Business Insight

Business Insight Tuesday September 25 2012

Lord of the aisles Rare retailer Edwin Booth Page eight

Red Rose forum

On advanced manufacturing Page six

New Mersey beat The knowledge economy Page twelve

Tuesday September 25 2012 | the times

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Business Insight

Welcome

The buzz is back A funny thing (didn’t) happen on the way to the Forum . . .

Do you sense it too? A certain buzz that must have been about when the North of England was the cradle of the first industrial revolution over two and a half centuries ago.

The busy pages of this Business Insight issue suggest there is a discernible new energy around this neck of the woods, and one of our headlines – above the Times Forum on page 6 – even proposes that Lancashire may now be the birthplace of a second industrial revolution.

The fact is there is so much entrepreneurial energy about that, at least in these parts, the recession must be cringing into its grave.

As if to prove that the gloom is doomed, this issue covers and celebrates two themes: the growth and future of advanced manufacturing in Lancashire as symbolised by its BAE Systems planemakers’ sophisticated work on the Eurofighter Typhoon – and the embracing of myriad aspects of the knowledge economy by the dynamic city of Liverpool and its environs.

Another admirable symbol is our cover subject, the patrician grocer with impeccable taste, Edwin Booth – a Lancastrian who never lost his faith in the happy returns that come from delivery of quality, especially when combined with personal drive and flair.

For such people, the promise of better times is well deserved and long overdue. Welcome to our underreview perception of life and work...

Inside ...

Red Rose revolution The Times Forum Pages 6-7 Retailer extraordinary Edwin Booth profile Pages 8-9 The Legal 500 Best law firms guide Pages 20-28 The Times Business Insight reaches more senior business people in the North of England than any other quality newspaper. Indeed, with 184,000 readers* and reaching almost 20 per cent of the all c-suite executives**, there is no better place to be seen. *Source NRS July 2011 - June 2012 **Source BBS 2011

To advertise in the next North of England edition of Business Insight: Freephone 0800 027 0403 or contact: stuart@timesnorth.co.uk

Mike Cowley at large Through the gloom of the Northern economy, bright spots are starting to shine

W

hereas things, superficially at least, seem to be little better for the Northern economy, the gloom appears to be starting to slowly lift in certain areas. Liverpool and Lancashire – yes, they are separate these days – have both been making what appear to be more than faltering strides in the direction of regeneration with a little help from the much-maligned Coalition.

In Merseyside, they appear to have found a new resource seam which they are now seriously attempting to mine: the Knowledge Economy. Apart from its fuzzy name and the fact that Liverpool now seems to be including all sectors of the economy under the title, it would appear to have some real legs. At least it has all the usual suspects – the public and private sectors, the educational establishment, even some of the money men – excited to the point that they see it as a route out of recession.

Yet the Knowledge Economy – for all that it has become a buzzword – has really been around for ever and a day. It’s just that it has never been exploited to its full potential previously. For years,

Liverpool – and other Northern cities – have been sitting on a goldmine which only came into prominent public view when spin-off companies from the universities started to appear.

Then the realisation slowly dawned that all those super brains in academia were a wonderful source of potentially highly commercial ideas, if only you could get them to climb down from their ivy-clad ivory towers. And as the cuts began to threaten education itself, the top universities began to realise that they needed to get their own commercial act together and actively cooperate with what they had previously regarded as a somewhat seedy business world.

There was then a gradual meeting of the ways – prompted in part by the good old public sector which found itself poised on the edge of a precipice, with enforced redundancies helping it along its way. An increasingly desperate level of expectation from those people who had put it in office in what were no longer jobs for life helped to focus minds as never before.

What the public sector has done is to help build an interface to allow those seemingly good ideas to get out to market – a meeting of academia and business which had been long promised but had not previously delivered. Hence the Liverpool City Region has become a hotbed of incubation companies, backed by the universities and the like and being nursed along – hopefully to the point of payback time.

Meanwhile, over in Lancashire, another promising major commercial initiative is taking shape: advanced manufacturing. Now advanced manufacturing is also not really a new idea, either. After all, Lancashire was the

birthplace of the industrial revolution, itself the highpoint of advanced manufacturing in its day.

But with Lancashire’s unrivalled lead in the aerospace industry thanks to BAE Systems and a cohort of other key manufacturers, here was a base on which to build in these difficult times.

And one with a positive message that even the most obtuse Government minister couldn’t fail to grasp.

Led by its new and highly enterprising Local Enterprise Partnership, wellembedded within Lancashire County Council, Lancashire has persuaded the Government to grant it an Enterprise Zone. Not just your run of the mill Enterprise Zone, either – where companies play the business equivalent of musical chairs to save on their rates – but a dedicated Advanced Manufacturing Enterprise Zone perfectly placed next door to BAE Systems’s two main manufacturing plants at Warton and Samlesbury.

So now they have companies wishing to do businesses – or currently doing business with BAE Systems – banging on their doors to be let in. Both of these projects seem well on course for success, and they also share a platform that has helped them on their way – a Times Forum, in which both feature in this issue.

The Times Forum is increasingly being seen as the prime route of choice to promote success across the entire North of England, not only enjoying the benefit of The Times brand – the number one paper for business people – but it being the only publication to cover the entire North. There is already a pipeline of Forums being built – yet another indication that the North’s economy is slowly edging out of the gloom.

Putting our money where the energy is First Person John McGuire Backing fast-growing sectors is the key to future prosperity

I

ncreasingly, the UK’s position as one of the world’s leading economies depends on our ability to excel in “knowledge industries”. In the past, as a country we have been known for our high-volume manufacturing. More recently, however, we have seen a move towards innovative, high-quality manufacturing in skilled sectors.

It is therefore important that UK policy recognises our strength in high-value sectors. Among our six sub-funds, three are focused on sectors we believe are vital to the future success and prosperity of the North West: digital and creative, energy and environmental, and biomedical. That belief has been borne out by our

investments so far. Since we launched the fund in December 2010, our sector funds alone have invested more than £12.5 million into more than 40 businesses.

Crucially, the region already has a foothold in these fast-growing markets.

Liverpool is home to a growing cluster of biomedical businesses, one of which is Albert Medical Devices (AMD). The fund invested £50,000 in AMD in November 2011, and this has helped AMD develop its “intelligent leg bags” for the urology sector. These are now ready to bring to market thanks to the funding.

We have seen the impact of clusters in other sectors, too. Take digital and creative. The North West has the largest concentration of BBC production outside London, at MediaCityUK in Salford Quays, while Liverpool has a long-nurtured gaming community that has produced dozens of computer games selling millions of copies worldwide.

But that expertise is not just concentrated in large cities. First Active, which operates the fashion and lifestyle website FemaleFirst.co.uk, is based in Ashton-in-Makerfield, near Wigan. After our digital and creative fund invested

six months ago, it has increased unique users from 1.2 million to 1.8 million and is continuing to grow at 12 per cent month-on-month.

Similarly, the region’s expanding energy and environmental sector plays to our strengths. Know-how stretches the length and breadth of the North West, from the energy firms springing up close to the M56 and M62 in Greater Manchester, Cheshire and Merseyside, to nuclear-focused businesses in Lancashire and Cumbria and the windfarms that provide an alternative source of power.

Above all, we aim to recognise that we should build on our strengths. Our fund managers, specialists in the areas in which they operate, are attuned to the needs of the great businesses we invest in. The North West has everything it needs to prosper in the key sectors that will boost the UK economy, including a skilled workforce, infrastructure, topclass universities – and, most important of all, visionary entrepreneurs who are driven to succeed.

John McGuire is interim chief executive of North West Business Finance, which manages the North West Fund.

the times | Tuesday September 25 2012

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Business Insight

Advanced manufacturing

Planemakers as high-tech pacemakers Lancashire has set out to be the advanced manufacturing heartland of the UK – and is flying high with help from BAE Systems

By Mike Cowley

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hile BAE Systems has been making the headlines recently through being in merger talks, it has been business as usual for their engineers in Lancashire turning out the world’s most advanced aircraft – the Eurofighter Typhoon.

Here is an aircraft that has it all. The Typhoon can lift off in eight seconds, travel one kilometre in two seconds, go from brakes-off to 35,000 feet in two-and-a-half minutes, and fly from the south of Scotland into Wales within five minutes – or London to Paris in eight minutes.

If that’s not enough for Jeremy Clarkson fans out there, then each of its engines develops 20,000 pounds of thrust, its systems allow “carefree handling” – meaning the pilots can focus on the mission rather than worrying about the aircraft – and it is the first British combat aircraft capable of “supercruise”, which means it is able to maintain supersonic flight without having the afterburners on.

Want more? Not happy just playing with your new iPad? OK then…

Each airframe is constructed mainly from carbon fibre composites, lightweight alloys, titanium and glass-reinforced plastics. The Typhoon has a foreplane/delta wing configuration that is aerodynamically unstable in the subsonic range.

The “delta canard” design shape is driven by the need for subsonic, supersonic, instantaneous and sustained turn rate performance, agility, lift and STOL (short take-off and landing), exceptional acceleration and reduced drag.

And because The Times North Business Insight is what it says on the tin – a business publication – it should be stressed that the Eurofighter Typhoon has done some exceptional business for BAE Systems.

The combat aircraft has, to date, been ordered by six nations: Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, Austria and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, with 707 aircraft under contract and 559 ordered.

Between them, the six air forces that have the Typhoon have accumulated over 150,000 flying hours.

125 Typhoons have been produced for the UK, 90 for Germany, 65 for Italy, 42 for Spain and 15 for Austria. Saudi Ty-

phoon deliveries have also started. The production in terms of manufacture on the Typhoon is 37.5 per cent BAE Systems UK, 30 per cent Cassidian in Germany, 19.5 per cent Alenia Aermacchi in Italy and 13 per cent Cassidian in Spain.

