume, fast pace, lots of activity.

“And if you can sell recruitment advertising it’s the best training ground you can wish for. I learned key values. The harder you work, the luckier you get. I’ve heard someone else quote that. If you made more phone calls than colleagues you got more appointments, sold more stuff.”

Then at 21 he met George Hayden.

Harper says: “George offered real opportunity – I suppose an apprenticeship with mentors like him and some other phenomenally successful business people. Surround yourself with successful people and you’ll always do all right - I’ve heard that said too. It’s true.” n

BUSINESS QUARTER |SPRING 11

COMPANY PROFILE

SPRING 11

A free search engine acting as a shop window for the North East digital industry has been launched

SOFTWARE SHOP WINDOW CONNECTS DIGITAL DEMAND AND SUPPLY

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UPPLIER Search is designed to help local businesses take advantage of the cutting-edge ICT solutions developed on their doorstep by matching them with the right digital suppliers to meet their business objectives, while helping local companies find new customers.

Developed in partnership between the Centre for eBusiness and Sunderland Software City -and available at www.sunderlandsoftwarecity.com – Supplier Search allows companies to highlight their areas of expertise and experience, making it much easier for local businesses to find the right software supplier.

Local suppliers have three months to sign up to Supplier Search by entering their details through a quick online questionnaire before businesses are invited to begin using the tool.

Pascal Fintoni, Chief Executive of the Centre for eBusiness said: “Supplier Search will be a brilliant way of showcasing the innovation of the North East’s growing digital community.

“It promises to be a priceless way for bringing new business to the door of local ICT suppliers and I’d encourage all local digital firms to take five minutes to enter their details”.

Bernie Callaghan, Chief Executive Officer of Sunderland Software City said: “Some businesses don’t always appreciate how the right software can transform their business and the impact it can have on profits and productivity.

“One company we’ve worked with has saved themselves £250,000 a year with a bespoke software package, but we know that many firms aren’t always aware of what software can do for them, or even sure where to start looking for the right software company to meet their needs.

“Supplier Search makes it really simple for a company working in a sector like the energy, health, or leisure looking for, say, a piece of

BUSINESS QUARTER | SPRING 11

SUPPLIER SEARCH WILL BE A BRILLIANT WAY OF SHOWCASING THE INNOVATION OF THE NORTH EAST’S GROWING DIGITAL COMMUNITY

James Kingett from the Centre for eBusiness and Bernie Callaghan from Sunderland Software City (right) test drive Supplier Search, the software supplier search engine acting as a shop window for North East digital industries.

Photo: Suzanne Hart software helping them keep track of their assets to immediately identify a local company with knowledge of their industry and experience developing those kinds of business solutions.

The application is targeted at companies of all sizes who supply ICT solutions and who are looking to do business with organisations in the north east, working in the following sectors: • Chemical/Pharmaceutical • Energy • Health and Life Sciences • Automotive • Commercial Creative • Business Services • Defence and Marine • Food and Drink • Leisure and Tourism • Logistics • Retail • Manufacturing

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It also gives digital suppliers the opportunity to publish testimonials from previous clients, showcasing their most successful projects.

Sunderland Software City is the regional initiative supporting and driving the growth of the North East software industry, which is now valued at a quarter of a billion pounds a year.

The initiative has helped almost 50 new companies start and more than 100 companies to grow, offering everything from one-on-one business and technical mentoring and assistance with finance and business plans to introductions to potential investors, collaborators and customers and support trading overseas.

The Centre for eBusiness provides consultancy and training support to the business community on all aspects of eBusiness. It provides this support in two ways; by helping businesses directly, and by providing business support organisations with knowledge, skills and resources that will enable them to help businesses grow.

Supplier Search is available at www.sunderlandsoftwarecity.com.

More information is available from info@sunderlandsoftwarecity.com and on 0845 872 8575 and @sunsoftcity on Twitter

Get up to ÂŁ10,000 of funding to get your export plans off the ground.

To find out more visit call the North East International Trade Hotline on 0845 05 05 054.

Are you ready to compete for London 2012 contracts and more new business opportunities?

CompeteFor is the free portal providing access to thousands of contract opportunities linked to major public and private sector projects across the UK.

For more information contact the Compete North East team on 0845 600 9006 or visit www.competenortheast.co.uk

INTERVIEW

SPRING 11

LET’S BEHAVE IN BUSINESS A new Act against bribery in business takes effect on July 1 but cannot guarantee exemplary conduct nor cover every excess known in business dealing. BQ asks Sir Michael Darrington, an outstanding North East company leader of recent years – and a noted advocate of ethics in business – how behaviours could improve, with or without the Act Is lack of ethics in business a recent trend?

There have ever been problems. Is it getting worse? It’s bigger because many companies are bigger. Once it may have been just your corner shop. Now it can be your multi-billion multinational doing things not necessarily good. It’s more serious. We need to encourage some people to think more of others – by example, training and upbringing.

Can you give instances?

Enron persuaded people to lend and invest in lies. It was big money, even very wise people were taken in. Banks too give some of the biggest examples of a lack in ethics. They present themselves otherwise, tick a lot of boxes and look goody goody, doing all the right things. Giving to the right charities. But really banks couldn’t care a sod about anyone except within – the bankers even more than the shareholders, since they benefit.

Have you been a victim of underhanded conduct during your business career?

At Greggs we had an important contract. If the other side didn’t fulfil their obligations

BUSINESS QUARTER | SPRING 11

we’d be left pretty uncomfortable. The contract entitled us to make slow but progressive changes which we did, exactly as the contract had been drawn – and in the spirit of the contract, not just letter of law. The top person in the other company, one much bigger than ours, took exception. We had hot discussions. He said he realised what the problems would be if they didn’t fulfil their side, but added: “If you don’t do as I want, though you may be entitled to, I’ll tear up the contract.” He knew it would cost us a fortune, disrupt our business. He said: “you can sue us but I’m a bully and have a lot more money to use on lawyers. I can afford to do it and sod you.” We failed to agree.

How does one try to counter this?

Fortunately, others in his organisation were decent. They confirmed the agreement, and that he had gone over the top. We found a way of appearing to backtrack but still doing more or less what we wanted because of those decent people. Someone in a very responsible position, on the main board of a

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large plc, threatening like that was disturbing.

I’m sure similar instances happen to others.

Fortunately, there are companies that stick to agreements.

Is it difficult to uphold an ethical ideal in today’s cut-throat competition?

Doing right isn’t all that hard. Look in the mirror, ask what you should be doing, then do it even if it may cost. Customers want to deal with people they feel they can trust. There’s the tax issue too. If everyone pays the tax they ought, instead of employing clever lawyers and accountants not to, they’ll shoulder their fair burden. Otherwise people of integrity are paying more pro rata than those choosing clever wheezes, which is what a lot of tax avoidance is.

Why do you feel so strongly on these matters?

I feel we should all do as we would wish to be done by.

Britain’s new Bribery Act, due to take effect now, has been deferred amid allegation the drafting is fatally >>

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INTERVIEW

Doing it right isn’t all that hard. Look in the mirror, ask what you should be doing, then do it even though it may cost BUSINESS QUARTER |SPRING 11

INTERVIEW

SPRING 11

flawed. How do you view the Act? Bribery will always be a problem. Some people will always try to gain advantage. People who take purchasing decisions are vulnerable to approach by suppliers and potential suppliers, so better defences are needed. I don’t think it’s a big problem in this country. But as companies grow, the bribery amounts get bigger. I do think merchant bankers should be nervous.

How they set out sometimes to woo potential clients likely to pay them millions in fees if they secure a deal is cynically manipulative. To get close to decision makers they discover what they like then supply it so they can be “friends”. Not just a meal in a nice restaurant – something different, special and memorable as a come-on. When the big deal comes they’re in pole position. Is that bribery? I think it immoral and wrong. But many merchant bankers get much fatter fees that way, unjustifiably. That’s also why they get these big controversial bonuses. It’s wrong because the ordinary shareholders pay for it – including those holding unit trusts with investments in the companies paying great fees.

Then there’s their role in acquisitions. A majority of acquisitions fail. But the merchant bankers still win; they push, put pressure on.

Merchant bankers talk of putting their own side into play. They’re supposed to be representing shareholders’ interests. But if they have to defend you they’re going to get a big fee from you. They’re defending you against “other interests”, whose involvement they may have generated in the first place. If the Bribery Act sorts that out – great. If it’s only going to jump on minor bribery, it’s not good.

Would jail for up to 10 years under the Act, as envisaged, fit the crime?

I understand having run a company it is difficult to know every single thing going on, no matter how many procedures are in place.

Some people deliberately do wrong. Some will have made genuine mistakes. I’ve made mistakes. To lock someone away as a criminal for five to 10 years for a genuine mistake made in letting someone under their charge commit an offence unknown to them would be difficult to justify. It’s right to have pressure on though, and sanctions on the casual and negligent are necessary.

BUSINESS QUARTER | SPRING 11

The only relevant law now dates to 1918, when it aimed to punish tradesmen who bribed domestic servants. Should reforms have taken place before now?

Any legislation like this must be reviewed from time to time. I also get cross about compensation culture. These tremendous

Mike Darrington: the person Sir Michael Darrington, a qualified chartered accountant, spent 17 years in general management with United Biscuits before becoming group managing director of Greggs Bakery for almost 25 years. He was knighted in 2004 for services to business and the community in the North East.

He is currently supporting the Hexham Abbey Appeal seeking a final £400,000 to progress a Heritage Lottery Fund application. He says: “I’m very proud of our region’s history, and the history of early Christianity in the North East. I’d like to encourage others to give support.”

For more information about the Hexham Abbey Appeal contact Jane Gibson, at 01434 602 031 or email heritage@hexhamabbey.org.uk.

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payouts are very much the fault of the legal profession and the judiciary. It comes into ethics. I’ve debated this with judges. They say it’s the fault of government and legislation. I say there is legislation but process of law interprets it and decides on the amount of award. These big awards spawn the ambulance chasers urging people to sue. Law firms can often make a lot out of this, more than the individual – absurd, not ethical.

Under the Act, firms without safeguards could face unlimited fines – even where bribes were given on their behalf without their knowledge. Are infallible safeguards possible when instances may occur thousands of miles away?

In overseas business the Act cannot be infallible. To secure business you may have to compromise between avoiding the risk and the consequences of not.

While crackdowns are under way in some countries where bribery and corruption were previously rampant, might Britain’s export performance – in defence of, pharmaceuticals and automotives for example – suffer by taking the moral high ground, and letting foreign rivals gain advantage? Or might a reputation for honesty be rewarded?

Any sentence, given equal magnitude, should be more severe on someone bribing at home than abroad. I see a difference because of how business is out there. A lot of bribery seems to stem from dealing with companies and organisations in places outside the developed countries. Standards are different. They don’t see it wrong or immoral to have a significant gift for doing business. If companies there don’t go with it they may not get the business.

I don’t know how the Bribery Act will eventually work. But normally one has an agent abroad to whom you pay commission for introducing and managing your business there. They speak the language, understand local laws and look after all kinds of things.

How are you to know if the agent will spread that commission around to encourage other people? We can’t impose our own cultures, but hopefully we can pressure other countries to change. If you don’t make dialogue about it nothing changes and you may never win the business. >>

SPRING 11

You oppose unjustifiably high pay rises for company bosses. Should salary difference between top executives and their lowest paid staff carry a fixed margin?

Unless something significant is done, things will worsen. People whose money it is aren’t always consulted. Many similarly placed bosses in big institutions and other corporate stakeholders involved in approving big pay rises and big bonuses are getting likewise themselves. They won’t vote for halved salaries because theirs might be halved too. They’ll vote against real excesses but not against an inexorable climb in pay. And their vote isn’t binding on remuneration.

If enough shareholders complained and voted against, the directors even where the vote is not binding would have to look out because the ultimate sanction is to sack them come re-election time. Some firms do keep a fixed difference between highest and lowest paid. However, some people may say: “OK, I’ll only go to a firm paying the lowest-paid lots of money”. And if a firm of lawyers, say, pays a minimum £50,000 salary to the lawyers, and outsources its support staff – cleaners, secretaries, bookkeepers and so on – there will be, instead of a minimum £12,500 to multiply, one of £50,000 to multiply.

Should the Government act to close the gap between the highest and lowest pays, though?

Excessive pay reduces a firm’s profits and its dividend payments and so, ultimately, lowers the share price. Individuals now can take more money from a big company far more easily than from a smaller one. With turnovers of billions who misses a million or two? It’s worth trying to find solutions, maybe caps whereby people can earn a sum that’s a certain number of times more than average earnings in the country. Solicitors assure me whatever rules you make, clever people find ways round them.

But I’m not defeatist. you need overriding principles as well as the law. And the overriding principle should be able to override the law. Then crafty people finding ways round the law will come up against the overriding principle. It would do away with a

Have your say The Independent Commission on Banking now recommends that customers should be able to switch banks within a week. And Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke is introducing measures to restrict unscrupulous solicitors exploiting “no win, no fee” deals. But uncertainty is being expressed in legal circles about the extent of corporate hospitality and what “freebies” will be permitted when the Bribery Act belatedly takes effect.

Do you agree with Sir Michael? Send your views (200 words maximum) to b.g.nicholls@btinternet.com

lot of time and effort wasted doing tax too – among accountants, for example, and other brainy people finding ways to avoid paying tax this nation needs.

You condemn banks that give customers

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INTERVIEW

“awful” deals then bury their misdemeanours in small print. Does this require attention?

Banks more and more pay lip service to customer service. They see customers as people to make money out of. A massively better service would cost a few bob more, whereas they’re only interested in big profits, big bonuses.

Their rip-offs are horrendous, introducing new accounts with higher interest then progressively reducing the value, for example.

Why do you have to keep watching in case they chisel you? your bank manager used to do right by you, not sell you something that promises him more commission.