The right wing of each aircraft is made in Spain, the left wing in Italy, the centre fuselage in Germany and the cockpit, nose, canard wings, spine and tail-fin in the UK. The 2011 turnover across the nations was more than $123 billion.

The first Eurofighter, DA1, flew from Manching in Germany in March 1994.

The following month, DA2 flew from Warton in Lancashire. In the UK, the Typhoon programme supports directly and indirectly some 40,000 jobs.

The Eurofighter Typhoon is a showcase example of high-end high-value manufacturing, and BAE Systems directly employs just under 4,000 people on the Eurofighter programme in the North West. Much of the development work for the Typhoon has been undertaken at BAE Systems’ Lancashire facilities in Warton and Samlesbury.

Warton is currently the largest site within BAE Systems in terms of employee numbers (approximately 5,000) and is the main site of the Military Air and Information (MAI) business. Its primary role is as the final assembly and flight test centre for MAI. The site also houses engineers and support functions for the full range of MAI platforms and services.

Currently, at Warton, Typhoon test pilots are refining the latest iteration of the aircraft, known as P1E part A, which will further consolidate the aircraft’s position as the world’s most advanced true swing-role fast jet fighter.

It was at Warton that test pilots also test-flew, and continue to fly, a new kind of helmet which allows the pilot to see all vital instrumentation on his visor and aim his weapons by where he is looking, rather than having to turn his aircraft towards his target. The system, known as the Helmet Mounted Symbology System, is a major advance in combat flying.

At Samlesbury, a number of advanced manufacturing techniques have been developed for the Typhoon programme.

One of the most important of these is the Super Plastic Diffusion Form Bonding process – a revolutionary and ingenious technique for the production of immensely strong, but light, components such as the small computer-controlled “canard” wings that characterise the Typhoon and provide its exceptional agility. The process, first developed in Lancashire, uses heat and pressure to bond titanium plates together without the need for any welding or other jointing process.

Samlesbury has also been at the forefront of developing the use of carbon fibre composites in military aviation – it is

In the workshop: the Typhoon does great business for BAE Systems

It is the intelligent mix of the right materials in the right places that helps give the Typhoon its edge

the intelligent mix of the right materials in the right places that helps give the Typhoon its exceptional performance edge.

Samlesbury and Warton have also developed highly accurate manufacturing processes that have changed the science of aircraft construction. The high levels of accuracy, now a routine part of the manufacturing process, ensure unprecedented levels of interoperability, meaning that components and aircraft sections are completely and reliably interchangeable.

At Warton, where final assembly of each UK Typhoon takes place, a laser alignment facility is used to connect the major components of each aircraft with a level of accuracy that brings major benefits in both performance and economy.

The facility even takes account of the pull

of the moon as tides raise and lower the hangar floor.

The Typhoon is likely to play a major role in the future force mix for many years to come. Capabilities with a stated in-service date of 2015 include a new electronic radar systems known as AESA or E-Scan Radar, and integration of the “beyond visual range” Meteor missile systems. Both these capabilities will further enhance the Typhoon’s appeal to a growing number of customers.

Beyond 2015, the Typhoon will continue to develop its role in operational dominance and high lethality against any threat. We are in safe hands – and advanced manufacturing in Lancashire has an unrivalled platform on which to build its future.

Tuesday September 25 2012 | the times

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Business Insight

Advanced manufacturing

An enterprise zone living up to its name Though Lancashire didn’t get the nod from the Government in the first instance, it has now pulled clear of the pack

By James Dunnett

I

f the Government is looking for an early success story for its new Enterprise Zones, it need look no further than one that didn’t get the nod in the first place: Lancashire. As though it had taken this as a snub from down south, Lancashire has shown the sort of true grit which made it the birthplace of the industrial revolution and has now surged well ahead of the pack. This is thanks to the new Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP), which had laid its plans well and is said to be one of the most progressive in the country.

Having proved that collaboration can work – in this case the private sector snuggled up somewhat suspiciously at first with the public sector in the LEP bed – they began to see there were real

merits in finding common ground. This prompted the thinking that if you are going to have an Enterprise Zone, then why not make it exclusive to people with mutual interests rather than open it up to the usual ragtag collection of bedfellows?

So Lancashire did just that and chose the advanced manufacturing sector – something at which it just happened to be rather good. After all, manufacturing industry in Lancashire has the highest concentration of activity outside the South East. It accounts for more than a quarter of local gross value added and continues to dominate economic activity and wealth creation in the county.

When it comes to aerospace, Lancashire is up there with the best of them.

Employing more than 20,000 people directly and thousands more indirectly, the local industry represents the largest single concentration of aerospace production in the UK. The industry within Lancashire encompasses all aspects of aerospace activity: from engines, airframes, avionics, missiles and ground support equipment to research and development and a wide-ranging design, manufacturing, servicing and testing capability.

The county’s unique aerospace knowledge and skills base extends back more than 90 years and has played a major

part in developing and producing some of the industry’s most innovative products and processes. Aerospace companies to be found in the county read like a roll of honour for the international aviation sector: Rolls-Royce, Aircelle, Spirit, Smiths Aerospace and BAE Systems are all instantly recognisable names.

That is why Lancashire showed real foresight by plonking its Enterprise Zone slap-bang alongside one of the world leaders in the sector. What better way to encourage companies than to place them next to the one whose success they would most like to emulate or do business with?

That company is BAE Systems, at the cutting edge of advanced manufacturing and with a workforce made up of some of the top engineers in the country, if not the world.

The Enterprise Zone project plan involved a business blitzkrieg, pushing forward on two fronts simultaneously.

It provided an exclusive, purpose-built environment in which engineering companies can work – either together or not – while at the same time potentially bolstering the supply chain for BAE Systems. And supply chains are high on the agenda for most major manufacturers these days.

One of the main players behind the push for the Enterprise Zone was Lan-

BAE Systems site at Samlesbury with Preston in the distance

Win, win: Phil Halsall

cashire County Council (LCC), covering the fourth-biggest area in the UK, with chief executive Phil Halsall being a key driver. It was LCC as part of the LEP that realised the county’s proven skills in advanced manufacturing would provide a perfect platform for an Enterprise Zone specialising in just that.

“This is a win-win for us,” says Mr Halsall. “We have a great situation here in that we already have a highly skilled workforce in place. We mustn’t forget that the UK is the second-biggest manufacturer of aircraft in the world. In total, there are 100,000 people in the UK who make aeroplanes and we have over 20 per cent of them here. So we are pretty good at it as a country and fantastic at it here.

The glue that binds supply chains and Getting companies to collaborate for the common good is the way forward, but it isn’t easy.

Lancashire may have the answer for the UK

M

artin Wright’s job is to apply glue – not to materials, but to companies. As chief executive of the North West Aerospace Alliance (NWAA), his primary role is getting the bosses of competing companies within the local aircraft industry supply chain to co-operate for the common good.

It can be a bloody business, as rivals with long histories of personal enmity are brought together, corporate fur and

feathers filling the room before a truce of sorts is grudgingly agreed.

Yet, over time, Mr Wright has worked out a formula – a series of processes to change that culture – which has implications not only for Lancashire but for the UK as a whole. He and his team have managed to get across what might seem obvious: that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Or that there is better and bigger business to be done if companies put aside their basic differences and get on with it. Together.

When he was brought in as CEO in 2004, after a career in Royal Ordnance which saw him end up as head of artillery systems, what Martin Wright found was a trade alliance, predominantly a marketing operation, a talking shop with little teeth. Eventually, however, it evolved into the first “cluster organisation” – bringing members together for the common good, a route that most trade bodies have followed since.

The aerospace supply chain sector was reputedly about as bad as it could get in

terms of lack of co-operation, and the primes – the major companies being supplied – were very unhappy. “So we started to look at how supply chains performed,” recalls Mr Wright. “And we found that it was highly disconnected, with the primes disappointed to put it mildly. So they backed us to look into it.”

This led to the NWAA obtaining its first round of significant funding – and changed the face of the organisation itself, giving it more critical mass and allowing it to bring in more expertise.

The thrust of the initial project involved holding a series of drumbeat workshops, in many cases attended with some reluctance by key members of the supply chains at the behest of the primes.

“We had regular workshops to ask questions – eventually coming up with an advanced development programme aimed at the core of supply chains,” Mr Wright says. “It was very frustrating work at first, in that many of the companies saw themselves as centres of excellence in a sea of mediocrity.

“Now people increasingly realise that they are in a global market – and if they want a piece of that market, the only way most of them are going to get it is to collaborate. That means pooling their skills, coming together to fund new technology, turning rivals effectively into partners.”

Phase one brought results. For every £1 spent, the return was assessed to be £75, a remarkable return when such projects rarely get out of single figures in terms of payback. With something to show, the money for phase two proved much easier to come by, £6.5 million in grants being made available, to be doubled by contributions.

The main funding came from the Regional Development Agency – now replaced by LEPs – and the European Regional Development Fund, an entirely more complex and bureaucratic source.

All this happened at the time that a buzz started around supply chains as the Government woke up to their potential impact on the economy, given that 70

Formula: Martin Wright

the times | Tuesday September 25 2012 the times | Tuesday September 27 2011

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Business Insight Business Insight james glossop for the times

It’s up to us to make it happen the way these big companies want it

“The jobs for aerospace engineers are well paid, with some on as much as £60,000 to £70,000 a year, so that is significant boost for the local economy.

The Government’s aerospace growth partnership – companies involved in aerospace – also produced a very encouraging document about the growth potential in the aerospace sector, Reach for the skies, which showed that we are on the right track. All of this adds up to 6,000 new jobs for Lancashire.”

The Enterprise Zone effectively straddles two of the BAE Systems sites, at Warton and Samlesbury. Both were Second World War airfields, so have plenty of space, 75 hectares in total at each. Known officially as the Lancashire Advanced Engineering and Manufacturing Zone – and open for business

since April – it sees the LEP working alongside BAE Systems to create a hub of expertise in a sector which is already one of Lancashire’s greatest economic strengths.

The success of the Enterprise Zone will give the LEP greater influence and financial strength in stimulating the local economy. For at least 25 years, all business rate growth within the Enterprise Zone will be retained and reinvested in the county, in support of the LEP’s priorities. Actual benefits available to businesses coming to the Enterprise Zone are not viewed as the key to its success, but are helpful, with only major companies able to reap significant rewards from business rate relief worth up to £275,000 over five years.

Neither will the new Enterprise Zone allow Lancashire companies to play the business equivalent of musical chairs, as happened with similar zones in the past – there are strict criteria to prevent that. The framework signed off by the Government is about advanced manufacturing and the aerospace sector; it isn’t about relocation unless a company can no longer expand where it is currently based.

“It would be madness for us to take a company from Blackburn which employs 50 people and put it there and still employ 50 people,” says Phil Halsall. “It would also leave Blackburn with a problem.”

Super-fast broadband is also part of the package, but this again is not a clincher for most companies in that many other sites are offering the same deal – and the Government is promising it for the whole country anyway.

Location will be a big draw-card, with the zone within easy reach of all major Northern cities, Manchester Airport and Liverpool SuperPort, and at the heart of the national motorway and rail network.

The Samlesbury site is in rolling countryside east of Preston, a short drive from the M6 and offers substantial undeveloped open space. The Warton site adjoins a village to the west of Preston on the Ribble Estuary and is part of a secure airfield with a 7,900-foot runway.

makes them work

it’s such a great business that when the op- almost a new set of challenges.

Keith Cochrane believes portunity arose to become chief executive, “It’s back to that passion about doing in investing in talent that well, you just don’t turn down that down. things better, opening our minds — and will help Weir Group “There is a great team of senior man- our organisation’s mind. We operate in to build a sustainable, agers and talented people across the huge markets but as a player we’re rela- long-term business organisation, so the opportunities to do tively small. something are very “Through we’ve “In essence,strategic the UK isplanning not a big counper cent of quite what special is madehere in aerospace exciting.

That’s gets The me: Advanced I want to identified opportunities to broaden our try but it has a big aerospace industry, alone goes out inwhat exports. realise the potential of this business.

The market and aproduct portfolio, and our so it needs centre to own a national Manufacturing Supply Chain initiative, group has come a longis way theofpast partly through strategy, thatfootprint, deals with all the highembracing aerospace, now in one the geographic decade — now we’re focusing on the next organic growth So andwe partly through aclevel elements. felt this was the top Government priorities. stage being passionate about whatthe is quisition.

It’s that realwere sensetoofmeet opportuway forward if we the Theand next milestone came when NWAA was approached to look at set- challenge of retaining year-to-year ting up a supply chain for the aerospace growth of 5 per cent in the face of some industry in India. “We’d been looking very severe challenges. It’s all about the manufacture of pumping equipment for the Clyde demand for “fracking” equipsupply chain, stupid.” at North India America’s because itgrowing is a potentially huge ment used extracting and gas from is keyresult isshipyards. that the NWAA is leadmarket,” saysinMr Wright.oil“And a lot ofshale The Today,bid Weir Group Weir Group’s profit predictions ing a £50m funding that has employs gone to around 13,000 people in thetoprocesses we upbeat have would fit into an announced more than 70Department countries, working in the minerals, oil during the summer. the Government – via the emerging economy.” and gas, and power industries.

Rapid growth continues This half-term reportthat detailed up 33 per for cent Business, Innovation and Skills – to One of the ideas Indiaincome had was to be been driven bySupply expanding into emerging markets to £1.03 billion, per centset to £1.2 up the National Aerospace a national supplyorders chainsoaring centreby of43 exceland providing services globally. billion and pre-tax profitspoint. boosted byhad 23 per Chain cent to Centre of Excellence in the new lence.

It proved a turning “We Innovation driven by customer demands is central £178hard million.

Zone.

Supported a long look at that and thought that Lancashire Enterprise to the company’s success, At was the time Keith Cochrane and backed by and earlier this year it here something the UK commented hadn’t got –“Theby leading industries announced the investment continue invest Mr to grow ahead of LCC, the University of Central Lanca- of £2 million in a dedicated andgroup therewillwas a realtoneed,” Wright research facility.

The Weir Advanced Research Centre our“All end we markets and we now expect profits for shire and the University of Warwick, says. had was a series of initiawillgroundbe a central plank of Strathclyde thein fullterms year toofbesupply somewhat ahead of our the centre would build on the tives chain developprevious expectations.” by the recently established ment which tend to be regional. And breaking work undertaken University’s Technology and Innovation Centre in Founded in 1871within in these are kept regions because NWAA. Glasgow.

G & Jinitiatives Weir, the are not the “We aim to start with aerospace, then Cochrane said the partnerof Glasgow funding.asNow shipskills would “continue to bring company responsible answer for awas country like the UK as the – because of the complementary breakthrough developments to our for the invention and required – morph into advanced engiinformation capture is not shared.

It’s time to pool Innovation driven by customer demands skills, for rivals to become partners

nity that excites me, to see far we’ve The Enterprise Zone hashow already won come, and to see howapplication, far we can gowhich over fast-track planning the nextthat ten LCC years.has been given special means So, is he global economic powers to worried facilitatethat this.

Provisionally slowdown blow those plans this appliesmight only to Samlesbury, butoff it course?

“Every company be sensiis expected to soon applyhas to to Warton as tive the economic well.toForgetting evenenvironment this and thearound semiit and attractions be sure it ison on offer, top ofitany potential rural is the presimplications.

Having said that,sites I would ence of BAE Systems on both that step and look at our experience givesback the whole project sufficient legs as to we went through 2008That and is 2009, underpin a centipede. whywhere it has there was a significant drop-off in activalready attracted real get-the-contractity on markets.

We were very outimpacting interest from a dozen major compaclear in terms the action we took: we nies from the of advanced manufacturing reset the base, looked forward. sector.

“Lots of at opportunities come we out are of “We are the stage where these times butspecific it doesn’t take askingdifficult them what their requireaway funmentsfrom are: the do mediumyou needto a long-term shed or somedamentals across ourPhil markets.

Mining, oil thing better?” says Halsall.

“There and gas resources are finite and there is a is a myriad of different solutions – some growing for them. combinawant to demand own, some don’tThat want to use tion going toItdrive further theiriscapital. is up to usinvestment. to make it He believes taking a positive view: happen the wayinthey want it.” you can’t the short-term But do ignore the incomers have toenvironfit into ment, but you can look at it in the context the BAE Systems supply chain model of a few years ago and the broader because of their presence on theopporsite? tunities in the longer he says.we are The answer is no.

“At term, the moment talking to somebody who is involved in ookingofforward, Cochrane manufacture high-tech carbon stressmatees, also in talent, rials which are means used ininvesting X-ray machines,” and he is almost evangelical Mr Halsall says.

“These might beabout used

by BAE.encouraging Clearly theyindividual could getpotential. into the “It’s our people whatever level BAE supply chain, but atthey don’t have they the difference, to becontribute involved inwho the make BAE chain to get in who us to deliver,” he says. “Look there.enable The key criteria is advanced manat our growth thecompanies past couplewere of years, ufacturing.

Ofinthe are both in achieving that and moving talking to at moment, about 50 perahead cent needs capability our people. are not involvedinin BAE supply chain.

“Weofarethis investing significant sums in None is Government funded.

It this, and commercially.” have just kicked off a senior will work management programme.

If we LCC is alsotraining prepared to dip into its don’t have the people held substantial pension potwe of will £4.3 be billion. back.

While investment and “Like any pension fund, it hascontinued a spread focus are very much at county’s the forefront of investments,” says the CEO. of my vast priorities, in my leadership “The majority is in equities role but as CEO also vital to make sure we there is ita is chunk invested in property. are the next generation of Andbuilding it makesupsense to have it invested managers. in Lancashire, as long as we have some“Itindependently is back to building one to say itais sustainable a good inlong-term business.

If we onlytowanted vestment. We have governance invest success for a year or two, we wouldn’t be in Lancashire when creating economic doing a lot things wegot are into verythis focused growth.

Weofmay have Enon now.” Zone game late through no terprise Despite that butunrelenting fault of our own, we intend to focus, show Cochrane having a good the rest ofagrees, them how to do it.” life balance is crucial. “When I’m working I’m passionate about the business, I do thrive on it; I’m quite driven. However, I have a relatively youngprobably family, and at weekends neering, then power generaItion,” tend says to focus on the kids — although Mr Wright.

He cites the exmy wifeofwould say not always exclusively! ample the Tornado.

It was designed try1970s, hard went to have a different in “Ithe into service insense the of perspective.

When haveinaservice senior 1980s and is still veryyou much management role it refits can easily today, even though have take madeover, it a so the abilitydifferent to step back and have a dose completely aircraft. of “Unlike reality, in likeGermany, taking your to says daughter Mr Wright, a“where sports there class on Saturday,recognition is good for is aa national everyone.” that engineering is what they are good most at,Perhaps so theythe tend notsurprising to tinkerdiscovery – in the about is despite UK weCochrane tend to back horses.his Webusiness backed DNA, he’seconomy not all about numbers. a service which the subsequently Ultimately, course, he wants to failed. Nowofwe are looking at them a much add and theneconomy to multiply.