More competition among banks would help and might happen if switching accounts was easy. But anyone who has tried will have found this horrendous – so many things are interlinked, you can’t just sign a piece of paper. Banks hide behind this bloody stupid Money Laundering Act. They complain about it but know it makes it harder to change banks. Crooks will find their way round it anyway. So the Money Laundering Act does little, but make it easier for banks to milk you.

Are you confident that with the spotlight on banks’ behaviour now their ethics will improve?

Things will change if politicians, who need our vote, feel enough pressure. People must tell the Government how cross they are about ways they are ripped off by financial services, particularly banks.

What effect might the growing income gap have on society?

Troubles are just beginning. I don’t think the Government realises how much aggro there will be this year when people see bankers with bonuses even bigger and chief execs getting bigger pay packages when many working for them are losing their jobs or have to pay a lot more tax.

And where chief execs get bigger pay the more staff they shed... where’s the morality there? That money could go to paying higher redundancy if nothing else. n With thanks to the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society.

BUSINESS QUARTER |SPRING 11

COMPANY PROFILE

SPRING 11

Employees of PD Ports are among the latest to sign-up for the two-year Foundation Degree in Leadership and Management offered by Teesside University Business School

LEADING ON THE WATERFRONT

D

AVE Douglas left school at the age of 16 to join the army, but nearly 30 years later he is about to graduate with a Foundation Degree in Leadership and Management from Teesside University.

The one-time soldier left the army to become a stevedore at Tees Dock at the age of 27, loading and unloading cargo bound for all parts of the world.

Now, 15 years later, Dave from Middlesbrough is the Training Officer for PD Ports, which as well as running Teesport and Hartlepool Docks, also has other port and logistic operations throughout the UK. “The job involves training all the dock and logistics operatives, but apart from my time in the Dave Douglas, training officer for pD ports, military 30 years ago I have had no training in pictured at Tees port leadership or management. That’s until I was asked by the company if I wanted to do the East and with employer organisations such as foundation degree in 2009,” says Dave. regional chambers of commerce outside the He is one of 14 port employees on the two-year North East.” foundation degree run by Teesside University Dave says: “I now have a much better belief in my Business School, and says it has been a great own abilities and much more self-confidence since confidence booster for everyone on the course. being on the University course.

Programme leader Andrew Dale says: “We’ve “I left school at 16 with just a couple of CSEs and designed this programme around the needs and went straight into the army, so yes, studying expectations of PD Ports. It builds on our for a degree is something I never dreamt of experience of successfully developing the until recently.

Foundation Degree in Leadership and Management “It has certainly broadened my outlook and made with the North East Chamber of Commerce, for me realise the importance of inter-departmental which we won the Times Higher Education Outstanding Employer Engagement Initiative dependencies. There’s a lot of learning to do, but I Award last year. have certainly found it worthwhile, especially in “We’re delighted to be running this programme for terms of the importance of building on my PD Ports and the participants have been excellent. weaknesses rather than my strengths to do my Spark magto band:Layout 1 21/12/10job effectively.

09:55 Page 1 Now we areBQ looking develop the programme with PD Ports and other employers in the North “Instead of just fire-fighting, I now look at the

A spark of inspiration

BUSINESS QUARTER | SPRING 11

www.tees.ac.uk/spark

56

bigger picture and try to find the root cause of any problems rather than just wait until it happens again. I hope it’s made me more of an inspirational leader and I now take criticism much better. I was always afraid of failure in the past.

“I also understand more clearly that I’m not just managing a team, but a group of individuals who make up our team,” says Dave.

Providing they graduate successfully from the foundation degree, Dave and many of his colleagues, who have been studying while working, hope to continue their studies for a further year to gain an honours degree.

“I would definitely recommend the Foundation Degree in Leadership and Management to anyone who wants to improve their job prospects and gain a better understanding of managing and leading people,” says Dave.

David Robinson, PD Ports’ Group Chief Executive Officer is delighted by the progress the first cohort of his company’s employees have made on the two-year programme: “The degree programme provides a unique personal development opportunity for employees such as Dave to develop and enhance their skills, allowing them to more effectively lead and manage people within the organisation. We are very proud of Dave’s achievement, and all the other staff involved in the course, who have demonstrated impressive commitment to developing their roles and skills.”

For more information about the Foundation Degree in leadership and Management contact Suzanne Withrington, Account Manager at Teesside university Business School.

T: 01642 738518 e: s.withrington@tees.ac.uk

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BUSINESS LUNCH

SPRING 11

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True alchemist A pub with a compelling background and a hard-earned reputation for quality was the appropriate place for Alastair Gilmour to invite Dianne Sharp to lunch

Fairy stories tell us that London’s streets are paved with gold. Carrying a handkerchief filled with victuals suspended over one shoulder, we only had to step out and whistle our way to riches beyond dreams. Maybe we’d pick up a cat en route for company.

And, anybody doing the opposite journey would have to be a bit mad – imagine leaving the capital’s opportunities, its openings and street-lined, gilded prosperity to come north to Newcastle, Middlesbrough, or – woe upon woe – Sunderland.

Dianne Sharp did exactly that in 1989. She wasn’t mad but had inside information – her dad was from Sunderland but had settled in North London in the mid-Sixties.

“I didn’t want to go to university and after my A levels I set out into the world,” says Sharp, who is now managing director of SCM Pharma, a world-leading specialist in drugs for clinical trials and small-volume licensed commercial products, based in Prudhoe, Northumberland.

“At 18 years old I had saved up, packed my bags and got a flat in Sunderland. People normally do it the other way around, north to south. My own daughter is now 19 and there’s no way I would be happy with her doing that, but my parents were very understanding.”

Sharp had twigged fairly early on that a career in accountancy could open any door in any

BUSINESS QUARTER | SPRING 11

business sector. Companies earn money, they spend money, and they need someone who can maximise the former and be canny and creative with the latter.

“Everything in business revolves around finance,” she says. “With accountancy you can go into almost any type of business – that’s why I went into it in the first place. I didn’t want to go to university, so a business foundation course was the easiest route into it.

“I’m an accountant but I don’t really want to shout about it. People have quite a traditional view of accountants and I’m definitely not your average, grey-suited, traditional one.”

She couldn’t have put it better. There’s an impish side to Dianne Sharp; she’s as perceptive as her name suggests, but her ready smile and readier twinkle expose a character who, one minute, has to demonstrate where every penny is being invested then can have a real good giggle the next.

She also recognises SCM Pharma’s sterile-fill environment that calls for industrial clothing – including facemask – during factory walkabouts presents its own difficulties.

“Even though you’re in finance you have to learn about the business you’re in,” she says.

“You can’t wear make-up with a facemask, so it gives me an extra 15 minutes in bed. Kitted

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SPRING 11

BUSINESS LUNCH up it’s heavy, it’s claustrophobic and it’s hot, but the staff appreciate that you know what a different working environment it is.

“It’s damned hard work, an incredibly difficult situation but I love being involved in a development process that makes a difference to people’s lives. Actually, it’s the team that makes it happen, but I feel as if I’ve hit the jackpot.”

On the subject of phobias, Sharp admits to a take-it-or-leave-it attitude to the view from the Rat Inn at Anick, near Hexham, where we are lunching. Our vantage point high on a Northumberland hillside reveals the River Tyne looping its way towards Newcastle along the fertile valley bottom.

She says: “I’m a city girl at heart and the countryside makes me nervous – just about the point where you start to lose your mobile phone signal. You can take the girl out of London…”

The Rat Inn is what country pubs do well – welcoming and traditional with an assortment of hanging brasses and chamber pots that might amuse, but serious when it comes to beer, wine and quality food.

Just as our lunchtime starters – cream of potato and garden lovage soup and terrine of chicken, chorizo, onion and chutney – are being whipped away to be photographed, we’re joined by Fiona Cruickshank who created The Specials Laboratory, the business that SCM Pharma was spun out of. There’s an immediately discernible energy between >>

Even though you’re in finance you have to learn about the business.

You can’t wear make-up with a face mask so it gives me an extra 15 minutes in bed

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BUSINESS QUARTER |SPRING 11

BUSINESS LUNCH

At SCM Pharma I have to be a scientist. It gives you the freedom to ask really stupid questions the pair, a meeting of like-minded, trusting spirits that’s almost electric. Actually, it is electric.

Cruickshank is still a director of the new company but the day-to-day running is Sharp’s, as is SCM Pharma’s future direction.

The question being, is passing on a successful business an easy decision to make?

“It’s a measure of our relationship that I said (to Dianne) I’m now going to go away and will trust you to look after my baby,” says Cruickshank. “Don’t break it and make it worth more than when I left it.

“Some entrepreneurs don’t make that decision to bring in the people appropriate to the conditions and the situation. It requires a degree of self-awareness and a lot of people can’t take that step.”

Dianne Sharps’ first job after taking the bus to Sunderland (she couldn’t afford the train) was temping at Nissan, then she moved around

BUSINESS QUARTER | SPRING 11

SPRING 11

long-term temporary jobs in finance departments, gaining experience and nurturing an admiration for the people who “make things”. Later, she had her daughter and eventually secured a full-time job. None of this sounds particularly easy.

She says: “In my early days in finance – as a purchase ledger clerk – there were a lot of young women, but it’s when you progress it becomes challenging. I was young, I was Southern, I had a young family, but fortunately some people never saw that as an issue.

“I’ve now been 20 years in manufacturing in one form or another. I love manufacturing; it’s true alchemy, using bits of raw material coming in and just through people’s knowhow and cleverness turning out something of much higher value. It’s magic.”

A chartered management accountant, Sharp also has an MBA from Durham University and is a non-executive director with Business & Enterprise North East. She joined SCM Pharma in 2010 as managing director, quickly improving operational efficiency, driving business growth and identifying new markets for the 64-strong team (14 more than when she joined).

During the previous 10 years she was managing director of Bishop Auckland-based Mechetronics, the UK’s leading manufacturer of solenoids, where she successfully led the business in establishing overseas facilities in India and China and its eventual sale to a large US corporate.

“I’ve tended to have been in technical businesses, so it’s a steep learning curve,” she says. “you become manufacturing experienced. At Mechetronics I had to be an engineer and at SCM Pharma a scientist. (She pauses for a moment, reflecting on how much she knows about engineering and pharmaceuticals. She laughs.) It gives you the freedom to ask really stupid questions.”

Her determination and drive, she reckons, has been strongly influenced by being born with a dislocated hip. She has undergone regular surgery and has suffered from arthritis from the age of 12. As an infant she was apparently so keen to get cracking she kept wearing out the huge plaster cast she was encased in.

“I had a hip replacement five years ago,” she says. “I have to look after it and make it last;

60

my doctor is quite strict about what I can and can’t do.

“I normally have to explain things at airports, which is fine in the UK or the US, but in China, having to explain about a metal implant is interesting, particularly when the officials don’t speak English and I don’t speak Chinese.

I’ve been put in a darkened room and have had to show them my scar.”

Single-mindedness even led her to cancel her own honeymoon last year – she was simply too busy.

“Anthony is the most understanding husband in the world,” she says. “He is a primary school teacher specialising in IT. He’s incredibly patient – he has to be.”

SCM Pharma opened its first overseas office last year, recruiting Thomas J Puskar to be responsible for business development in North America. That coincided with the company’s involvement in the prestigious annual American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists event in New Orleans. The US is >>

Patient approach SCM Pharma specialises in the sterile filling of novel, difficult and dangerous drug products for clinical trials and small-volume licensed commercial products. The vision from day one has always been to be different and to stand out from the crowd (at trade fairs, for example, representatives wear bright orange ties).

The contract manufacturing business is independently-owned, having been spun out of The Specials Laboratory in 2004 as Specials Clinical Manufacturing. It has been SCM Pharma since 2008.

It employs 64 staff at its Prudhoe, Northumberland, site in a range of disciplines in pharmaceutical manufacturing – research and development, sterile fill/finish, aseptic processing, quality assurance and routine production. www.scm-pharma.com

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BUSINESS LUNCH

obviously a potentially lucrative market and is expected to make significant additions to a turnover of around £3m.

“Most business up till then was in the European market but nobody is spending more on drugs than the US,” says Sharp. “It’s going really well; we’ve done a couple of trade shows there and went on a trade mission to Japan with UKTI last October. Japan is second only in pharmaceutical spend to the US, though I don’t know what will happen in light of recent events.

“What we deal in is what we call ‘novel, difficult and dangerous’. We deliver processes that other people can’t or won’t handle – it’s to do with the potency of the drug, such as cytotoxic drugs for oncology treatment.

“Some of them, we’re the only manufacturer in the world. If we don’t, patients don’t get it; it’s a moral situation. But the patient always comes first. One of the exciting things at SCM Pharma is how close we are to the patient; we can help save someone’s life. “you could have a drug that could be used on our parents, our children and our family, so you manufacture it in a way that you know where it’s going.

“Our business expanded from contracting – making drugs on behalf of other customers and using drugs on clinical trial – when we launched our own clinical capability 18 months ago.

“We’ve invested in our space, adding a mezzanine, taking over an additional unit, and looking at taking out a lease on another one a couple of miles away.

BUSINESS QUARTER | SPRING 11

SPRING 11

It’s a nice position to be in.

“One of the best things about being in the North East is its manufacturing heritage.

People think of big factories or dirty machinery, but it’s not been like that for 20 or 30 years. Manufacturing as a whole is coming out of recession faster than any other sector. I was at a NEPIC event in the Houses of Parliament recently – headed by Vince Cable – and suddenly manufacturing is sexy again.”

She reminds us how the pharmaceutical sector is growing and vibrant; there’s a renaissance in the region where the global brands like Aesica have been born.

“No-one can tell me manufacturing is dead,” she says.

The North East’s rich, diverse and burgeoning cultural scene has also been grasped firmly by Dianne Sharp. She has deep admiration not only for the Sage Gateshead, Theatre Royal

and Live Theatre, but the Stadium of Light and Newcastle Arena for attracting top performers.

“I love the theatre,” she says. “Theatre and music. I’ve even been known to do odd bits of am-dram.Theatre is magnificent in that you can’t think of anything else for a couple of hours. It’s nice to be taken away from all of it.

“My work is exciting so I don’t mind being boring on the side. We’re about to have a holiday in the sun in Lanzarote. I’ve never had a sunshine holiday for five years. This pasty face isn’t my normal colour, I want to be bright orange, the company’s colours.”

The streets of Sunderland may not have been paved with gold when Dianne Sharp first set foot on them, but neither did she expect it.

It was tough at first, but she was determined to make her own way. It still is tough, but success is most definitely not accomplished in a grey suit. n

A Rat with a long tale The Rat Inn, situated in the picturesque hamlet of Anick, approximately a mile from Hexham in Northumberland, was built around 1750, most likely as a drovers’ inn. In the 19th century it was known as the Board Inn and there is much speculation as to how it got its unusual alternative name.

Some say it was the meeting-place for local rat catchers and others that it attracted Jacobite sympathisers in the mid-1700s. The pub’s landlord would listen in to their subversive plans and pass information on to government agents – earning him the nickname The Rat. It boasts spectacular views across Hexham and the River Tyne which meanders along the valley below. A charming and characterful pub with a stunning beer garden and crackling log fires to sit by (it’s Northumberland, remember), the Rat Inn is a classic country pub with a reputation for fine but unpretentious food sourced locally as much as possible.

Phil Mason and Karen Errington took it over in late 2007, having previously owned the successful, Michelin-rated Green Room restaurant in Hexham. It is featured in the Good Pub Guide, Good Beer Guide and Michelin Eating Out in Pubs.

Lunchtime starters include charcuterie with pickles and bread (£8.50); smoked salmon with horseradish and potato salad (£6.95), and beef tomato salad with balsamic onions, rocket and Blacksticks Blue cheese (£6.50).

Main courses: Northumberland sausage, leek potato cake and onion gravy £10.95); Peppered local steak (rump £18.95, or fillet £21.95), roasted tomato, watercress and chips; Grilled North Sea coley, fennel and citrus salad £12.95); Slow-roast belly pork, sage and onion potatoes, fine beans and cider apples; Pasta with broccoli, rocket, watercress and Blue Stilton (£8.50); Roast Northumbrian rib of beef, watercress, chips and Bordelaise sauce (£35.95 for two).

Hand-pulled ales are particularly popular among regulars – a choice of Draught Bass, Deuchar’s IPA and a local microbrewery selection that could be Mordue, Allendale, High House Farm or Wylam.

Scurry to the Rat Inn and scurry back if you must, but it’s well worth lingering over. www.theratinn.com

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MOTORING

SPRING 11

OH yES, IT’S A GTS When the car of your dreams is offered for a rigorous test drive you take it to its legal limits and ask questions of every feature. At least, that’s what Martin Hunt did. Plus, he enjoyed every second of it

BUSINESS QUARTER | SPRING 11

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SPRING 11

I’ll admit up-front that I am car mad. My friends would probably go further and say I am a car bore, and they’re probably right.

My obsession has led me to own at least 22 cars over the past 18 years, ranging from a Triumph Herald and a very rusty 1960s Fiat 500 to a Porsche 356 Speedster and a (frankly terrifying) TVR Cerbera 4.5. It’s also led me to embark on some unusual “road trips”, including a memorable recreation of the late, great automotive writer Phil Llewellyn’s famous Road to Muckle Flugga. I even get excited by the prospect of a “hire car” as it’s an opportunity to drive something new. So, when Bryan Hoare at publishers room501 phoned to ask me if I’d be interested in reviewing a car for BQ, I jumped at the chance. I’d have been delighted if it was going to be a Kia Picanto, but the jump quickly turned into a somersault when he said it was going to be the new Porsche 911 GTS.

Arriving at JCT600’s Silverlink dealership, the very knowledgeable Graham Ross showed me round this latest and very special iteration of the 997. Visually, first impressions of this latest in a long line of 911s are helped by the return to round headlamps. The GTS has the 44mm wider body found on the Turbo, giving it a superb planted stance. In my humble opinion, it makes the GTS the perfect model sitting between the lairy GT3 and almost-too-discrete standard 911. Jump into the driver’s seat and you are given an object lesson in the use of soft-touch switchgear and tasteful finishes.

The seating position and visibility are fantastic, giving you an instant feel for the edges of the car.

The £90,296 GTS has the 3.8 litre normallyaspirated flat six engine but with 408bhp, an extra 28bhp over the Carrera S model. It helps to launch the car to 62mph in 4.4 seconds and on to a top speed of 190mph. This particular

MOTORING

car has the excellent seven-speed PDK paddleshift gearbox and the Porsche Active Suspension Management (PASM) system.

Selecting the first of the two active damper settings – Normal – I find the ride surprisingly compliant given the 19 inch wheels, which >>

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BUSINESS QUARTER |SPRING 11

MOTORING

SPRING 11

What Bob says ...

are the very sexy, centre-locking RS Spyder rims. Onto the dual carriageway and I get my first opportunity to open the taps. The acceleration is so strong, and I love the way the nose lifts a little as the car squats on its haunches and flings itself up the road. Huge overtaking ability is but a brush of the accelerator away. As the revs climb, the cabin is instantly filled with that unmistakeable Porsche flat-six sound. It’s wonderful and there’s just enough of it filtering into the cabin to put a smile on your face without it becoming weary on motorway stints.

However, this car is fitted with the optional sports exhaust system which has a button on the dash that opens a butterfly valve in the backbox. Now the engine really sings and if you push on above 6000rpm it takes on a much more purposeful and menacing howl – it’s a real spine-tingler and begs you to go looking for tunnels.

Onto sweeping A roads, I select the Sport PASM setting and start to press a little harder.

Everything firms up and the car becomes more immediate in its responses. The steering is very good – jink into a turn and there’s no hint of hesitation before the nose tucks. Yes, the steering feels a little lighter than expected but you soon learn that the 911 is about delicate inputs, not brute force. The rear of the car moves about much more than I was expecting, but once you get used to this and gain the confidence to keep your foot planted, the back-end settles and then grips. Out here, the gearbox ratios allow you to easily stay in the

BUSINESS QUARTER | SPRING 11

power band and exploit the sweetspot between peak torque and peak power.

Weighing just 1420kg, it’s little wonder this thing shifts. Reining all this power in is a feelsome set of four pot-drilled and vented brakes. Once I have had my fill of adrenaline I spend the evening just cruising around, marvelling at just how good this car is at playing both Jekyll and Hyde.

By the end of my time with the Porsche I’ve added one (albeit very second-hand) to my mental shopping list for future cars. It’s a stunning machine and if you’re in the market for a fast, useable and characterful sports car then this should definitely make it onto your shortlist.

But as the GTS will likely be one of the last 997 models before a brand-new 998 version of the iconic 911 comes out later in the year, you’ll have to be quick. Talk about saving the best till last. n Martin E Hunt is Head of strategic marketing at Piramal Healthcare, one of the world’s leading contract development and manufacturing pharmaceutical organisations.

The Porsche 911 GTS is priced at £90,296 and was provided by JCT600 Porsche Centre Newcastle, Silverlink Park, Wallsend, Newcastle upon Tyne, Tyne & Wear, NE28 9ND. Tel: 0191 295 1234. www.porsche.co.uk/newcastle

66

It seems hard to believe that the 911 was originally launched in 1963.

Porsche originally named the car 901 but Peugeot objected to this, as they owned the rights to any numbers with a zero in the middle.

The 911 went on to dominate both the rallying and racing world. The car continued this success to become one of the world’s most successful competition cars ever.

Porsche launched the 911 GTS recently in both the Coupé and convertible. The car fits above the standard Carrera but below the GT3.

The GTS is the only 911 to get a wide track and that is a rear wheel drive.

Any Porsche buffs will no doubt notice the 19 inch RS Spyder alloy wheels. These wheels feature a central locking nut instead of the usual five wheel nuts. To emphasise the sporting nature of this car the wheels are painted black.

Any unnecessary weight has been stripped out of the car. The Coupé version loses its rear seats but they can be re added at no extra cost.

The cars interior is finished in Alcantara.

The 3-spoke steering wheel is exclusive to the GTS, it lets you know when launch control, sport or sport plus are activated.

The steering wheel, handbrake and gear lever are all covered in Alcantara as it has been proven on the racetrack.

Prior to driving this car the 911 Turbo was always my pick of the range. Driving the GTS has changed my mind - not only is it cheaper than the Turbo but on my opinion it is the best 911 on sale today!

Bob Aurora is an independent car reviewer and also owns Sachins restaurant on Forth Banks, Newcastle. bob@bq-magazine.co.uk

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EQUIPMENT

SPRING 11

a dash of genius It’s a name that spells everything that’s stylish about style. Chris Porter reports on Porsche Design, a company interested in more than just cars With its elegant lines, white, composite plastic case and serrated bulb, one would be forgiven for thinking that it was some kind of concept communications tool. Look closer, however, and the name on its side, Porsche Design, suggests that maybe this is some form of ignition key, or a car door handle. It is, in fact, a pipe.

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That a name like Porsche – all speed and sex – should produce anything as prosaic, sedentary and old-mannish as a pipe might at first prompt thoughts of returning your Carrera to the nearest dealer. This would be a mistake. While design studios typically remain anonymous, letting the brand selling the product take the credit, Porsche Design is an

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exception – part back-room creators, part status name, it is true that its founder, Ferdinand Alexander Porsche designed the car company’s masterpiece, the 911. But then, coming up to 40 years ago, he went on to establish an independent studio that would turn its attention to the perfecting not only of cranes, trams and even dental chairs for other

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companies – more recently a super-yacht for Royal Falcon and furniture for Poltrona Frau – but would launch the cream of its design thinking under its own name.

“Of course, the first part of our name creates a certain awareness,” says Juergen Gessler, the CEO of Porsche Design, based in Zell Am See in Austria. “But there has to be design integrity and quality to convince anyone to buy one of our products and we’re selling mostly to people who do not own a Porsche.

They’re people who appreciate a very modern, very puristic design language – it is a classic ‘form follows function’ approach.”

It is also, Gessler concedes, an especially masculine style – austere, minimalistic, with lots of black and white, like the contents of a dream bachelor pad.

“Or at least it’s masculine if you define the curved form as being feminine,” he jokes.

“We don’t do many curves. But really it’s a look that appeals to a certain type of person who tends to have a knowledge of design and places a lot of importance in it. They are into the technique and materials of a design rather than the brand on it.”

That rigour is one of the characteristics that makes the brand unusual – an unwillingness to add pop colours or pretty graphics to make a product stand out, preferring understatement that is almost monastic.

“Bold is OK,” says Gessler, whose industrial design career started out with Mercedes and BMW. “It’s just not for us.”

The second is its readiness to launch only those products where the design team feels it has made a genuine improvement on what is already available. And, not exactly a compliment to the wider design community, the third is the diversity of products in which it has found improvements to make. Luggage comes with stain-resistant coating and silent-running wheels; pens come in anti-corrode materials and with flexible barrels; its spectacles fold almost completely flat; its mobile phone is milled from a single aluminium block; its desk lamp was among the first to use LED lighting. Fashion, footwear and watches offer some smart ideas too.

Recent products have included sunglasses with a unique lens replacement system (swap the lenses according to the ideal light >>

EQUIPMENT

Really it’s a look that appeals to a certain type of person who tends to have a knowledge of design and places a lot of importance in it Awareness: Juergen Gessler believes totally in design integrity and quality

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conditions for the activity at hand), a fountain pen with a system that prevents the nib from drying out and a briefcase designed following research to understand exactly what typical users might want to carry with them and how, rather than providing a design with endless compartments, none of them the right size for good use. And as for that pipe... The ribbed effect is actually an integrated cooling system – akin to that used in motorcycle engines – to ensure the body is always comfortable to hold but the optimum temperature for the tobacco is maintained... Such thinking has won the company more than 120 prestigious Red Dot and ADI Milan design awards. New luggage lines, as well as small leather goods and

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additional watches are on the sketchpad.

Indeed, Gessler argues that it is precisely because Porsche Design’s designers are not specialists in any one field, but are ready to cross-fertilise ideas from other design disciplines, that its products are innovative. “(That way of working) has a very inspiring effect,” he says. “Rather than working on one kind of product all the time our designers jump from one product world to the next.

Today it’s a new watch, tomorrow the interior of a business jet. ‘Porsche Design style’ is more a way of thinking. And a timely one – design is set to play a much more important part in buying decisions for consumers.”

It is certainly a thinking that has appeal – Porsche AG, the car company that shares the name, finally recognised a good thing in 2003 when it joined with Porsche Design to create the Porsche Design Group, launched to maximise the car brand’s potential beyond the auto industry. Gessler’s Porsche Design, meanwhile, has some 500 points-of-sale around the world, as well as 106 of its own stores, and expects to open a further 150 or so shops over the next five years – essential, Gessler suggests, to allow consumers to experience what he calls the Porsche Design world.

“There is certainly scope for more design studios to become brands in their own right, although that was never Ferdinand Porsche’s intention,” he adds. “Most of our design work is still anonymous for third party companies and that remains important in terms of generating ideas. But the fact is that there is power in creating your own products too...”

Are there, in fact, any product categories to which Porsche Design would not turn its sharpened pencil and CAD software? There is one it has considered repeatedly, Gessler admits, although never quite committed to – laptops. Why? Because laptops have never

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Rather than working on one kind of product all the time, our designers jump from one product world to the next been regarded as means of expressing their user’s personality.