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L

PROFESSIONAL BRIEF

The Olympicof Challenge turning legacy - big an ideas into opportunity reality is key to export

FN

or Scotland’s orthmany Westyears, businesses in thelife Aeroscience sector has beenManufacturheralded as space and Advanced one the nation’s rising stars. ing of sectors are being urged to take have a tremendous opporadvantageWe of emerging export markets. tunity to leverage resources including Jonathan Thomas,our MBA, from Rosebud the NHS,Solutions, our universities excepBusiness financeand andour business tional forbymedical innovation, supportheritage provided Lancashire County talent andtalks infrastructure to encourage Council, about opportunities for and attract big business.

So why does is it that these sectors and support available: many of our young life science companies Despite are struggling to get off the ground? economic The challenge of turning ideas into challenges, reality and companies of scale still seems the sectors to elude all, continue to but a few, and is an issue that needs to be urgently addressed. hold their The life science industry is truly global own against and Scotland, as others, has identified it competition as a key sector to from overseas. drive future wealth Manufacturand prosperity. ing maintains But aspiration isn’t a strong enough and we foothold in Jonathan Thomas need to act now Lancashire, to fully exploit the particularly opportunity before Advanced Manufacturing. we get left through behind.

The sectors are well supported Lack of NAA, funding MAS, NW Aerospace Alliance, Neil looksGrowth is a vociferous EEF McInnes and Regional Funding. The to pooling resources lament by those designated Enterprise Zone in Lanin the sector. cashire and TSB competitions including Scotland has a vibrant businessbut angel SMART bring opportunities, through community andtheme the Scottish Investment all of this, the of export continues Bank’s Co-investment to be very important. and Venture Funds play an important role.a However, there I recently attended seminar series is a growing of timed foreboding that this organised bysense UKTI, to coincide money be redirected at renewables. with thecould Olympic Games with themes of Coupled our lack a strong active exportingwith to China andofBrazil.

The fifthVenture Capitalincommunity, specialislargest country the world, Brazil has a ing in life sciences in Scotland, growth higher GDP per head than either Chinais inevitably or India. slow.

That said, lifethe science Considering rangeisoffundamencontracts and tally a long term, high-risk business.

It tenders for the London Games, the 2016 is expensive, for instance, to take drugs Rio Games offers huge opportunities for through clinical trials and the market North West companies to into win business in with guarantee return.

But if ScotBrazilno over the nextof4ayears and beyond. land is serious interested about its life Companies in science trading sector, with we needand to Brazil find ways get businesses China willtohave had furtherto aopportunities point where in venture capitaltomoney is Lancashire find out forthcoming. more during the Rise Business week in While Scotland’s life science sector September, closely followed

by UKTI remains made up manyand diverse trade missions to of China Brazilsmall for companies, mayin also be an arguNorth Westthere business October and ment for consolidation.

Pooling resources mid-November respectively. and critical mass Incollaboration order to beat to offcreate competition, with other need indigenous companies or partbusinesses to innovate and seek nering with organisations new opportunities to grow,overseas such asis one route andexport, may well through butprevent it can besome hardcompato nies fromright failure in these particularly hard find the funding.

Rosebud Business times.

Getting ready is another Solutions haveinvestor been at the forefront of prerequisite, especiallyinwith majorwhere foreign supporting businesses a period organisations borrowing haslooking becomeon. a serious chalScotland has an for exceptional pool of lenge, particularly new less-tested talent and ideas.

But inistoday’s global technologies.

Rosebud a unique offer competitive that is not enough to Lancashireeconomy businesses lending money without the right and the busifrom £50,000, andincentives equity investment can ness to supportpackage. them. forminfrastructure part of an investment Neil Head of Technology, AsMcInnes, well as Aerospace and Advanced Grant Thornton Scotland Manufacturing, Rosebud provides finance to growing businesses in the Energy and in association with Environment and Creative and Digital sectors.

www.lancashire.gov.uk/rosebud

Tuesday September 25 2012 | the times

6

Business Insight

The Times Forum

Lancashire – the birthplace of a second industrial revolution?

As the Red Rose county enjoys a boom in advanced manufacturing, our forum asks key players to anticipate what the future holds

By Mike Cowley

S

eated in the midst of a huge aircraft hangar in Lancashire, surrounded by Eurofighter Typhoon jets in their final testing stage before being shipped to either the RAF or Saudi Arabia at £65 million each, you can’t fail to think that when it comes to advanced manufacturing, this county knows what it is doing.

So much so that the birthplace of the first industrial revolution is hoping it could well be in the running – with a little care and attention and Government support – to spearhead the second. With the Government desperately looking for good news in manufacturing, here it is – and that is why, out of the 100,000 engineers in Lancashire, 20,000 are in well-paid jobs in the aerospace sector alone. This is also the reason ministers have given the go-ahead to a special Enterprise Zone in Lancashire dedicated to advanced manufacturing and its supply chain.

Naturally, this second industrial revolution will not be about cotton, which led to the first, or mines – but neither will this one, if it comes about, be solely about aerospace. This was the subject that the great and the good assembled from across the county had come to discuss at a Times Forum held at BAE Systems Warton – where, punctuated by the roar of jets taking off from the runway alongside the hangar, a hand-picked group of key influencers in the county tackled the issue of how to build on the success already achieved in this sector.

Literally feet away from the table around which they were sitting were the menacing Typhoons, built at Warton and quite an attention-grabber. Lurking apparently nearby was a concept unmanned air vehicle (UAV) capable of

striking targets at long range, even in another continent, while other UAVs for intelligence gathering are under development in the same plant.

Lancashire County Council (LCC), which co-sponsored the event with The Times, had chosen the venue to make the point of how important a centre Lancashire is for engineering and advanced manufacturing, not just in the UK but on the world stage. And BAE Systems is certainly not the only Lancashire success story in terms of advanced manufacturing, even in the aerospace industry sector – although it currently enjoys the highest profile and so provides a high-flying promotional platform.

It was panel member Mike Tynan who chose to underline the overall strength in advanced manufacturing in Lancashire by pointing to his own company, Westinghouse, a world leader in the nuclear industry. “We share a common requirement with aerospace,” Mr Tynan said, “and that is advanced manufacturing.

While people might think of nuclear fuels as being dominated by sciences, actually we are an advanced manufacturing plant and have been for nearly 70 years.

“Fuel made at Springfields has served the nuclear industry for its entire life – all the reactors in the UK exist on fuel from Springfields – it’s the UK’s indigenous fuel plant – but it is a manufacturing plant and we rely on skills in advanced manufacturing, both now and in the future.”

Mr Tynan went on to clarify that the skills requirement is not limited to engineers. “We have a complete range of support services and we often find it is difficult to get people skilled in project management, programme management, procurement, recently even HR [human resources] specialisms such as pensions.

“So we employ a wide variety of people, and when we talk about sustaining the industry locally in Lancashire it is important not just to think about progressing people through science and engineering disciplines, but also to think about what are real skills needed to support industry in the long term – and that means looking wider than just the core engineering.”

That advanced manufacturing embraces more than one sector means the county can benefit from the crossfertilisation of skills, according to Dave Holmes of BAE Systems, the other representative of a world-leading company on the Forum panel. “For companies to stay

in front,” he said, “we need a differentiator, a competitive edge, something that makes people want to do business in Lancashire. We also need a lot of cross-sector synergies that we can exploit. That’s important to deal with the cyclical nature of business. To invest in people, to invest in infrastructure, to invest in capacity, so we can all see through the supply chain lots of diversification away from the niche sector.”

The importance of the supply chain featured strongly throughout the debate, as building this is one of the fundamental objectives for Lancashire. Key to understanding this area was panel member Martin Wright, CEO of the North West Aerospace Alliance, which has provided the glue to bring once-rival companies together for the overall good of the sector.

“From the supply chain point of view,” Mr Wright said, “it has been here for a long time, it is historic from the aerospace point of view in that it has evolved from the back of the skill base itself.

Whereas I‘d like to see more investment from SMEs [small and medium enterprises] in their own infrastructure and their own business, we do have an established supply chain, very powerful, and it has longevity for the future.

“I know the Government supports advanced engineering, but to say to companies go out and export, it is much more complicated – and individual smaller companies will find it very difficult. If UK Limited is going to be successful, we need to get companies to collaborate to get bigger offerings – to couple supply chains with supply chains to leverage those supply chains.

“You can win much bigger packages – companies have to stop seeing everyone as a competitor in their own back yard – if you learn to collaborate, learn to invest significantly in new technology and go out collectively and win business. Our next great adventure is to get them to co-operate, and in Lancashire I think we have started to do just that.”

All of these engineering-related activities require underlying skills, underpinned in turn by an education system designed to fit. Professor Margaret Bruce of the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) reassured the panel that the educational establishment was very much on the case. “We are looking to be futureproof in our approach,” she said. “Only yesterday we had a visit from NASA who

Taking off: the Typhoon

You can win much bigger packages if you learn to collaborate, invest in new tech and go for business collectively

want to take our students over there. We also have a substantial engagement with employers to ensure we have an innovative approach that is relevant to our skill training and development.

“Engineers coming out of UCLan are equipped not only with technical skills but with the ability to manage effectively, to develop product, to take concepts to market place. They are aware of agendas that are arising such as digital impact, green impact – drivers in the business – so they will be future leaders. We are very concerned about the pipeline, so we are working at schools level to try and influence the decision to move into engineering. We need to get them thinking about it and planning ahead.”

Professor Bruce raised the concern that while a high proportion of girls perform well in maths and science, they do not choose to go into engineering as a profession – a topic taken up by other panel members. “I think that industry would be very glad to get females in all roles – apprenticeships in particular,” said Mike Tynan. “And we have been successful at that. However, what we need is to see a progression of females to operational roles in heavy industry and then on to the boardroom. When you look at operations at the moment, you see male domination.