“They have simply been devices,” says Gessler.

“But, people use to say that about mobile phones and they are now important status items. And the laptop market seems to be going that way too. So maybe...”

Watch out Apple. n

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SALUTE THE ARISTO MOVEMENT The clothing brand associated with Aston Martin, rowing, rugger and Oxbridge started life on a French fleamarket barrow. Chris Porter delves into Hackett

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FASHION

Jeremy Hackett can recall when “vintage” clothing was still called “second-hand”.

“Although the rarity of the clothing was appreciated even then, it was still known as ‘second hand’,” says the habitué of market stalls. “Call it ‘vintage’ and you can add another nought. I recently found a pair of white British naval trousers with a kind of side fastener I’ve never seen before and of which, I thought, ‘that’s nice, we’ll copy those’.”

“Although copying old clothes is not like going into a modern menswear store and buying something and copying it. I can’t really do that anyway, they all know me in the shops,” he jokes.

Hackett’s own name graces the front of some 60 shops globally (including Edinburgh and york), now generators of a $100m annual turnover and outlets for the quintessential English style that the brand promotes – an Englishness so hyper-real as to have done for the sartorial traditions of the tweed suit, the city stripe, Sloaney weekend sweaters and loud socks as Ralph Lauren has done for Americana. Lauren, indeed, was a customer of Hackett when he and his then business partner Ashley Lloyd-Jennings were running their own market stall in London’s Portobello during >>

BUSINESS QUARTER |SPRING 11

FASHION

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the booming 80s. The duo, both salesmen on Savile Row at the time, had visited Paris’s Clignancourt flea-market one weekend, finding a trader doing a roaring trade in the old hunting, shooting and fishing clothing of the traditional English gent. The trader hired the duo to supply him from London, but they soon found that they had a market for it themselves – selling old but clean, repaired, properly displayed and hand-made suits to the well-to-do but not quite well-heeled. Soon their little store at the wrong end of Chelsea’s Kings Road became something of a destination – thus fulfilling the prophetic warning of Hackett’s father that, unless the boy pulled his stripy socks up, he would end up working in a shop.

“We weren’t really selling vintage as fashion then, as it is widely sold now,” Hackett adds.

“We were selling to young City guys who would rather buy a good second-hand suit than one for the same price from a high-street retailer. We’d get old ladies calling to tell us their husbands had died and would we clean out their wardrobes. Sometimes those wardrobes were absolutely fantastic. We cleared out the brother of the singer Jack Buchanan and this guy was the perfect size 42L. We bought 50 suits at £10 each, and each pair of trousers had braces on them.

We sold the braces for £10 each and the suits for £100 each. Sometimes we’d be told that the departed was tall and slim and we’d get there and clearly he had been a short fat man.

We went through quite a lot of dead men’s wardrobes.”

But there were not enough dead men.

Demand soon outstripped supply, so Hackett and Lloyd-Jennings had clothes made in the style of their second-hand pieces. And a brand

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FASHION

was born. One, indeed, whose potential was noted by the Richemont luxury goods group, which bought it less than a decade later, selling it five years onto the Pepe Jeans Group.

And one that would actually come to be appreciated by the full social spectrum of thrusting, late 20th century England, from young aristos on the razz in Fulham to lads on the football terraces during Euro 2000, the latter drawn to Hackett’s somewhat prescient re-appreciation of then still sadly nationalistic St George cross (“Becoming what was perceived as a hooligan brand, well, we sold a lot of polo shirts but it’s not very aspirational is it? Not unless you’re a hooligan,” Hackett quips).

But whether your estate is council or populated by deer, the Hackett image has, the man concedes, a welcome touch of fantasy about it. Many think the brand has been passed down through the generations, but the Hackett of long associations with Aston Martin and rowing, rugby and polo is only 28 years old. It is sponsor of the British Army team, and also, less well known, of the Sussex Spaniel Association, with Jeremy Hackett’s own spaniels having appeared in the company’s ad campaigns since they were puppies.

“And, what is more, I don’t play polo or rugby, I don’t row and I don’t have an Aston Martin,” says Hackett.

This is the Hackett of Eton and Harrow house colours and the blazers of the Oxbridge boat race – an event Hackett also sponsors – although Hackett the man did not have those privileged beginnings either. He left school and went to work at 16.

There is, he explains, a certain appeal to the English look – it is more comfortable classics than high style; decidedly male when >>

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fashion likes to play with gender; it is tailored and dependable. It is also a formula that is working worldwide – the company is now expanding into the Far and Middle East, launching in Australia and pushing into the US. If Ralph Lauren has been selling his own idea of Englishness, here is a company from over the pond to show how it is done.

“I think we’ve probably romanced that English look a bit, because otherwise a plain grey suit is just a plain grey suit, with nothing to get much excited by,” admits Hackett, who recently redesigned the company logo as a fun take on the skull and crossbones, only now with a bowler hat and crossed umbrellas.

“Yet if that English look doesn’t really exist as it’s imagined then people certainly like it, extraordinarily so. In fact, it’s a look that’s probably worn much more outside of England than inside it. After all, Italians are the best-dressed Englishmen there are. Distance lends enchantment, I suppose. I mean, we all love Armani and Prada over here in Britain.

Well I don’t – but you see what I mean...” n

I think we’ve probably romanced that English look a bit, otherwise a plain grey suit is just a plain grey suit

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SPRING 11

NOW yOU SEE IT...

An unexpected package may have had Dave Streather, senior business development manager at Lloyds TSB, reaching out of his Bordeaux comfort zone, but it made him think all the same

When I was asked to review a couple of wines on behalf of BQ, in my mind the request would play to my strengths – my love of French wine, particulary those from around Bordeaux.

I agreed happily to undertake such an onerous task as long as the wines that I’d taste would be from that particular region – staying within my comfort zone with wines that I drink frequently, but perhaps savour a drop which I hadn’t come across before.

No problem said BQ, we’ll arrange that for you and have the wines delivered to Lloyds at Grey Street. Fair to say that when the well wrapped bottles arrived and I delved through the packaging for the Bordeaux beauties, the wines that surfaced were certainly not what was expected and created an initial sense of disappointment rather than anticipation – my taste buds weren’t energised!

So, what did I have to savour? Let’s deal with the white offering first – a bottle of Spanish wine from the northern Navarra region, a 2009 Blanco Seco, Aga. This looked a perfect candidate for an early evening drink on

BUSINESS QUARTER | SPRING 11

the patio enjoying the last rays of spring sunshine at the same time.

The tasting notes on the company website promise: “Flavourful , powerful, fresh palate with expressive fruits, varietal and quite persistent.”

Fine words, and certainly the last comment of “quite persistent” runs true for me. Described as a dry white, this is blend of grapes, 30% Chardonnay, 30% Sauvignon Blanc, and 40% Moscatel and whilst the first two usually do it for me, the addition of the sweeter Moscatel I found overpowering and just made the offering too sweet – for me anyway – in both nose and taste.

As they say, “first impressions last”. That said, I did persist with another glass – my thinking being that if the label said persistent then I should be too. Fair to say that with the second glass I did find the dryness coming through more and I thought I could detect some grapefruit within the lingering flavours – certainly different to the tasting notes.

I do know that my father-in-law who shared a glass with me enjoyed this wine – he always complains that I serve wine that he finds far too dry.

So whilst not one for me to rush to buy, clearly a wine which should appeal this summer to those who favour a medium/dry offering. Spookily, the bottle did get emptied.

Turning to the red – a little more interesting and up my street I thought. Whilst South African in origin, it was described as a “Bordeaux blend” from Klein Steenberg, Constantia.

So what did the blend

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constitute? 21% Cabernet Sauvignon, 5% Cabernet Franc and a massive 74% of Merlot – the wine is aged for circa 12-14 months in French oak casks and blended after ageing.

The tasting notes describe the wine as: “This easy drinking red is medium bodied with distinct ripe berry aromas, complemented by gentle oak. These aromas are carried through onto the palate creating a well balanced, structured and rewarding wine.”

As with the white, I chose to drink this wine initially on its own (and on my own), again enjoying the late evening sun. Not surprisingly, I did find this wine much more to my liking – quite a strong nose – and I do agree with the tasting notes that the berry aromas come through strongly.

It went down well with the beef stew which followed the patio relaxation. If I’m honest, I would still look to spend my money on what I consider the “real thing”, a Bordeaux appellation where I believe there is still reasonable value, given the quality of the last few harvests and where I think the wine delivers greater complexity of flavour. That said, this was a very pleasant wine to “quaff” and I’d happily serve this to any future guest.

Overall, a very enjoyable experience but perhaps reinforcing my belief that mostly it’s best to stick to what you know you’ll like. n White: 2009 Blanco Seco, Aga, Navarra, Spain. £8.04 Red: Bordeaux Blend, Klein Steenberg, Constantia, South Africa. £8.22 Available online from www.michaeljoblingwines.com

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INTERVIEW

SPRING 11

200 yEARS yOUNG In today’s ephemeral world of business and public affairs you need to move with the times to survive and, as Gillian Hall tells Brian Nicholls, this is exactly what she and her fellow lawyers are doing as they pass a 200-year milestone

yes, it is bicentenary year and (hesitation)...”Umm, we shall be doing something for clients, staff and friends, I think.

It’s one of those things you want to celebrate.

But it’s very important to pitch it properly.”

This is the otherwise incisive Gillian Hall, senior partner of lawyers Watson Burton, choosing words carefully now. Why? “Two hundred years is something to be proud of,” she says. “But you must also look to the future. And in these difficult times in the region, and in the economy generally, you’ve got to pitch it right.”

But of course, she adds reassuringly, something will be arranged. There’s no hesitation in discussing the firm’s progress.

“Although we’re a national firm now,” she says, “with offices in London and Leeds, most of us work out of Newcastle office.”

Perhaps in the past the firm could have been more active in the local market in that respect.

“I am trying to raise the profile,” she points out, “and I think we’ve had some success there. I think more people know about us now. Ten years ago it was a matter of pride that we didn’t advertise, do PR – anything like that. We sat under our bushel doing very good work for very good clients, as now. But markets change. When you’re a big employer and have been in the area for 200 years you have a responsibility to it.”

This indeed is her personal responsibility for, as she explains, she’s a senior not a managing partner, and different law firms run in different ways. Watson Burton is run by a senior

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management team in which, of course, she’s prominent. But Gillian Hall also remains a corporate lawyer.

“All I’ve done for almost 20 years is argue about money in one form or another – always doing the best deal possible for my client. I’ve then taken responsibility for teams doing that in the region and nationally, and I’m still very active in the corporate finance market.

So she spends an equivalent of one day a week on senior partner work and the rest of the week in corporate finance.

“As senior partner, my role is to be visible in the market and among clients. I don’t golf or go to every party, but I try to do things where my skills set and the skills set I can draw on within the firm will benefit the firm and the region.”

Visionary: Robert Spence Watson, pioneering partner with his father Joseph

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As a CBI regional councillor she doesn’t just attend meetings.

“I’m doing work now in relation to the Local Enterprise Partnership,” she says. “If we’re in something we participate. I try to bring something to the table. “ She also belongs to the Institute of Directors, Newcastle Law Society and maybe yet the North East Industrial Development Board because, she laughs, she hasn’t been told yet that she’s sacked. The board apportioned GBI grants – incentives to bring firms to the region – and as the Government has scrapped these she may eventually learn that job has ended.

Internally, the senior partner has to remind everyone of a world outside, and to input on strategy.

“This is a role we felt was needed,” she says.

“The only question was, who? We’re not precious about who’s got what job. I have a corporate skills set. I’m well known and I hope respected in the market. I’m not over-talkative.

But clients tell me when I do speak they are prepared to listen!”

When she entered law there were few women lawyers in the North East – and only she and Catherine Wood (ex-Muckle, now Sintons) were corporate lawyers. That was in the mid-80s. If it sounds Victorian it indicates perhaps the recent pace of change in her profession.

Today’s legal market is intensely competitive.

Gillian explains: “you have to be very business focused and work out what your business is.

And you’re only as good as your last job. you

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can only lose your reputation once. It’s so fast today, so much business being by e-mail. But your reactions still have to be considered.”

Different clients need different approaches too if, like Watson Burton for example, you’re acting for the Nuclear Decommissioning Agency as compared with the owner of a local small business selling up. One’s a sophisticated buyer of legal services, the other trying perhaps to sell their lifetime’s work for a pension. Mind sets need adjusting.

Hall says: “Firms that put their clients at the heart of the business will be those successful in this very competitive market, where the legal business landscape is also changing. you cannot rest on your laurels, not even on 200 years of laurels.” “you must adapt quickly. Even 200 years ago there must have been a fair amount of looking forward and tweaking to get a firm to a position where it is still here after 200 years.”

But there’s still a vast difference today between the lawyer’s historic office Watson Burton helped replicate at Beamish Museum and its modern spacious suites aloft at 1 St James Gate in Newcastle – the difference, for example, between reading Jane Austen on Kindle and watching her actually scratch out Sense And Sensibility, which she was doing about the time Watson Burton’s door first opened.

Gillian’s thinking now of Robert Spence Watson. Is he a company icon? (Again, hesitation) then: “I think so. We’ve a very nice portrait of him we brought when we moved here. It didn’t suit these rooms. So it’s in safe keeping somewhere. I think it will be nice to put it on an easel perhaps in reception.”

Visitors would see a curly-bearded figure akin to a Father Christmas in mufti, promising cordiality such as Gillian’s today. He first partnered his father Joseph as J and RS Watson in 1860.

“He was fascinating,” Hall agrees. “A Quaker interested in so many things – clearly a business person but looking after the unions too, and setting up universities. He had a finger in every interesting pie.”