“We must help young females to see a career path not just in the softer functions. Sometimes that may mean overcoming some of the barriers such as shift patterns, as shift work is often not attractive to young women with children. It is on the agendas of most senior executive to be able to tap into the wealth of experience and talent you get from having females in the workshop.”

This led to a broader discussion as to the appeal – or not – of the engineering industry as a whole. BAE Systems’s Dave Holmes dismissed the dark, satanic mills image as “an urban myth”, pointing out the excellent working conditions and the diversity agenda pursued by companies such as his.

the times | Tuesday September 25 2012

7

Business Insight

Martin Wright agreed that the long-held view that manufacturing was the poor relation in terms of what people can achieve was starting to change. “We come back to the issue of what kind of infrastructure do we expect these young people to work in,” he said. “The kind that BAE Systems has put up in Samlesbury, a modern, clean environment, has seen a paradigm shift in what an industrial environment actually looks like.

“I don’t think we are there yet, though.

Nor have we done a good job in spelling out the benefits that accrue when they enter a career in manufacturing, what the rewards are in terms of job satisfaction or pay. So they are seduced into easier roles because, at the end of the day, engineering is a tough academic subject and can be a tough environment.”

While the situation on the ground today was high on the agenda, so too was the future, in that the end products of advanced manufacturing are not seen in a matter of months but often take decades. “Let’s say we are successful in developing the next generation of nuclear reactors to support UK power,” said Mr Tynan. “The young kids who started school this September will be the grandparents of people who decommission the reactors at the end of their useful life.

“So we have to think about where we get skills to take these down as well as put them up. That’s why we need targeted education, we need strategies that are industry-led. We also need leadership with the foresight to take the industry forward 20, 50, 100 years. We need to create the future. What you have seen in BAE Systems and in my company is desire to do that – to create a future both in technology and for people as well.”

But is advanced manufacturing getting enough help from the Government, asked chairman Edwin Booth. Somewhat surprisingly, the answer seemed to be an emphatic yes from the two manufacturers present.

BAE Systems’s links to the Ministry of Defence (MoD) were said to have given it a superb shop window to stimulate sales abroad, with many foreign countries looking to the UK armed services – and their equipment – as something to which to aspire.

“The RAF is one of best demonstrators by actually flying products,” said Dave Holmes.

“We have an excellent UK shop window in real time. The MoD’s role in helping sales has been critical, also in helping us make contacts and secure contracts. This has percolated all the way down to our SMEs in terms of revenue to be invested in skills, making a very strong flywheel for the economy.”

Westinghouse appear similarly pleased with the support they are receiving. “We are heavily involved with the Government for the next generation of nuclear reactors in the UK,” said Mr Tynan. “I would say that, over the last four or five years, the Government has been proactive both on the skills agenda and on attempts to stimulate the supply chain.

“Two examples of help sponsored by BIS [the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills] are the National Skills Academy for Nuclear, which has done an excellent job in highlighting the skills needed in industry for the long term, and the Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre, which helps small companies integrate and understand how to meet very precise quality standards.

“And speaking with officials and ministers in the Department of Energy and Climate Change over the years, we have had nothing but complete support for moving forward. In relation to the potential for the next generation of nuclear reactors, the Government has made it very clear that anyone developing those units will need to develop a significant UK value in scope and content.”

Commenting on the degree of common purpose shown during the Forum, chairman Edwin Booth said: “We seem to have rediscovered our industry mojo. Maybe, just maybe, we are on the verge of another industrial revolution here in Lancashire.”

The Forum ended with the rumble of yet another aircraft close by, reminding everyone that advanced engineering has already made an indelible mark on our lives and could be instrumental in shaping all our futures.

Advanced manufacturing - the political perspective

G

eoff Driver, a former local government chief executive and now leader of Lancashire County Council (LCC), took an active role on the Forum panel where he set out the council’s task in helping the advanced manufacturing sector.

“Perhaps local government as a whole has yet to fully define its role, but in Lancashire we’re quite clear what that role is,” Councillor Driver said. “We are not going to change the economy, industry is going to do that – but while we are not a business we must be business-like and use our areas of influence to help people grow.”

He has already singled out education as a way LCC can help the sector’s cause.

“We’ve got some of the best schools in the country and we are raising standards of education generally – we need to listen to big employers and ask them what they want young people to be able to do when they come out of school.”

And he revealed that Lancashire is “pumping a lot of money” into apprenticeships, providing its young people with an option to go on to university. “We’ve got to put our money where our mouth is, and our recent track record shows that is exactly what we’re doing. We’ve made economic development a priority, led major infrastructure schemes including the rollout of super-fast broadband, and invested in new roads and the improvement of the existing highway network – that’s the way the county council can help.”

Yet, despite Cllr Driver’s reticence – not always a natural trait for a politician – LCC has already been singled out for praise by the Government for taking a proactive role and is clearly determined to stay ahead of the pack.

The Times Forum Panel

H

ow extensive advanced manufacturing is in Lancashire – and the critical importance with which it is viewed across all sectors – was best reflected by the panel assembled for the Forum:

Mike Tynan, chief executive of Westinghouse UK, a major player in the extensive Lancashire nuclear fuel industry and representing a host of companies with manufacturing skills outside the aerospace sector.

Martin Wright, chief executive of the North West Aerospace Alliance, who was there to reveal that the aerospace industry in Lancashire embraces far more than just BAE Systems.

Professor Margaret Bruce, pro vice-chancellor of the University of Central Lancashire, accepted an invitation because of her expertise around the economy and the supply chain.

Geoff Driver, leader of Lancashire County Council, was taking part to show how vital advanced manufacturing is for the future of the county and how the authority is getting behind it.

Dave Holmes, director of investment and infrastructure at BAE Systems’s military air and information division – apart from representing the company, he was also present because of his close involvement with the new Advanced Engineering and Manufact-

uring Enterprise Zone, which is located on both the BAE Systems sites at Warton and Samlesbury.

The panel was directed and brought magnificently to heel by the Forum chairman Edwin Booth, who is both the executive chairman of the family-owned E H Booth grocery chain and the first chairman of the Lancashire Local Enterprise Partnership.

Under his urbane verbal prodding, the Forum moved smoothly through the key topics of skills, education, collaboration, the future for the sector and Government support – all the main ingredients needed in the advanced manufacturing mix.

Forum, from left: Prof Margaret Bruce, Dave Holmes, Martin Wright, Edwin Booth, Cllr Geoff Driver, Mike Tynan

Tuesday September 25 2012 | the times

8

Business Insight

Cover story

Edwin Booth, the patrician grocer with impeccable taste How the fifth generation of the Booth family dynasty ensures the group’s survival by giving customers not just what they need but what they want

By Mike Cowley

E

dwin Booth is an astute businessman whose roots go deep into the fertile soil of his native Lancashire. The fifth generation of the famous E H Booth grocer dynasty, the tall, slim Lancastrian – a patrician to his fingertips – has without question a keen sense of loyalty to his family, to his employees and to the county he loves.

He is a gentleman of the old school – a reader of The Times for the last 30 years – and none the worse for that. Think Lord Grantham of Downton Abbey but with a highly tuned entrepreneurial business brain and you won’t be too far off the mark. When his father, John Booth, called Edwin one cold February evening in 1997 – and as he rarely phoned this in itself was an unusual event – it was to inform him it was time to take his place as chairman. He accepted his responsibilities as he had always done.

Edwin Booth had been sent to the renowned Oundle School in Northamptonshire on the grounds that it was endowed by the Worshipful Company of Grocers – and the Booths certainly were grocers. Oundle brought Mr Booth’s love of music to the fore – he played the cello, piano and organ – and his prowess as an oarsman saw him toy with the idea of going to university to pursue these pursuits.

But once again the weight of family history bore down on him. His father asked him to go straight into the family business, and his sense of duty ensured he did just that.

Leaving Oundle with an accent which he admits sounded “like a royal”, he started at the bottom, as all Booths had before him – in the central warehouse surrounded by people with broad Lancashire accents. “Young Mr Edwin”, as he was called, was taken aback when first addressed as “luv” by little George, a boxing enthusiast, as in “Would you like a piece of cake, luv?” But they took to him and he took to them, and that liking for his staff remains to this day, something that has underpinned the success

of Booths.

“I loved working in the warehouse, mixing with 50 or 60 local men and women,” Edwin Booth recalls. “The sheer warmth I experienced has been a major influence on the way I’ve interacted with people at all levels in business ever since.”

Mr Booth probably went down a storm with his workmates. More importantly, he was learning the family business from the bottom up – and getting paid the going rate for the work.

Having arrived in the business, the first thing Edwin Booth noticed was the parochialism. “I kicked against that because I wanted to take the entrepreneurial and modern approach,” he says.

“I was constantly told you can’t do certain things because we were a family business, because we were small – that was like a red rag to a bull.”

Slowly but surely Edwin Booth began to influence the way the family firm worked, helping to reshape it from the bottom up. He became the first member of the family to take an active interest in marketing and was instrumental in appointing a PR person in London to talk about the wine side of the business – which he had helped to grow from a handful of labels to more than 700. “I had developed that side of the business and I wanted the world to know about it,” he says. “I wanted people to aspire to shop at Booths.”

Whether it was simply in his genes or not, Mr Booth soon showed he had retailing in his blood. This talent was spotted when he was 21 by a giant of the food trade, Gordon Baxter of Baxters Soups.

“Do you fish?” he asked. “No I don’t,” came the reply. “Well you’ll have to come up to Scotland and I’ll teach you then.”

Gordon Baxter taught Edwin Booth a lot more than just fishing. He became his mentor, advising him about business and giving him the encouragement to challenge the status quo in the family firm and reshape it. “He was the head of family business, charismatic, entrepreneurial, never took no for an answer,” Mr Booth recalls. “And I instantly warmed to him.