He did indeed. Along the road, inside an august 1825 building, his name also appears on the tablet listing past presidents of the Literary and Philosophical Society of >>

INTERVIEW

Gillian Hall: the person Gillian Hall, who’s 50, was the first in her Tyneside farming family to go to university. She took A levels in Greek, Latin and history to Cambridge gaining a first in law.

But it was through accompanying her father to the annual wool market that she had learned a lot about dealing. The family’s living standard for the rest of the year largely depended on success of negotiations then.

She worked for the City law firm Lovell White King. But, disliking London, she returned to the North East. After six months at Watson Burton she switched to industry and, with North East engineering titan NEI (RIP) she handled major engineering contracts.

But within months she was missing the variety in work that a law firm offers. It was back to Watson Burton, its corporate finance team, and a goal of being a partner within three years. This, she did in 1988. On becoming senior partner in June 2010 – the firm’s third such appointment in six years after its relocation from Collingwood Street – she had headed the corporate team for 18 years and was now noted as the first woman in the North of England to be made senior partner of a full-service law firm.

Chambers Legal Directory has referred to her “outstanding” knowledge and willingness to go “beyond the call of duty”, while The Legal 500, the profession’s other repository of reputations, sees her as “a consummate professional”. The same publication reckons the firm itself provides a “superb level of service.”

She is married to Richard Whitaker, a lecturer in business management at Durham and Northumbria Universities. They and their son Daniel, 14, live at Whitley Bay.

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INTERVIEW

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Newcastle, the country’s largest independent library outside London. His name fits easily between those of great scientists and engineers who also held the position – Robert Stephenson, Lord Armstrong, and Sir Joseph Wilson Swan.

Spence Watson, purveyor of literacy as well as law, presided between 1901 and 1911, having been honorary secretary for 31 years from 1862, and written the society’s history in 1897. With his love of learning he helped found the Durham College of Science in 1871, later Armstrong College, then Newcastle University. He became first president there in 1910.

He campaigned for university extension in the North and creation of the Newcastle Free Public Library. A lifelong Quaker active in the Liberal Party, he entered the Privy Council in 1907 and remained an active lawyer almost until he died.

“It does make you wonder when he quite fitted the legal work in,” Gillian laughs, admiringly. But among other things he pioneered arbitration in trade disputes, umpiring solely on 47 such disagreements between 1884 and 1904. A notable contemporary called him “perhaps the greatest living authority in England on labour questions”.

The practice is proud his name is in its name, and that he influenced the firm’s growth.

“Some clients he acted for, we still act for,” Hall observes. “Our work now in schools converting to academies, the university technology colleges too, ties in with relations he built with education.

“He didn’t say: ‘I’m a lawyer – I am only reactive.’ Most lawyers simply respond to clients’ wishes. But here was a chap who said: “This area needs a university,” or something like that, and he and his chums went off and did it. He had an analytical brain, used his business skills and looked after his clients.”

Like Watson associating with pioneers of engineering then, his successors today are in frontline developments. The cover of the firm’s newly launched in-house journal indicates how Watson Burton not only represents offshore businesses and some big American power companies, but also the National Renewable Energy Centre (Narec), the UK’s North

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We need to look forward, building the business for clients and staff so we have another 200 years’ success East-based centre for renewable energy and low carbon technologies.

“We’ve moved on 150 years,” Hall observes.

“That Robert Spence Watson was so involved in doing what was best for the area is something we still aspire to.”

Watson Burton is active today in 16 or more sectors of business, from banking to sport. It has emerged successfully from a difficult 2009 when, like many other law firms recently, it had to pay off people: 50 out of 300 reportedly. It was clearly one of Hall’s unhappiest professional experiences, horrible for those redundant and unpleasant also for those having to make colleagues redundant – “realising you’re in a better position than those it’s being done to”.

And amid survivors’ guilt the worry of whether it will happen again.

She says: “You have to put a lot of effort into motivating people and getting them to

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understand it probably won’t happen again.”

The firm, now around 29 partners and 140 others, is recruiting again, bringing in some names well known in the region, and also at the younger end from London and locally.

There’s determination to restore staffing numbers to pre-recession level, plus one.

Eyebrows rose in the profession when the firm opened offices at Leeds in 2005 and in London – in the Gherkin building, no less – in 2007.

“Leeds is a tight market where we are holding our own,” she reports. “London for us is a niche of construction and professional indemnity. That’s going incredibly well and we’re picking up some good international construction clients.”

In the recession the partners have tightened their belt a little.

“Transactional work where there’s reliance on banks for funding was hit initially,” she says.

“People just stopped doing stuff. But that improved. We’re also strong in property development, which banks will still not support. We and our clients have found other routes. We’ve also found other real estate products to deal in. We have a good reputation nationally now for ground rent sales and are working with a number of funds in the City. We looked for new clients, new workstreams, and at how we could help our clients further.”

Ability to offer London clients service at Newcastle rates has been helpful.

“Revenue levels within all the disciplines are fine,” she says. “People say there’s no construction going on but the revenue is still there. And, if you’re lucky enough to be an employment lawyer you can do fantastically well.”

If the Budget improves business it will be good for lawyers, too. But 50,000 people are still being made redundant in the public sector, she reminds us. All in all, though, she thinks there’ll be cause for cheer when the firm’s latest accounts are filed, and Spence Watson might feel proud if he saw the firm’s progress in general.

“We’re not resting on our laurels,” she says.

“We need always to look forward, building the business for clients and staff so we have another 200 years of success. You have to keep reinventing yourself.” n

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COMPANY PROFILE

Need for increased funding will bring challenge for local companies Some companies are now beginning to experience increased activity, which is encouraging, but will create an important funding challenge, according to Simon McIntosh of Grant Thornton UK LLP. Simon has a corporate finance background and operates as part of the Recovery and Restructuring team of Grant Thornton across the North of England. He explains “ We continue to face a difficult and challenging environment.

However, recently, some companies have begun to experience an increase in positive activity having weathered a difficult period and are now seeing increased order intake and sales activity. This is bringing the challenge of sourcing adequate working capital funding to deliver this growth” The general perception is that available funding is difficult to source and that traditional lenders are not supporting companies. This is in part correct, but Simon has successfully raised finance recently for a number of companies. Simon believes that

there are a number of key points common to a successful finance raising: • Understanding and demonstrating the current overall viability of the business; • Fully understanding the working capital needs of the business in the short to medium term, recognising that the working capital cycles may have significantly changed, for example due to less availability of supplier credit and customers generally taking longer to settle debts; • Considering the best sources of funding, which may not always comprise the more traditional routes of overdraft and/or term loan. Simon notes an increasing using of invoice discounting and other asset based lending generally and comments that there are a number of specialists in this area who are currently very active in providing new facilities to companies. He is also a firm supporter of the regional funds available in the North East, which can often provide significant assistance to

SME’s and can usefully bridge any gap in an overall package where traditional lenders are unable to assist; and • Preparing and presenting an appropriate financing proposal for approaching potential lenders.

Overall Simon concludes that “Raising finance remains challenging but achievable. Now more than ever it is essential that businesses utilise an appropriate advisory team to assist them in this process, with funding definitely available for viable well researched and presented propositions”

Simon McIntosh, Director Tel: 0191 203 7792

It’s not what you know, It’s who you know!

Ever wondered what makes an inspirational leader tick? Ever wondered how they got to where they are now? By attending the Bridge Club’s exciting series of monthly ‘In Conversation with...’ events, you’ll be able to find out!

Inspirational speaker events to put in your diary include:

Thursday 14th April David Harker, Chief Executive of Durham County Cricket Club Thursday 19th May

Valda Goodfellow, Managing Director of Continental Chef Supplies Ltd

Tuesday 14th June

Helen McArdle, Chair and Founder of Helen McArdle Care

These events will take place from 5.30pm for a 6pm start at Newcastle Business School at Northumbria University and tickets are priced at £20.00+ booking fee +vat.

For more information on each of these events and to book your tickets, visit: www.newcastlebusinessschool.co.uk/bridgeclubevents.aspx In Partnership with

Supported by

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BUSINESS QUARTER |SPRING 11

COMPANY PROFILE

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Hay & Kilner’s specialist dealmakers covered all legal aspects of the sale, including corporate finance, employment and commercial property related issues.

HAY & KILNER ADVISES ON DEAL FOR DANIELI

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EADING Newcastle based law firm, Hay & Kilner has assisted Danieli Holdings on the sale of one of its subsidiary businesses, Careline Homecare, as part of the group’s ambitious growth plans to create an additional 200 jobs in the region.

Careline, a market-leading domiciliary care provider in the North East, was acquired by national care provider City & County Healthcare Group for an undisclosed sum. Careline will continue to provide high quality “care in the community” for its many elderly and disabled service-users.

Neill Winch, director of the Danieli group, engaged a multidisciplinary team of lawyers from Hay & Kilner to cover all legal aspects of the sale, including corporate finance, employment and commercial property related issues.

He commented: “Hay & Kilner has consistently provided an excellent service to the Danieli group. We are delighted to be able to expand our operations into the respite care market and to help create jobs for the North East.”

The Danieli group was set up three years ago and has a turnover of around £15m. It includes the Northridge Care and Phoenix Security businesses, as well as business training provider Executive Training Solutions.

Mark Adams, corporate finance partner, led the Hay & Kilner legal team, which included employment lawyer Sarah Furness and commercial property specialist Gail Marshall. Commenting on the share sale, Mark Adams said: “We were delighted to work with Danieli Holdings throughout the sale of Careline. The deal was done in what was ultimately a very tight timescale,

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neill Winch, Director of the Danieli group (third from the left) with the Hay & kilner team. (l-r) Sarah Furness, Mark Adams and Gail Marshall.

HAY & KILNER HAS CONSISTENTLY PROVIDED AN EXCELLENT SERVICE TO THE DANIELI GROUP

but will undoubtedly help the group fund its ambitious and exciting expansion plans. We wish Neill Winch and the directors every success and are sure that Danieli will continue to go from strength to strength.”

Danieli has already embarked on a new venture via its subsidiary, Northridge Care, with planned developments in Whitley Bay, Gateshead and Northumberland. The three facilities are expected to create around 200 care jobs in the region.

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Hay & kilner, a 25-partner newcastle based law firm, offers a complete legal service to individuals, corporate clients and institutions, locally, nationally and overseas. recommended in 23 work areas by independently researched legal guide, The legal 500, Hay & kilner is ISo 9001 accredited and holds the law Society lexcel Quality standard.

Visit www.hay-kilner.co.uk for more information. Tel. 0191 232 8345.

Entrepreneurs’ Relief - worth a conversation?

The March Budget doubled Entrepreneurs’ Relief (ER) to £10m from 6 April 2011. ER can reduce an individual’s capital gains tax by £1.8m, meaning a married couple can save £3.6m of tax between them. You may qualify for ER if you own shares, or assets, in a trading business, but there are conditions to be met. If you would like to discuss whether you could benefit from ER please contact: Dermot Callinan, KPMG’s Northern based UK head of Private Client on 0113 2313358 or dermot.callinan@kpmg.co.uk or alternatively Jodie Barwick-Bell on 0191 4013840 or jodie.barwick-bell@kpmg.co.uk kpmg.co.uk

© 2011 KPMG LLP, a UK limited liability partnership, is a subsidiary of KPMG Europe LLP and a member firm of the KPMG network of independent member firms affiliated with KPMG International Cooperative, a Swiss entity.

Six million people count on buses to get to Metrocentre’s shops every year Find out more about how important buses are to business in Tyne and Wear at nexus.org.uk/bus

BUSINESS QUARTER | SPRING 11

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ENTREPRENEUR

Light and sound Kristina Simpson tells Brian Nicholls how she saw the light starting a business on a credit card, and paused to become a mother before taking her venture further ahead

If you love the North East but don’t find a job to match your aspiration, it could be time to start a business here instead.

Homesick Kristina Simpson did that on return to Tyneside. She lights people’s lives now.

She’d been employed in London and Edinburgh for six years with high-end lighting design companies, involved with the like of Gucci and Royal Bank of Scotland – experiences enviable to any designer.

Today, working from Gateshead International Business Centre – and often the “mobile office” of her cellphone – Kristina, 31, has in four years created her own lighting design business with prestigious clients both regionally and in London’s cut-throat market.

Focused spotlights, downlighting, colourchange integrated and low level lighting, mood-changing controls to adjust automatically throughout the day – these are some of the tools on the palette, enabling her to exude senses of warmth or coolness, calm or excitement. Be it bar, boutique, hair salon or something much bigger, the magic works.

It is she who has flooded the recently-opened Rockcliffe Hall at Darlington – the North East’s newest five-star hotel – with colour outside and in, and restaurants at London’s O2 Dome.

Her latest project is another Darlington hotel, this time a town-centre boutique model called 11 Houndgate, for local construction and civil engineering firm Bussey and Armstrong.

Operating alone as KLS Lighting Design – she even does her own photography – she has given Middlesbrough Town Hall new brass chandeliers (reducing energy consumption by half), and has also recreated original chandeliers to replace old and unsafe sodium lights in Middlesbrough’s Reference Library.

She has also brightened the town’s crematorium with her expertise.

Former Newcastle United stalwart Shay Given and his family had looked forward to relaxing amid her luminant creations in their luxury home at Tranwell Woods, Morpeth. But Given, the Irish Republic’s most-capped goalkeeper ever, didn’t stay.

“I think we’d just finished the project when he was transferred to Manchester City,” Simpson says. “Such a shame... He’d been dying to move in for ages. I think the family moved in for Christmas then had to move out soon after. For me it was a lovely project, working with two interior designers.”

Her private clients tend to be upmarket.

“A house needs big rooms to make design

I was quite naive at first. I had loads of work. You invoice people and think you’ll get the money within 30 days. It doesn’t happen like that

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lighting effective and my services worthwhile,” she explains, but pointing out also: “It doesn’t matter to me how much you spend – say, £2 or £50 on a fitting, for example, I still must do the same amount of work.”