He gave me a huge amount of confidence. For years I spent time with him up in Scotland and I was able to talk to him about the business and the way the family relates to business.”

That was some 30 years ago and Gordon Baxter is now in his 90s, but Edwin Booth still occasionally pops up to see him in Scotland for a spot of fishing – and for some advice. It was this advice that helped him turn Booths into a serious player in the supermarket league when he became chairman – not a mean feat given that change does not sit easily alongside tradition.

When that call came through from his father in 1997, Edwin Booth was taken by surprise. “The first thing he said was I want you to be the chairman,” he recalls.

“I thought good heavens. Then I reminded him it was the 150th anniversary of the company and asked didn’t he want to wait until June to celebrate it. He simply said he wanted me to do it straight away and that was that.”

Mr Booth spent the first year deciding what needed to be done, and the first major change was to set up an operations board, appointing non-family members.

At the same time, he asked that family members take on specific management roles – again an innovation. “I took hold of the management structure and gave it cohesion, modernity, something that had been badly needed,” he says.

Edwin Booth also had to make the company more competitive – and that meant efficient. Whereas previous generations had faced little serious competition, looming on the horizon, guns ablaze, were the battleships of Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Asda and Morrisons, followed by the corvettes of Lidl and Aldi.

He suggests that commando tactics are needed for his 28-store group (soon to be 29), all located in Lancashire, Yorkshire and Cumbria, and likens his firm’s approach to business to a speedboat, weaving in and out of the major supermarket fleet, blasting holes in the opposition with sheer quality and service.

Amid the shells he lobs at his rivals is a range of locally sourced “forgotten” Northern products such as double curd Lancashire cheese, damson butter and asparagus from Formby. Some 25 per cent of all the products sold in the Booths stores are local, something that the big chains cannot live with. It was this approach that saw Booths named second best retailer in the world by The Grocer, behind only US organic retailer Whole Foods Market.

“We try every way to become more competitive and more attractive to customers,” Mr Booth says. “From the fabulous infrastructure of our stores created by my brother to the quality of our produce. At Booths, we provide not just what people need but what they want.”

Booths has put money into the UK arm of Slow Food, the global pressure group taking on agri-business. Part of this project is to support ingredients in danger of being sidelined, by supporting them at source – such as damsons from the Lyth Valley and smoked haddock from Grimsby. The company sees such foods as a way of differentiating themselves from the larger and increasingly cut-throat members of the supermarket pack.

Yet, important as such moves are, they are really diversionary skirmishes in the battle. Competition remains a major challenge for what is now the largest remaining family food multiple. It is also one of the oldest, in that it opened its first stores before Sainsbury’s.

“We will never fill as big a shopping basket as Tesco because we are not as cheap as Tesco,” says Mr Booth. “But we will provide more satisfaction. It is that degree of satisfaction with the shopping experience that preoccupies us here.

Our customer profile is different than the others. We do not focus on attracting people who sit down to a microwave meal on a Saturday night in front of the television. Yet Booths stores are not just for people with money, they are for people who love food and drink.”

There is little doubt, however, that its larger and more aggressive neighbours supermarket neighbours – and the new kids on the block such as Lidl and Aldi – have made Booths constantly look for fresh ideas. One such venture saw them team up with Waitrose for economies of scale – but this came to an end as Waitrose began to appear in the Booths catchment areas.

“I’d always admired the Waitrose business and the way it operates, and we did have a conversation with them to collaborate because we didn’t compete directly at that time,” Mr Booth says. “We had a working relationship, completely kosher as far as competition was concerned – only when they started to approach on our trading area that was it.”

Booths has meanwhile scored considerable brownie points in the supermarket sector with its well-designed upmarket stores – and for the way they are mainly placed either in or close by prosperous market towns such as Clitheroe and Knutsford. Booths new stores fall into two categories: Group One offer between 15,000 and 30,000 square feet, Group Two between 9,000 and 15,000 square feet.

The company also finds itself a player in the mini local supermarket game by default, with some of its over-the-counter legacy stores still serving small communities – although, as Edwin Booth constantly reminds people, “We are not a convenience store but a grocery store.”

Their latest store was a surprise in that it did not quite follow the pattern. Located in the heart of Media City in Salford, it is perfectly positioned for promotional purposes, hence the parading of a prize bull outside the television studios to mark the opening. But number 29 will follow a more traditional path, being located in leafy Milnthorpe.

So how many more stores are likely to follow – and when? “We have plans

Rare retailer: Edwin Booth

I was told you can’t do certain things as we were a family business – that was a red rag to a bull

the times | Tuesday September 25 2012

9

Business Insight

A helping hand for Lancashire

E

dwin Booth is helping to repay his debt to his native county in his role as the first chairman of the Lancashire Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP), established in 2011. Designed like others across the UK to replace regional development agencies, the Lancashire LEP has already won plaudits from the Government as being one of the two pace-setters in the country, the other being in the North East.

Under Mr Booth’s leadership, the Lancashire body has successfully avoided using the funds for administration costs, these having been effectively absorbed

by Lancashire County Council.

Unlike other LEPs, there has been no appointment of a CEO on a significant salary, neither have there been large sums spent on research – again the county has stepped up for this.

As a result, it has marked a successful co-operation of both the private and public sectors – providing a model for the rest of the country. This has surprised many, including Edwin Booth himself.

“I came into role with a healthy dose of scepticism,” he says, “having been told in the past that productivity was a dirty word in the public sector only to find that these guys are working very hard. A year and half later, I regard the public sector as working companions.

I hope working with business at strategic level is an eye-opener for them as well.

“So far I am delighted with the way the political elements have worked with the private sector.

for another four stores over the next five years – but it could be more,” Mr Booth says. “Businesses like ours cannot develop beyond a certain pace. We have a pipeline of developments but the restraint is cash. If customer spending is tight, we have to keep a close eye on our cost base. We have refinanced last year with a new banking package which will allow us to develop the way we want to.

We have a strong asset base and we are a good bet.”

Asked if he would like Booths to be a national chain, he says “We have no aspirations for size, just quality. We invest in existing fabric and every now and again build a new store. We are scalable.

This is not a money-making exercise per se, but it is fair to say there is a lot of latent value in the business. That enables us to grow.”

So how much impact has the recession had on Booths? “Same as for everybody else,” the chairman responds. “However, with us, the basket spend below £20 has gone down a bit while the basket spend between £20 and £100 has gone up. We didn’t really notice anything until 2010 when the recession seemed to get a second wind and then the squeeze became noticeable.”

Yet Edwin Booth – not normally a man to boast – is convinced that the UK could have escaped the recession entirely had it been run on the lean-and-mean lines of Booths. “We have never over-extended ourselves as a business,” he says, “always lived within our means – and that should have been the course the UK would have been wiser to follow.”

Meanwhile, the sixth generation of Booths has just joined the group: Henry Booth, Edwin’s brother’s son, is in place a graduate management trainee – a situation that Edwin finds particularly pleasing in terms of both the company and the family. The father of two teenage daughters, Edwin Booth was also very happy to see 19-year-old Emma take her place on the checkout at Clitheroe this summer before going to university.

After all, Mr Booth still retains a very personal – as well as business – interest in the family stores, and either he or his wife can often be seen in one doing the family’s weekly shop. So what has driven him to adhere to the family tradition and continue to steer Booths through a fresh chapter in its long and illustrious history?

As he replied to an interviewer having just joined the business in 1973: “I just wanted to try to do it better than my Dad.”

This is very important to me in that I’ve always been associated with enterprises that are successful.”

The Lancashire LEP’s role is to chart a successful future for business in the county. And with limited funds available, it is critically important that all parties co-operate to provide maximum results at minimum costs. The LEP is currently involved in looking at what is happening to the county’s diverse economy – which, like others, has been battered during the recession – and seeing where it can help with long-term planning.

With all elements of business, education and the public sector involved, the objective is to support the county’s business community through the current economic turbulence with the objective of it coming out stronger on the other side.

“We have already seen an inexorable coming together of thinking as to how Lancashire can be developed,” says Edwin Booth. “We have an incredibly diverse economy here covering most sectors. The larger businesses such as those in advanced manufacturing are easy to identify and to bring into the plan, but we feel there is a lot of value out there being driven by many small businesses.

“Our biggest challenge is to gain sufficient understanding from a geographical and sectoral point of view as to what is going on with small businesses.”

The LEP chairman illustrates the potential with examples of two small businesses that had recently come on to the radar –

one in high-tech with a potential to double its employees from 30 to 60, the other an agri-business looking for larger premises in Lancashire. “These are just two,” says Mr Booth, “when there are hundreds if not thousands out there which with a little help can make a major contribution to Lancashire.”

However, the LEP intends to initially concentrate its efforts on the easily identifiable big business in the area of advance manufacturing, and has already successfully established an Enterprise Zone for this purpose.

Edwin Booth uses the analogy of oxygen masks coming down in an aircraft for what they are currently doing. The mask is placed over the head of the strongest, which then provides the time for them to apply it to the weakest.

“That is our current approach,” he says, “although we are well aware that there are many small businesses of five or six people out there who are growing at 100 per cent and we don’t know them. By focusing initially on helping the easily identifiable larger companies and sectors such as advanced manufacturing, this will drive GDP and support growth in employment.

“We are looking for quick wins at the moment because this has to be business-based or it won’t work.”

So what is the future for Lancashire? “When I get that question,” Mr Booth says, “I’m expected to come up with some sweeping answer like we are at the start of the second industrial revolution here. Well, who knows, we might just be…”

Origins of a dynasty

I

t was in 1847 that 19-year-old Edwin Henry Booth borrowed £80 from the family grocer to whom he was apprenticed and opened the China House in Blackpool. He repaid the debt in three months and still had £50 left over.