She has just completed a commission – not a multi-million but a half-million pound house – at Bishop Auckland.

“The occupant has spent about £25,000 on the lighting,” she says. “I said it’s a lot to spend on lighting alone, although it is a lovely barn conversion. But she preferred to spend her money on creative lighting than on an interior designer. Some people like to spend on a flash car – or on all-granite work tops. It depends what you want.

“It was a lovely project; she put a lot of trust in me. I sit with people, get a feel for their tastes. Do they want the house traditional or modern?

“Residential is a lot more about taste. A bar or cafe is quicker to complete. A house can be eight projects in one, counting all the rooms.

There may also be a gym, a swimming pool, an exterior. Something like a restaurant tends to represent one project.”

What of Rockcliffe, her biggest job yet?

“That was about a hundred projects in one,” she agrees. “I worked three-and-a-half years on it, having got the job a couple of months after starting my business in April 2007.”

There, latest technology in lamps and luminaires was used, and unlimited control installed for scene settings, also energy saving – all without letting function win over aesthetics. The outcome? Nick Holmes, managing director of Rockcliffe Hall, said >>

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ENTREPRENEUR afterwards: “We’re thrilled to have found someone of Kristina’s talents almost on our doorstep.”

From Ponteland originally, Simpson was drawn to design lighting at Westfield School, Newcastle, where she designed and lit the school theatre sets. An art foundation course at Newcastle College followed, and later she gained a BA (Hons) in lighting and interior design at Leeds Metropolitan University.

“I didn’t know then there was a design industry in lighting,” she recalls. She knew of a “boring” lighting industry. Through her father in electrical wholesale, she gained work experience with a lighting manufacturer.

“It nearly put me off, four lights on a bowling court type of thing,” she says. “Then I learned from magazines and websites about companies into lighting design.”

Opportunity lay mainly in London. She got a job in her first interview.

“Not many people do my kind of thing. It’s an industry short of skills,” she says. “Anyone with enthusiasm soon gets soaked up.”

She loved her job, hated London. Initial efforts to find work in Newcastle failed. An offer from an Edinburgh firm had her thinking: “Well, it’s

How it’s done Usually Kristina Simpson meets a client to get a feel for the job, then slots into any team involved, which could include interior designer, architect, mechanical and electrical engineer and contractor.

Her drawings reflect the client’s broad preferences in lighting and lamps – LED, tungsten, halogen or fluorescent for example. Choice of fittings is secondary.

“How warm will the area be? If a corridor, will it be lit all the time? With high ceilings you must consider maintenance. you also need an idea of costs expected,” she explains.

“Clients get a budget before the job goes to tender. I always work in the client’s best interests. Being independent, I’m not biased towards any manufacturer.”

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Star in shadow: Rockcliffe Hall Orangerie, for which Kristina Simpson created the lighting. not far.” She bought a house there, expecting to settle.

“I loved the city and the company I worked for, and I still keep in touch with them,” she says. “We’ve actually pitched for a job together. It’s nice to keep good relationships.”

Long term, though, Tyneside called. She could trace no full-time independent lighting designers in the North East, other than one in Durham since retired, and with whom she also stays in touch.

“Some lighting people offer free service when they sell their light fittings,” she says. “But no-one between Edinburgh and Leeds, as far as I know, does what I do. I’m lucky too because I don’t need staff. A couple of projects and I’m happy. No need to make lots and lots of money, although it’s great when I do to safeguard against quieter times.”

Her successful application for a vacancy in lighting design with Apex Electrical in Gateshead finally got her back to Tyneside.

Home again! “Everyone had said I was going to the dark side working for a wholesaler,” she says. “But my eyes were opened to the technical side – the nitty gritty of trying to supply light fittings and that kind of thing.”

She built her own contacts and worked for herself at weekends. By the time her business

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was launched she was already in demand.

Financing it, however, was unconventional – risky, even – for she started with nothing.

“I had no capital. I’d got a loan to pay off about £6,000 outstanding on my credit cards.

Instead of doing that immediately I used some of the loan as start-up capital and continued to live off the cards.”

Her father offered to lend £2,000, but she demurred in case she might really need it later.

“I wanted to do it on my own,” she says. “I was quite naive at first. I had loads of work. you invoice and think you’ll get the money within 30 days. It doesn’t happen like that.

“Within months I was in dire straits, thinking, ‘Oh, my God. It’s awful people not paying up when you’re a young girl starting off on her own.’ I showed the bank all the work I had on and they gave me a bit of money to keep me going. Last year, though, I paid off everything.”

She rang debtors persistently – “it knocks your confidence when people don’t pay” – then was recommended to a debt-chasing firm that only charged a couple of pounds to send a first letter. That seems to work. But one “particularly awful” debtor wouldn’t pay because one light fitting on the project didn’t quite fit. >>

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ENTREPRENEUR

“He’s a bully – just because I’m a woman,” she thought. But in fact he paid no-one on that job, she learned later. By then, she was so upset that her work was affected.

“My dad said I’d have to write it off. ‘It’s affecting you getting more work in,’ he told me. I was constantly on the phone trying to get a couple of thousand when I could have been making more elsewhere.”

Even so, she still runs the finances herself, apart from the annual returns her accountant prepares. Business Link helped with funding for her accountant to tutor her, and she attended two one-day courses.

“I have an A level in business studies and the courses acted as a refresher,” she says. “At least I know now what my accountant is talking about when he mentions profit and loss.”

Small is beautiful Kristina Simpson expects her business five years from now to be still small, personal and prosperous, but covering the entire country from Tyneside.

She’s wistful, though, as she looks from the office window across the Tyne to St Nicholas Cathedral in Newcastle. She pitched for a contract to light it and knew many people associated with the cathedral and the project. But the job went to a London firm experienced in church work, despite her own belief that every project shares a common objective.

“When I see the cathedral I feel something close to my heart,” she says. “It would have been lovely to work on. It’s such a shame if a project is local and goes outside the region. Sinful.”

Her company’s specialism, she says, is personal attention. “At Rockcliffe Hall, for example, I was on site once or twice a week. you wouldn’t get that from a designer outside the area. Many people tell me I should try to portray my company as being bigger. But I think not really. Small is beautiful.”

Light touch: Kristina Simpson works independently, even seeing to her own accounts

People may blame each other when things don’t work. With maybe 20 round a table you must fight your corner

Her O2 win came through an existing client, a consultant in Newcastle.

She says: “I was visiting my brother in Australia when the client texted and said: ‘When are you back? I need a bit of magic.’”

And she’s had to learn the politics of working on a major team project.

“People may blame each other when things don’t work,” she says. “With maybe 20 round a table you must fight your corner. When they try to change your fittings and say, ‘I’ve got a cheaper light fitting here’, you must stand up for your beliefs and reasoning.”

She got a good grounding in that working on a £300m project at the headquarters of Royal Bank of Scotland in Edinburgh.

“Money was no object but the politics were horrendous,” she recalls.

She answered to a gentleman whose named association with the bank is now blanketed by legal injunction.

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“He changed his mind all the time,” Simpson recalls.

When the senior designer left six months early she took over entirely.

“At 25, that was quite a task,” she says. “I learned to follow everything up by e-mail to ensure you’re covered and don’t get blamed for anything.”

Kristina Simpson, now of Low Fell, Gateshead, has sustained her sole activity despite the birth of her daughter Anabel 10 months ago. She belongs to the Professional Lighting Design Association, the Society of Light and Lighting, and the Entrepreneurs’ Forum.

She aims to grow her firm organically, for she recalls: “Someone who came through the 1990s recession gave me good advice early on: ‘Save because there are always going to be dips.’ I spend what I need but save and save.” n

BUSINESS QUARTER |SPRING 11

IN ANOTHER LIFE

SPRING 11

See how the wind blows Former GP professor Ian Purves heads Clarity Informatics Group, an international centre of excellence providing, from Newcastle, healthcare knowledge bases and computer support systems to help health professionals’ decisions on topics such as drugs and patient treatment plans. Professor Purves has held professorships at universities in New Zealand and Canada, is a past adviser to the European Commission and the UK Government, and has chaired various healthcare think tanks and advisory boards.

Though largely desk-bound, he holds a RYA Ocean Yachtmaster commercial ticket. He has sailed thousands of ocean miles – partly solo – and skippered everything from a 1932, 100ft classic Staysail schooner to a 40ft modern racing yacht. The Clarity team is busy launching new products to the UK and Middle East, but in another life Ian would be donning deck shoes, hauling anchor and sailing around the world.

Here he tells why.....

I took up sailing while I was working in Vancouver in 1993 and it’s now one of my biggest passions.

Sailing demands total focus on the job in hand, while being aware of surrounding factors. Navigating through a field of oil rigs in a force eight gale in the dark really concentrates the mind. And as in business, you need plans in place so you can anticipate and react to whichever way the wind blows.

I was sailing in the Gulf of Mexico with a friend when he accidentally left the fishing line drifting off the back of the boat as it got dark. Later that night a squall damaged the mainsail which partially came down and collected water. When I came on deck to lift it, the sail emptied and soaked me to the skin.

When I fired the engine up to give us some control, the boat swung round in an arc and I ran over the fishing line, which promptly got tangled in the propeller.

I had to dive into freezing cold, shark-infested waters to cut it free. When I finally climbed

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As skipper, it’s very bad form to let someone fall overboard and get lost, and I try to adopt the same at principle at work back on board the bowsprit on the prow had broken, and when I leaned over to unscrew it I lost my precious knife overboard.

You need a plan, but you also have to react to whatever is thrown at you, just like business. The NHS has been almost our sole client for over a decade, and we are responding to health sector changes by adapting our offerings to take them to other markets.

Teamwork is vital on a boat; everyone gets on

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with their job. As skipper, it’s very bad form to let someone fall overboard and get lost, and I try to adopt the same principle at work by keeping the crew together and focused.

I was in a race where someone fell off the foredeck of a boat. His friends didn’t notice and he was eventually picked up by a following crew. Naturally, he lost faith in his team after that and transferred to our boat for the ride home.

I like the adrenalin rush of racing solo, too. You only sleep in 15 minute stretches with two alarms to wake you, as you need to constantly go on deck to check for ships. Radar won’t pick them up if they are over the horizon and big boats can bear down on you very fast – much like your competitors.

I wouldn’t change what I do, but if I could live a parallel life I’d be sunning myself on deck somewhere in the Caribbean. Or having a cold beer at a marina bar and swapping tall tales about some of the situations that all sailors – novice and experienced - find themselves in.

Carlsberg don't write letters to your bank manager...

Dear Bank Manager, I am writing to thank you for bouncing my cheque with which I endeavored to pay my plumber last month.

By my calculations, three nanoseconds must have elapsed between his presenting the cheque and the arrival in my account of the funds needed to honour it. I refer, of course, to the automatic monthly deposit of my salary, an arrangement, which, I admit, has been in place for only twenty seven years.

I have also written to the scientists working on the Large Hadron Collider to tell them that their attempts to be the first to propel an object at the speed of light have been thwarted by your unauthorised overdraft letter-dispatching machine.They are understandably crestfallen.

You are to be commended for seizing that brief window of opportunity, and also for debiting my account £30 by way of penalty for the inconvenience caused to your bank.

My thankfulness springs from the manner in which this incident has caused me to rethink my errant financial ways. I noticed that whereas I personally attend to your telephone calls and letters, this courtesy is not reciprocated.

Therefore, from now on, I, like you, choose only to deal with a flesh-and-blood person.

My mortgage and loan payments will hereafter no longer be automatic, but will arrive at your bank by cheque, addressed personally and confidentially to an employee at your bank whom you must nominate. Be aware that it is an offence under the Postal Act for any other person to open such an envelope.

Please find attached an application form, which I require your chosen employee to complete. I am sorry it runs to eight pages, but in order that I know as much about him or her as you know about me, there is no alternative.

Naturally I will require them to attend a medical

and will need full details of his/her financial situation (income, debts, assets and liabilities) along with documented proof.

I have taken note of your own procedures for proving identification and they will be required to provide proof of identity on a regular basis. I understand that this is necessary just in case they have been practicing the dark arts and through some sorcerer’s magic are no longer the person that they were the last time they proved their identity to me.

Again, in line with your own procedures I will, on occasion, pass this confidential information to many unrelated parties through acts of breathtaking negligence.

In due course, I will issue your employee with a PIN number, which he/she must quote in dealings with me. I regret that it cannot be shorter than 28 digits but, again, I have modeled it on the number of button presses required of me to access my account balance on your phone bank service. As they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

I have also taken the opportunity to review my charging structure for the services which I am obliged to provide for you as follows; There will be a £25 charge for every time I am forced to break down my already fairly simple instructions, into Duplo sized chunks so that the simpleton behind your counter can understand them in order to complete my transaction.

Where this is unsuccessful and I am required to perform a charades style mime to convey my instructions there will be a further £25 charge.

For an additional £10 you may wish to upgrade to my gold level service whereby using the contents of my shopping bag and some practiced puppetry, I perform a short play whereby Roger Red Hat who has eight potatoes gives three of them to Billy Blue Hat, leaving him with just five potatoes, demonstrating visually to your cashier the £5 that I wish to withdraw.

When you call me, please press buttons as follows; 1, to make an appointment to see me.

2, to be told that your call is very important to me but that I am not going to answer it for a very, very long time.

3, to be plunged into a dark telephonic abyss and forced to redial whilst contemplating the bittersweet irony that you cannot use the redial function on your phone by virtue of the fact that you pressed the 3 button.

I have synchronized my availability with your opening hours and I am therefore guaranteed to be only available when you are at work and cannot attend. This system will continue until I realise that we are no longer in the nineteenth century.

So again I thank you for drawing my financial tardiness to my attention and I am sure that these new procedures will enhance my offering to you.

Regrettably, but again following your example, I must also levy an establishment fee to cover the setting up of this new arrangement.The full details of this charge is buried very deeply inside the 146 page terms and conditions document enclosed.

Kind Regards, your loyal customer P.S. From time to time I would like to plague you with an incessant barrage of marketing material. If you would prefer not to receive this literature then please indicate your acceptance of my offer of not sending it to you by unchecking the previously checked box if this is not what you would like me to not keep on not doing.

Independent Financial Advisers Wealth Management Contact us for a free no obligation chat.We’re always glad you called!

Teesside 01642 525511 | Newcastle 0191 3017218

www.joslinrhodes.co.uk

Employee Benefit Schemes Company Pensions

Joslin Rhodes is a trading style of Darwin Rowe Ltd which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority.

The Financial Services Authority does not regulate advice on will writing, trusts, taxation and some forms of mortgages. Any opinions expressed in this promotion are not intended as individual recommendations. You should take independent financial advice before making any personal financial decisions.

MEDIA BRIEFS

The Scrutator >> Online for success Online spending could hit £67bn by 2020, accounting for as many as one in every five British pounds spent on retail. Given its low overheads, online dealing is no bad way to start a business.

Online business are taken by enticing layout, through five steps: Finding a niche to dominate, building a plan to make the business scaleable, establishing and maintaining a stunner of a website, generating traffic on it, and turning users into repeat business. Anyone can do it, says this voice of experience.

Jon Smith has practiced his online strategies across four continents working for some of the largest e-commerce brands, as well as launching, running then selling his own websites. He has written 11 books and now runs an online marketing agency from Barcelona.

The most obviously dodgy advice: “Beg, borrow or steal office essentials before paying retail price – you don’t have to buy new.” It’s the “steal” we fear might be taken literally. And besides, if everyone avoided buying retail how would any business, let alone one online, exist?

(Start an Online Business by Jon Smith £10.99)

>> Food for thought Paperback spinouts from Dragons’ Den continue. your previous BQ reviewed James Caan’s guide to landing your ideal job. Now it’s Levi Roots – chef, reggae performer but foremost the entrepreneur

BUSINESS QUARTER | SPRING 11

SPRING 11

who, in 2006, slayed them in the Den when successfully appealing for funds to launch his Reggae Reggae Sauce. Three years later it was named best new food product at the World’s Food Awards.

Here he advises on starting up in business.

His company and brand in food have grown extensively. Last year he appeared in The Power List as one of Britain’s most influential young black people. His attractively laid out manual will suit younger aspiring entrepreneurs but is a refresher too for anyone with a business already growing.

He tells of failures as well as success and, with his background – former friend of Bob Marley, performer with James Brown and entertainer before Nelson Mandela – he reminds us that all work and no side interests can dull our business creativity.

If you’d like his cookery hints too, Collins has earlier turned out one book of them, and Mitchell Beazley another tied into his BBC2 TV series. The same publisher is also bringing out another this year.

As with the books by showbiz and sports celebs, one speculates how much is the author’s writing and how much ghosted. Maybe this is all Roots’ own work.

He’s clever enough.

(Mitchell-Beazley £10.99).

>> Where the money lies A second Access to Finance Guide from North East Access to Finance (NEA2F) is now available.

Chairman Hugh Morgan Williams says that while getting finance is no easier for small businesses, they can at least have this collection of vital information and contact details in a convenient booklet, duplicated also on website www.nea2f.co.uk He says that while Finance for Business funds are starting to give growth businesses equity solutions, a problem remains for firms accessing traditional debt finance; both on

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demand overdraft and term loans from the high street banks.

Last year some main lenders assembled a £1.5bn fund to help firms with sales of £10m-plus. But a significant issue remains for most smaller firms.

“Often,” he says, “the businesses are new, without a track record, or significant tangible assets to pledge against lending propositions from the banks.”

Grant schemes appear almost to have disappeared since the change in government, and he sees a need for loan funds that target firms whose banks deem them outside their credit criteria. NEA2F is working on several schemes to benefit North East business further.

Hugh Morgan Williams: Businesses still have support needs

>> Don’t kid yourself Why overwork to be less effective?

Why let work bleed into family life and holidays? Merely owning and overusing a BlackBerry or similar smart phone cuts into leisure time. There are no social norms for their use; this affects productivity at work, work-life balance and leadership behaviours. No longer a status symbol, it threatens us all.

Ian Price suggests how to work less yet be more effective. Up to 20% of an organisation’s payroll gets soaked up by ineffective use of email, for example. Price, an English literature graduate of Magdalen College, Oxford, uses his experience of 20-plus years of senior corporate roles in the telecoms and payments industries, along with leading start-ups as chief executive, to back up his findings.

(The Activity Illusion by Ian Price £13.99)

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COMPANY PROFILE

Newcastle Racecourse is delighted to announce an exciting summer schedule of racing and events that will provide great value entertainment for all those seeking a fantastic day out in North East England, from families and friends to the region’s businesses.

SUMMER RACING AND EVENTS AT NEWCASTLE RACECOURSE

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HE racecourse has an action packed summer ahead, with high quality races running from April through to September along with major pop concerts featuring chart topping acts such as JLS and Olly Murs.

These high profile developments epitomise the racecourse’s success in recent years as it goes from strength to strength building its offering in the conference and event market and enhancing its position as the North East’s premier racecourse.

The highlights of our racing season are the ever popular three day John Smith’s Northumberland Plate Festival, which begins on 23 June and Ladies Day, held on 23 July.

The John Smith’s Northumberland Plate, run on 25 June, is the pinnacle of the Festival and is the richest handicap race in the northern hemisphere.

Over the course of the Plate Festival and Ladies Day more than 50,000 race-goers will attend as millions more watch on television. Eye watering amounts of prize money are on offer and the racing will be of the highest quality, with some of the best runners and riders from across Europe on show.

At this year’s Plate Day and Ladies Day, Newcastle Racecourse is introducing a new luxury hospitality experience to the course in the shape of the dazzling Diamond Marquee, perfect for entertaining clients, friends and family in sumptuous style.

Situated in the centre of the Gosforth Park track, it will be truly exclusive and it will offer stunning panoramic views of the packed grandstands and runners and riders as they cross the winning line.

The Diamond Marquee package boasts a raft of indulgent features. Entry includes a chauffeur

Above: Simon Lane, General Manager at Newcastle Racecourse service to and from racecourse, a champagne and canapé reception, your own racing tipster, race day program, grande buffet lunch, afternoon tea, an unlimited bar including champagne and liqueurs, entertainment and live music, plus a special memento for all guests.

And in addition to highly exclusive hospitality options, we are proud to provide a sporting and leisure experience that offers outstanding service at a range of entry points. For our standard race days such as Blaydon Races Family Fun Day, grandstand and paddock tickets are priced at £13 per person and children under 16 go free at all of

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our meetings while hospitality packages for our standard race days start at just £66.

The racecourse’s summer schedule is one of the most well attended sporting programmes in the region and the range of events taking place throughout the summer will provide something for everyone. In addition to our main features there will be a host of events to enjoy, ranging from charity fun runs to business conferences, music nights and many more exciting race meetings.

Whatever your interest or budget, Newcastle Racecourse has a diverse offering and can cater for any leisure or business need, from weddings to international conferences and small bespoke meetings. The Parklands Golf Complex, newly refurbished Border Minstrel pub and 812 acres of the glorious Gosforth Park Estate all provide a great service to our many guests and compliment our race day and event offering, making us one of the premier venues in North East England and much more than just a racecourse.

I hope you will be able to join us for a great day or evening out soon.

For more information about Newcastle Racecourse summer racing and events visit www.newcastle-racecourse.co.uk or call 0191 2362020

BUSINESS QUARTER | SPRING 11

BIT OF A CHAT

SPRING 11

Europe, following Teesside and Bristol’s lead through Amsterdam. That doesn’t get us to London, but the faster rail link promised might help there. It would also ease the nation’s burden of debt bankers left us. The Civil Aviation Authority needs to acknowledge the customer is king.

with Frank Tock >> The folly of flying to the shops No need for Heathrow now the Metrocentre, Eldon Square and The Bridges are still growing in the North East. Maybe (tongue in cheek) that’s why only a third of all passengers travelling between Newcastle and London fly these days, compared with half five years ago.

And as shopping rather than flying appears to pre-occupy Britain’s main terminal, we provincial flyers may as well press for an alternative, more user-friendly main hub, especially as the environmental case against a third runway at Heathrow is irrefutable.

Also, since Heathrow ranks only 99th in the public’s list of preferred airports, and now operates at 98% capacity, the case for change is reinforced. We’re not so parochial, or silly, as to suggest Newcastle, Teesside or even Manchester should become Britain’s number one. But neither would we wish to be inconvenienced by some alternatives being suggested, such as Southend or Luton, which Autair (RIP) once tried to convince Teesside passengers was in London!

As for reclaimed land on Isle of Sheppey, why not Land’s End? Could this financially beleaguered nation afford, anyway, the £60bn required? Somewhere central in the country would be sensible. Birmingham? Especially if a superfast rail link connected with London.

If the South must prevail, why not Stansted, running now at half capacity? That the owner BAA (aka Heathrow) vetoes a second runway necessary there isn’t insurmountable.

BAA has after all exhausted a long legal battle to keep Stansted, in defiance of an anti-monopoly ruling.

We could switch totally to somewhere in

BUSINESS QUARTER | SPRING 11

>> A nasty sort of settling up Despite pressures even at government level to have business to business bills paid more promptly, unreasonable delays are still selfishly common, to the pain of SMEs that dare not complain for fear of reprisals. I’m told one of the nation’s biggest construction firms, despite getting public sector settlements within 30 days of invoice, still makes small firms they’ve sub-contracted wait 100 days for their rightful share.

Surely it can’t be the titan is having to scratch for every penny to pay for some acquisition?

>> Change times, changed numbers The savagery of staffing cutbacks must be particularly painful to County Durham’s chief executive George Garlick. He told BQ last September 175 fewer employees were expected to be required. Now the toll could be 1,600.

>> First things first The fuss over proposed routing of the £30bn HS2 railway, which may not even come about in our lifetimes, illustrates how wrongly we as a nation prioritise. Rightly the Government says the upgrading would benefit the economy. It would also restore our reputation as a railway nation.

So what’s the public focus on now? It’s whether the prettiness and property values of this village or that in the soft underbelly of the South will suffer. Attention at this point should still be on whether the whole east side of England will be largely

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sidetracked, and what effect that would have on national income.

>> Guerilla tactics Whereas English Heritage warns of possible job cuts and maybe a weekdays closure of winter attractions, National Trust in the North East and yorkshire has apparently enjoyed popular success with its recent advertising campaign that highlighted winter events at its venues. Guerilla, the Newcastle creative agency, devised the National Trust’s drive.

Eve Crook, the trust’s communications and marketing manager, says: “The campaign has challenged perceptions and created a huge amount of interest.”

Will Guerilla’s account director Mark Hutchinson now be charming the conservative backroom team at English Heritage? Good luck if so.

>> Taxing patience A tradesman friend tells me he recently received 53 identical letters in one week from the same sender – HMRC.

>> Enveloped in angst Why do makers of greetings cards sell them with red and blue envelopes which make the addresses almost illegible? And why hasn’t Royal Mail complained? If impractical colours really do help sales surely the makers should affix something like a jam pot label on the front. It would save posties precious time in reading and tax senders’ patience less.

>> Get online Ben Hamilton-Baillie the noted architect and urban designer seems light in logic, suggesting to Hexham Civic Society that their town is endangered by internet shopping. Countless good little firms in remote backwoods thrive because they use the Web as well as their shop to display products that customers miles away want too. Shopkeepers of Hexham, take heart and note.

SPRING 11

COMPANY PROFILE

Land owners and farmers come with their own specific needs when it comes to legal work.

UNDERSTANDING THE NEEDS OF FARMERS AND LAND OWNERS

L

ATIMER Hinks Solicitors, one of Darlington and County Durham’s longest established law firms, provides a wide range of services for farmers, land owners and landed estates.

The firm has a team of experienced legal professionals, including members of recognised specialist practice organisations, such as the Country Land and Business Association, Agricultural Law Association and the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners (STEP).

Latimer Hinks provides a comprehensive range of services to the agricultural community and land owners, such as succession planning, leases and tenancy agreements, sales, purchase and options, partnership agreements, and for wind farm development agreements.

When it comes to legal matters of a more personal nature, such as tax planning, wills, probate and trusts, the firm also recognises that those whose lives revolve around farming and land owning often have specialist requirements. A number of the firm’s solicitors have specific experience in these areas.

Among the lead Partners at Latimer Hinks are Tim Haggie, Anne Elliott and Neil Stevenson, all experts with proven track records advising land owners and farmers.

Listed in the prestigious Legal 500 directory in 2009 and 2010 for his work in the fields of agriculture and estates, Tim’s experience spans 40 years and a client base across the North East, as well as around the UK and abroad. A specialist commercial property lawyer, he deals with purchases and sales of development and commercial property and of agricultural property.

As well as significant experience in these areas and a member of the Country Land and Business Association and the Agricultural Law Association (ALA), Neil has an acknowledged expertise in property matters relevant to wind farm and

Above: Tim Haggie, one of the lead partners at latimer Hinks Solicitors

OVER THE COURSE OF MORE THAN

100 YEARS, LATIMER HINKS

SOLICITORS HAS CONSISTENTLY RECOGNISED THE SPECIALIST NEEDS OF LAND OWNERS AND THOSE IN THE FARMING COMMUNITY renewable energy issues. On the agricultural side, his expertise is in the acquisition and disposal of farms and farmland.

Anne, a Recommended Professional for the Tenant Farmers Association and member of the ALA, has also been cited repeatedly in the Legal 500 for her agriculture and estates work, while she was also consistently commended for her advice on succession planning in Chambers over a number of years, most recently in 2011.