That, at least, is the official version of the founding of the Booths dynasty. The current Edwin Booth tells it rather differently.

In his version, the first Edwin was born on the wrong side of the blanket and orphaned at the age of 11. When he reached 16, the apprentice borrowed stock and set up in a business with 21 guineas that came from his blood father.

No matter which version is more accurate, it is an inspiring tale of a young man from the humblest of backgrounds who started with nothing and laid

the foundations of a business empire. It certainly inspired the present Edwin Booth.

“I remember thinking it was my job to perpetuate his idea.

What a privilege to be able to pick up the pieces and run with them. How many people get that sort of opportunity?”

By dint of hard work, the founder of Booths extended his stock – which in turn allowed him to search further and further afield for goods to tempt the customers in his Blackpool store. One of these trips took him to France in 1855, where he discovered Count Simon’s French coffee, a product sold by Booths until only recently.

Changes in the licensing laws smoothed the way for Booths to expand, enabling the founder to move into the wine and spirits trade in 1863, then to open new branches of E H Booth and

company in Lytham in 1879 and in Blackburn in 1884.

Under the leadership of Edwin’s eldest son John, the first stores were enlarged and cafes were added in 1902 – helping launch the cafe society that became so popular in fashionable resorts. It was John Booth who had the foresight to reward the loyalty of his staff first with a bonus on company profits and then, in 1920, with shares in the private company.

Today, Booths has 28 stores – with the 29th due to open shortly in Milnthorpe in Cumbria – and the latest has taken the company into Greater Manchester with a store in MediaCityUK. But the stores still follow the simple philosophy of Edwin Booth, the founder: “Sell the best goods available, in attractive stores, staffed with first-class assistants.”

Tuesday September 25 2012 | the times

10

Business Insight

Business costs

Easy in, easy out of the recession

T

he lack of confidence to expand business premises and hire new staff is routinely cited as the cause of the sluggish performance of the North West market for commercial office space. Property agents GVA reported that take-up levels in regional city centres totalled 882,000 square feet in the second quarter of 2012, some 12 per cent below the quarterly average. Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds all produced lacklustre figures.

In many cities GVA says the market has become dominated by smaller lettings. At the same time, commercial landlords are responding with lower-cost options and have opened up a new niche in the market.

Liverpool-based property group Downing, which has over one million square feet of commercial buildings under its ownership and management, has introduced Flexi-Offices – positioned as filling a gap between full service and the traditional leasing of a suite.

“We spotted that there was room in the market for a different type of serviced product,” said Robin Ellis, senior agency surveyor. “All the flexibility of a serviced office, with a monthly rent that is fully inclusive, but none of the expensive add-on services.

“We know that tenants want newly refurbished, affordable, private offices that they can move into and work from immediately. Yet, in a tough economic climate, the deciding factor for many businesses is assurance over costs - and, as serviced office leases include rent, rates and other utilities, they have become increasingly popular.

“Yet instead of a full serviced offering, we wanted to bring something to the market that gives tenants real control over their occupational costs – such as telecoms, where many fully serviced offices occupiers are subjected to large mark-ups – and choice over things such as whether furniture is included.”

Nigel Read, a partner in the real estate team at Cheshire law firm SAS Daniels LLP, agrees the market has changed. “There’s no doubt that the flexible ‘no strings’ business space offer has taken a dominant position in the market in recent months,” he said, “nestling nicely between the cottage industry with people working from home and the more traditional formal longterm office lease.

“The rapid advance of technology and the internet has played its part in the rising popularity of the lower end of the commercial property spectrum, but it is not the only reason. Factors including large-scale redundancy from formerly ‘safe’ jobs and a conscious Government focus to encourage banks to lend have almost certainly had an impact.

“On the surface it’s a great development for the industry, making it easier and quicker to fill empty office space.

But, as with all these things, the devil

is in the detail. One thing which can trip people up is the security of tenure clause which secures a business’s right to renew their lease. Flexible ‘no strings’ space is almost always short-term, so without the likes of security of tenure in place it’s easy to find yourself having to up and leave after a relatively short period of time. It’s flexible for the business, but it’s also flexible for the landlord, and that can have its drawbacks.”

Another big landlord, Bruntwood, notes a rise in demand for its serviced offices over the past year. “Customers are the lifeblood of the business and paying close attention to their needs is vital to attracting and retaining them,” said regional director David Guest. “In this current economic climate, companies appreciate the convenience that a fully furnished, ready-to-use serviced office provides, allowing customers to focus on running the business without worrying about the upkeep of premises.”

Flexi-Office space available within the Port of Liverpool building

Green tax keeps pressure on energy costs

T

his autumn, the Government will announce the results of a consultation into the Carbon Reduction Scheme (CRS), a tax on 2,500 businesses whose energy bills are individually more than £1 million per year. The CRS is aimed at improving energy efficiency and cutting emissions in large public and private sector organisations, which are responsible for around 10 per cent of the UK’s emissions.

Participants buy allowances from the Government each year to cover their emissions in the previous year. This means that organisations able to decrease their emissions can lower their costs under the CRS. The scheme has already been subject to significant change – in 2010 it was declared that money raised from the sale of allowances would be retained by the Government rather than recycled back to CRS participants.

Green lobbyists have complained that companies are being put off from spending money on energy efficiency because they cannot be sure about the rules of the CRS. One concern

is that a substantial amount of emissions are likely to fall outside of the revised scheme.

This would significantly dilute CRS’s effectiveness and move it away from what it was set up to achieve.

“Changing the CRS has had an impact, with major energy users concerned with how revenue generated through allowances will be distributed,” said Mike Hogg, general manager of DONG Energy Sales, which has 11 per cent of the industrial and commercial gas market share in the UK. “Rather than being fed back into the scheme as financial rewards for highperforming businesses as originally planned, it is instead taken as fiscal receipt. This has led some to call the CRS merely a tax on carbon.

“However, the CRS (or rather what it represents) holds significant opportunities for UK business, particularly as a driver to more energy efficient practices. With a deeper understanding of volume and patterns of consumption, businesses will be well placed to make financial savings – after all, monitoring energy use is the first step towards managing it.”

Mr Hogg cited Automated Meter Reading (AMR) as one solution that forward-thinking businesses have adopted. “The technology puts businesses in control of their consumption, by allowing access to accurate, day-to-day gas usage information at the click of a mouse.”

The AMR device is fitted to an existing meter and electronically records the amount of gas consumed. This information is made available to customers via a secure website, where it can be displayed numerically or graphically in a variety of units of measurement and downloaded for analysis. It is also simultaneously available to the gas supplier – allowing estimated billing and physical meter readings to be replaced with accurate invoices based on actual consumption.

“The benefits are wide-ranging – from the ability to track and compare gas consumption across multiple sites, to prompt and precise reporting,” said Mr Hogg. “Access to this information allows trends to be identified and useful management data captured to drive and monitor the success of efficiency initiatives.”

Mike Hogg, general manager at Dong Energy Sales

the times | Tuesday September 25 2012

11

Business Insight

Business costs

Better cash flow solutions are required for growth

A

North West accountancy firm says the reluctance of banks to lend is being exacerbated by the UK’s late payment culture. Duncan Sheard Glass (DSG), which has offices in Lancashire, Liverpool and North Wales, says the twin problems are stifling growth as small and medium enterprises (SMEs) struggle to find funding for expansion and to manage cash flow difficulties.

Figures from the British Bankers’ Association for the first three months of this year showed that lending to SMEs between the last quarter of 2011 and January to March 2012 fell in all regions except North East England and Wales.

The Government faced calls this summer to increase support for cash-strapped small businesses as new figures revealed that more than a million are suffering because customers, many of them larger rivals, are delaying payments. The total amount owed to Britain’s SMEs climbed to a record £36.5 billion in the past six months, putting even more strain on the cash flow of already hard-pressed companies and pushing some to the brink.

Andrew Moss, corporate partner at DSG, said small firms are sometimes pressured by large customers who extend payment terms without notice or demand discount for

prompt payment. DSG provides a range of tax, audit and corporate finance services, with offices in Liverpool, Southport and Ewloe, North Wales. It has a particular focus on growing businesses, established companies, professional practices, charities and third sector organisations and private clients.

Mr Moss added that firms are also sometimes guilty of failing to establish formal credit control systems and that late payment created a domino effect which impacted on others in the supply chain. “The late payment culture has always been endemic,” he said. “The problem now is that it is made so much worse by the current historically low levels of bank lending.

“The growth of SMEs could be severely hampered, in our view, by these issues. Late payment cripples cash flow, stifles growth and drives otherwise sound businesses out of business.”

Mr Moss said they were working hard to advise firms on alternative financing solutions and on measures they can take to tackle late payment. “Many very healthy businesses rely on ‘lumpy’, projectbased revenue streams,” he said, “whilst their overheads remain constant. We advise businesses to ensure they establish formal credit control procedures – it can be the key to survival.

Cheviot apprentices Daniel Vaughan-Hardy and Michael McNulty with investment director Catherine Morris

Wealth of talent

A

Andrew Moss, partner at Duncan Sheard Glass “We are increasingly advising businesses to look at the alternatives to conventional bank lending. Invoice discounting is a reliable and cost-effective solution for many companies which are otherwise finding it difficult to secure traditional sources of funding.”

Department of Regeneration

T

he second-largest speculative office scheme in the North West has been launched as part of a transformative regeneration scheme in Liverpool.

Property developer Merepark has launched the 75,000 square feet of office space to the market as part of a project to transform six acres of land close to Liverpool Central station and the Bold Street shopping area in the city centre.

The office space, named The Department, is currently undergoing a major refurbishment in the historic former Lewis’s building

in the city. The project is part of Merepark’s Central Village development which comprises the former department store, a cinema, three hotels, retail outlets, restaurants, bars, cafes, a car park and extensive landscaped public spaces.