Tim said: “Over the course of more than 100 years, Latimer Hinks Solicitors has consistently recognised the specialist needs of land owners and those in the farming community.

“Our solicitors who deal with trusts, tax planning and wills are STEP qualified and equipped to deal with the types of issues created by relationships and personalities in any family situation. The specialist experience and skills of our team also

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recognise and handle working in areas such as farming where business and family so often combine to create unique sets of circumstances and arrangements.”

Anne, herself a farmer’s daughter, continued: “There is a special relationship between a farmer and his land, which makes for an interesting and challenging legal experience, particularly when it comes to succession planning.

“This is an area of huge importance for all owner managed businesses, and one which we are careful to never underestimate.”

Neil added: “Commercial property law is an area of diverse requirements and while we deal with all aspects of this field, one of the areas in which we specialise is renewable energy. We have worked with clients to help secure wind farm developments, as the UK pushes towards its target of 15% of all UK energy from renewables by 2020.

“We work with land owners to protect their interests and get the best possible outcome when the opportunity arises for them to take advantage of this growing market.”

Latimer Hinks, which is based in Darlington’s Priestgate, has a team of 50 people serving private and corporate clients.

The firm’s range of expertise and services covers legal issues surrounding residential property, wills and lasting powers of attorney, trusts, probate, long-term care, tax planning, commercial law, alternative and renewable energy, property and disputes, business rescue and debt recovery, employment, and land-owning.

For more information about latimer Hinks’ services, visit www.latimerhinks.co.uk or call 01325 341500.

BUSINESS QUARTER | SPRING 11

EVENTS

WINTER 11

BQ’s business events diary gives you lots of time to forward plan. If you wish to add your event to the list send it to: editor@bq-magazine.co.uk.

The diary is updated online daily at www.nebusinessguide.co.uk

MAY

Contact: NewcastleRB@bankofengland.co.uk

3 Business Link Marketing Bootcamp, Riverside Stadium, Middlesbrough (8.30am).

Contact: 0845 9002 970 11 NECC Northumberland Open Committee (4pm) venue tbc 12 Tees Valley Business Club, Crathorne Hall, yarm (6pm). Contact: Pauline Osborne, tel 07946 881 428. www.teesvalleybusinessclub.co.uk 12 CIM address, Nigel Jones on Social Media, a Strategy Design or Following the Trend?

National Glass Centre, Sunderland (6pm). Contact: tel 01628 427 340. cimevents@cim.co.uk 12 Nepic Meet the Members, Sedgefield racecourse 8am and 1.45pm. Contact: tel 01642 442 560, cath.birkin@nepic.co.uk 12 NECC afternoon tea meeting, Jai Ho, South Shields 16 NECC skills event, Successful Budgeting, Aykley Heads, Durham (9.30am). www.necc.co.uk 16 CIM North East Branch Centenary Celebration, Copthorne Hotel, Newcastle (6pm).

Contact: tel 01628 427 340. cimevents@cim.co.uk 16 CIM’s 100 years of Marketing and all that Jazz, Noel Dennis, Darlington College (6.30pm). Contact: tel 01628 427 340. cimevents@cim.co.uk 17 Meet the Professionals with ipnconnect, Working and Collaboration, Sedgefield racecourse (noon). Contact: tel 0808 1982 968. www.ipnconnect.com 17 Science City Showcase, Centre for Life, Newcastle (5.30pm). Contact: juke.henderson@newcastlesciencecity.com 17 Teesside University Business School Annual Conference. Speakers include: Andy Haldane (executive director, Financial Stability at the Bank of England) Stephen Catchpole (Tees Valley Unlimited), Juliette Lee, an executive coach, and Stephen James, senior lecturer in economics.

Europa Building (9am). Contact: TBSevents@tees.ac.uk 17 CECA (NE) Early Morning Legal Briefing, Watson Burton Presentation, Mock Trial, Durham County Cricket Club (8am) 17 Public Procurement, Burnetts law firm briefing, Gosforth, Newcastle. Contact: Hannah Turner tel 01228 552222, events@burnetts.co.uk 18 Nepic event, Business Security, Hardwick Hall Hotel, Sedgefield (1.30), Contact: Lynne Aungiers, tel 01642 442 560 18 ICE event, Engineering Our Future, Central Square, Newcastle (5.45pm). Contact: martin.heddon@sunderland.gov.uk 18 South Tyneside Manufacturing Forum, Guest Speakers, Bede’s World, Jarrow (noon).

Contact: John Wood, tel 0191 427 2324. john.wood@st-mf.co.uk 18 Business Clubs North East Ltd, Being World Class, Rainton Meadows Arena, Houghton le Spring (5.30pm). Jessica Trotman, tel 0191 388 4488. info@stbn.co.uk 18 - NECC skills event, Facilitation Skills, Aykley Heads, Durham (9.30am). www.necc.co.uk 19 Bank of England briefing, Inflation Report, Darlington FC Stadium (9.30am). Contact: TeesValleyRB@bankofengland.co.uk 19 Jackson’s Law Firm, Essential Employment Laws master class and mock tribunal, Wynyard Rooms, Wynyard (8.30am). Contact: Caroline Allen, tel 0844 855 4111, callen@jacksons-law.com 19 NECC event, International Online Marketing, Aykley Heads, Durham (9.30am). www.necc.co.uk 19 Geoff Ramm “the Billy Connolly of marketing” leads an informal marketing event, Centre for Life, Newcastle (8.30am). Contact: Samantha Doyle, tel 0191 243 8282, samantha.doyle@life.org.uk 19 NECC skills event, Time Management, Aykley Heads, Durham (9.30am). www.necc.co.uk 19 Eighth Annual Business Conference and Gala Dinner of the Entrepreneurs’ Forum, Hilton, Gateshead (9.30am 4.30pm, then dinner 7 till late). Contact: 0870 850 2233, info@entrepreneursforum.net 20 Bank of England briefing, Inflation Report, Grey Street Hotel, Newcastle (9.30am).

BUSINESS QUARTER | SPRING 11

25 NECC skills event, Telephone Selling, Aykley Heads, Durham (9.30am). www.necc.co.uk 24 South Tyneside Means Business, Open Night, South Tyneside College (4pm), Contact: Maxine Downey, tel 0191 427 3679. maxine.downey@stc.ac.uk 24 to 26 Thinking Digital 2011 Conference, The Sage, Gateshead. www.thinkingdigital.co.uk/2011 26 NECC skills event, Health and Safety (level 2), Aykley Heads, Durham (9.30am). www.necc.co.uk 26 NECC human resources seminar, Legislation Update, Aykley Heads, Durham (9.15am). www.necc.co.uk 27 NECC skills event, An Intro to PR, Aykley Heads, Durham (9.30am). www.necc.co.uk

JUNE

7, 8 Sustainability for the Process Industries, Newcastle University. Contact: lisa.jackson@ncl.ac.uk 7 to 9 NECC event, Dangerous Goods by Air, Aykley Heads, Durham (9.30am). www.necc.co.uk 9 Nigel Wright North East Accountancy Awards 2011, Gosforth Marriott Hotel Newcastle (7pm). www.accountancyawards.co.uk 9 NECC Tees Annual Dinner, Middlesbrough Town Hall (6.30pm). Contact: tel 0300 303 6322, www.necc.co.uk 14 ICE talk, Design against Terrorists, Central Square, Newcastle (5.45pm). Contact: peter. white@arup.com 14 NECC event, Export Procedures and Documentation, Aykley Heads, Durham (9.30am). www.necc.co.uk 15 Women into the Network, Win Wednesdays, Great Coffee, Newcastle. www.greatcoffee.me 15 South Tyneside Manufacturing Forum, Guest Speakers, Bede’s World, Jarrow (noon).

Contact: Contact: John Wood, tel 0191 427 2324. john.wood@st-mf.co.uk 16 to 20 NECC facility, Dangerous Goods Safety Advice, Aykley Heads, Durham (9am on). www.necc.co.uk 22 to 24 Conference on Community Philanthropy, Northumberland University. Contact: tel 0191 222 0945, general@communityfoundation.org.uk 28 South Tyneside Means Business, Open Night, South Tyneside College (4pm). Contact: Maxine Downey, tel 0191 427 3679. maxine.downey@stc.ac.uk

JULY

13 Meet the Professionals with ipnconnect, Working and Collaboration, Gosforth Park racecourse (noon). Contact: tel 0808 1982 968. www.ipnconnect.com 20 South Tyneside Manufacturing Forum, Guest Speakers, Bede’s World, Jarrow (noon).

Contact: John Wood, tel 0191 427 2324. john.wood@st-mf.co.uk Please check with the contacts beforehand that arrangements have not changed. Events organisers are also asked to notify us at the above e-mail address of any changes or cancellations as soon as they know of them.

Acas: Advisory Conciliation and Arbitration Service, CECA (NE): Civil Engineering Contractors Association (North-East), CIM: Chartered Institute of Marketing, HMRC: Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, ICE (NE): Institution of Civil Engineers North East, ICAEW (NR): Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, North Region, NECC: North-East Chamber of Commerce, NSCA: Northern Society of Chartered Accountants, FSB: Federation of Small Business, Tbc: to be confirmed.

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Contemporary style and hospitality in an historical city Located on the banks of the river wear in Durham City the Radisson BLU Hotel Durham offers stunning panoramic views of the historic city of Durham and the Cathedral.

A purpose built hotel catering for the business and leisure markets, guests are ensured a high standard and a genuine Yes I Can! Hospitality.

From small meetings, banqueting for up to 280 people and large conferences for 450 people the Radisson BLU Hotel is the perfect venue for all of your business needs: 1,100 m2 of meetings and event space fully accessibly and located on the ground floor 11 flexible and adaptable meeting rooms with high ceilings and natural daylight Complimentary high speed internet access for all guests Pace Health Club with impressive 15m deck level swimming pool, sports art equipment gym, sauna, steam room, whirlpool and Emmanais beauty treatment rooms Filini Italian Restaurant offering a unique dining experience with contemporary Italian cuisine Easily accessible from the A1(M), minute’s walk from Durham Rail Station and onsite car parking for up to 130 cars.

Day Delegate Rates available from ÂŁ35 pp Radisson BLU Hotel Durham, Frankland Lane, Durham, DH1 5TA For further information, please call 0191 3727200 or email events.durham@radissonblu.com

radissonblu.co.uk/hotel-durham

From £351 we mean business. *

The Refined New E-Class

The All New C-Class

The E 250 CDI BlueEFFICIENCY SE Saloon has been further enhanced thanks to its new 7G-Tronic Plus Automatic transmission, giving you greater refinement without adding to the cost. The ideal car for your fleet, it now boasts greater fuel economy and a 17% lower whole life cost than its closest competitor. This means an impressive saving of up to £5,284 over three years.

The new generation C 220 CDI BlueEFFICIENCY SE Saloon has redefined style, comfort and innovation with over 2,000 improvements. From refreshed headlight designs to outstanding engine performance, the new C-Class Saloon has got something to impress everyone. It also has lower whole life cost than it’s closest competitor, meaning an impressive saving of up to £2,617.

E 250 CDI Saloon, metallic paint £393.13 monthly rental* 36 Month Operating Lease £1,179.39 initial rental 3+35 payment pattern C02 129 g/km

C 220 CDI SE Saloon, metallic paint £351.04 monthly rental* 36 Month Operating Lease £1,053.12 initial rental 3+35 payment pattern CO2 117 g/km

Sytner Group Mercedes-Benz of Newcastle City West Business Park, Scotswood Road, Newcastle upon Tyne NE4 7DF 0191 4479164 Mercedes-Benz of Sunderland Hylton Grange, Wessington Way, Sunderland SR5 3HR 0191 5978219 Mercedes-Benz of Teesside Concorde Way, Yarm Road, Stockton-on-Tees, Cleveland TS18 3RB 01642 909783 Mercedes-Benz of Carlisle Montgomery Way, Rosehill, Carlisle CA1 2RW 01228 318761 www.sytner.mercedes-benz.com Official government fuel consumption figures in mpg (litres per 100km) for the Mercedes-Benz range: urban 12.5(22.6)-45.6(6.2), extra urban 22.2(12.7)-70.6(4.0), combined 17.8(15.9)-64.2(4.4). CO2 emissions: 378-116 g/km Models featured are a Mercedes-Benz C 180 BlueEFFICIENCY SE Saloon at £26,170 on the road including optional metallic paint at £645 and a Mercedes-Benz E 200 CDI BlueEFFICIENCY SE Saloon at £28,920 on the road including optional metallic paint at £645 and exterior styling pack at £710 (on the road price includes VAT, delivery, 12 months’ Road Fund Licence, number plates, first registration fee and fuel). *For business users only. All payments subject to VAT. Finance example based on a MercedesBenz C 220 BlueEFFICIENCY SE Saloon with metallic paint on a 36 month (3+35 profile) Mercedes-Benz Operating Lease agreement, excluding maintenance, with an advance payment of £1,053.12. Finance example based on a Mercedes-Benz E 250 CDI BlueEFFICIENCY SE Saloon with metallic paint on a 36 month (3+35 profile) Mercedes-Benz Operating Lease agreement, excluding maintenance, with an advance payment of £1,179.39. £180 acceptance fee payable in addition to and at the same time as the first rental. Based on 10,000 miles per annum. Excess mileage charges may apply. Rental includes first year’s Road Fund Licence only. Written quotations available on request including alternative contract lengths and mileages. Guarantees and indemnities may be required. This finance offer is available on all C-Class Saloon and Estate models ordered/credit approved between 1 April and 30 September and registered by 31 December 2011. Excludes model year 801, AMG and special request engines. Terms and conditions apply. Credit provided subject to status by Mercedes-Benz Financial Services UK Limited, MK7 8ND.