The refurbishment of the L-shaped Grade II listed building has been part-funded by the European Regional Development Fund. When complete, it will provide an Accor Adagio Apart hotel and The Department Offices, separated by a six-storey atrium.

Merepark Construction Ltd is currently undertaking the refurbishment works. Practical completion is due by the end of November 2012. “Central Village is an extremely complex scheme and after several years of hard work we are delighted to see both the hotel and offices taking shape,” said Neal Hunter, associate director at Merepark. “There has not been a building of this quality in this part of the city before and we believe the inherent strengths of The Department will ensure that it finds a successful niche in the Liverpool office market.”

n asset management company which chose Liverpool as the location for its first office outside London expects to grow to £300 million of funds under management in the next year. Cheviot Asset Management, which opened an office in the city’s business district in May 2011, has achieved more than £180m funds under management in the last 16 months and grown to a team of 14.

Cheviot’s senior partner in Liverpool, Simon Walker, says the business’s growth is partly down to the strong links they are forging with professional intermediaries and independent financial advisors (IFAs) across the North of England and in Wales. Mr Walker says the growth is vindication of Cheviot’s decision to choose Liverpool for its first office outside London.

Cheviot was originally launched in May 2006, following the recruitment of 92 investment professionals and support staff from UBS. Michael Kerr-Dineen, industry veteran and former chief executive of UBS Laing & Cruickshank, was appointed chief executive and Sir George Mathewson, formerly chairman of Royal Bank of Scotland, was appointed chairman.

The business operates within an independent partnership structure, providing investment management and advice to high net worth private clients, charities and trusts. It now manages and advises on over £4 billion of client assets, primarily with discretionary and fee-paying mandates. It targets clients with at least £250,000 in investable assets.

Cheviot’s Liverpool team were separately recruited from Deutsche Bank (previously Tilney Investment Management) in the early part of 2011 and joined the new office at various times during the summer last year. The Liverpool business has now grown to 14 staff and, unusually for a wealth management business, has taken on two apprentices.

Both recruits – 20-year-old Daniel Vaughan-Hardy and 18-year-old Michael McNulty – will initially undergo 12-month apprenticeship schemes whereby they acquire National Vocational Qualifications and train on the job.

“It might be regarded as unusual for an asset management business to take on apprentices,” said Mr Walker, “but we are passionate about investing in young people and affording them the opportunity to grow as people and as professionals.

“In the current climate, with high levels of graduate unemployment and historically high tuition fees, an apprenticeship is an attractive alternative to university for young people and we are glad to be able to afford this opportunity.”

Mr Walker added that Liverpool’s historic strength in the sector was a key factor in the business setting up there, because of its critical mass of expertise and quality in terms of those professionals already in the city region. “The calibre of professionals operating here cannot be matched anywhere except London,” he said. “We combine a contemporary and modern approach to investment management with a very traditional approach to our relationships with clients, all of it underpinned by genuinely independent advice. Award-winning performance and strong growth in the business suggest we deliver what we promise.

“This has proven an attractive proposition for professional advisors wishing to refer their clients to a trusted third party to manage their assets. Our independent partnership structure means we offer an attractive alternative to the growing corporatisation of the sector.

“Our focus is on winning more private clients and on demonstrating to the IFA community the value we can bring to their existing client relationships using our insight and independent expertise.”

Tuesday September 25 2012 | the times

12

Business Insight

Introducing... The knowledge economy

Launchpad for a new era Liverpool takes lead in defining what it means, says Mike Cowley

T

he Knowledge used to be something that hard-faced London cabbies had to learn to get their hackney carriage licence, only to then take their punters round the longest route anyway. Now it appears to have become a sector of the economy. In fact, not really a sector, in that it is described as the Knowledge Economy in its own right.

Cities – particularly Liverpool – are taking it very seriously as a potential way out of the recession. Just how seriously you can find out on the following pages, which examine the implications of the Liverpool City Region Knowledge Economy in detail.

Liverpool Vision, the economic engine room of the city, has even produced a report which says “expanding the Knowledge Economy by 15 per cent by 2022 is achievable”. Liverpool has a Knowledge Festival slated for next month, with an open day for the family and something called “James Joyce and the Golden Age of English Murder”, which seems a little puzzling.

It also offers some events more easily defined in knowledge terms – such as the launch of the British Centre of Nanomedicine and the opening of the University of Liverpool Central Teaching Laboratories – but a Festival?

Then of course there is a designated area in the city centre known as the Knowledge Quarter, where you can find most of Liverpool’s renowned academia and centres of research. All of this will possibly seem a little surprising, at least to rival football supporters 50 miles up the road where knowledge is not necessarily the first word they would use to describe Liverpool or Liverpudlians.

True, they will acknowledge that Liverpudlians have always been fast on their feet and will cite Ken Dodd as a much-loved example. And there have been some pretty brainy people who at least passed through Liverpool when it was a booming gateway port to the United States.

During the middle decades of the 19th century, more than half of those emigrants who eventually helped build America as a superpower came through Liverpool on their way to a better life.

While the Ford family originated in Ireland, Carnegie in Scotland, Edison from Holland, Boeing from Germany and Ericsson in Scandinavia, their last views of Europe were of the docks and shipyards of Liverpool.

However, I was still struggling to understand what the term Knowledge Economy really means, so I asked Alan Welby of Liverpool Vision. His job title is “Knowledge Economy Director”, so I figured he was likely to be a guru on the subject.

The formal response came back from his office: “The Knowledge Economy is based on the application and exploitation of the most relevant, up-to-date

Liverpool Waterfront at night ideas, skills and innovation in the provision of goods and services.” They also sent me a document – “Liverpool City Region’s Knowledge Economy: Delivering New Opportunities for Growth – Summary 2011 to 2020”, which they said would give me a clearer picture.

Having worked my way through it, the Knowledge Economy would seem to be, in its most simple terms, where business interfaces with the brains, the creatives, the scientists, the high-tech people coming up with the ideas, the business and public sectors providing the funds to get the products to market.

Where it all started was with spin-off companies from universities – where the best and brightest ideas were taken and given a commercial spin for the benefit of the economy.

Now Liverpool intends not only to ramp up that process but lead the way, with both the private and public sectors – not always comfortable bedfellows in the past – putting aside historic differences to make it happen. The city has already identified its knowledge asset hotspots in order to maximise them, with its creative and digital industries, advanced manufacturing and life sciences as the frontrunners.

Literally central to the push into the Knowledge Economy is what is now known as the Knowledge Quarter, which is currently contributing around 15 per cent of the entire city’s GVA (gross value added) and is educating up to 60,000 people in all manner of disciplines. It already generates £1 billion in income per year and supports some 14,000 full-time jobs, making it one of the greatest contributors to the overall economic well-being of Liverpool.

Geographically, this stretches from Upper Parliament Street in the south to

PICTURE: Craig Easton

Islington in the north, and apart from seats of learning there can be found both cathedrals – the Anglican and “Paddy’s Wigwam” – the Philharmonic Hall and the World Museum, all adding to the cultural life.

Since the Millennium, hundreds of millions of pounds have been invested in the Knowledge Quarter, with the single largest development scheme being the new £450 million Royal Liverpool University Hospital, itself seen as a major cog in the Knowledge Economy.

With three major universities to choose from in the Knowledge Economy equation in Liverpool, it has a foundation that few rivals can offer. Add to this other assets such as the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine – offering world-class research in its field – the Liverpool Science Park and Merseybio, and you can understand why the city is keen to successfully play the Knowledge Economy card.

Liverpool Vision has already identified the way. Developing technology innovation centres to support leadingedge innovation and its translation into goods and services. Capitalising on the area’s world-class strengths in life science industries and the expansion of the Liverpool Science Park, which has already attracted 50 new companies to the city. Maximising market opportunities in digital advertising. Establishing an advanced manufacturing innovation centre. Setting up a Public Services Institute to develop innovative solutions to public sector challenges – and there are likely to be a lot of these in coming years. Developing a strategy to secure the provision of super-fast broadband and associated data centres and internet exchanges.

It’s where business interfaces with creative, scientific and hightech brains to get products on to the market

Nor is Liverpool confining its push into the Knowledge Economy to the limits of the city region itself. It has also embraced the Sci-Tech Campus at Daresbury, where world-class scientists are working closely with embryo businesses. While Daresbury is in Cheshire, it is now seen as a potential hub for the Liverpool life sciences operation, as it retains the facilities of national laboratories including the UK’s fastest computer and the world’s most powerful microscope.

And all this flurry of activity seems to be bearing fruit. The city’s approach to the Knowledge Economy found a high-level endorsement when Redx Pharma – one of the hottest companies in the drug field – decided to locate there. It has since launched an oncology offshoot and has an anti-viral venture waiting to come out of the starting blocks.

From a handful of people in the startup, Redx Pharma will be employing literally hundreds within the next few years. This in itself has created a true buzz of excitement around the Knowledge Quarter in a region where, in the past, emerging biomedical companies had to high-tail it out of the region to succeed.

It even caused Sir Howard Newby, vice-chancellor of the University of Liverpool, to comment: “Things are beginning to change. What is exciting about Redx is that they have grown rapidly and we have been able to accommodate them in the labs they were looking for.

It is all beginning to change.”

Liverpool’s Knowledge Economy, then, has itself moved from concept to reality. They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Liverpool is showing that a lot of knowledge works.

the times | Tuesday September 25 2012

13

Business Insight

The Vision Thing

It’s showtime for Liverpool again as it stages 61-day business fest The city is heading back to the international stage – and this time it is representing all UK business

By Mike Cowley

W

hile the rest of the UK – and the world – was left reeling in 2008 following the financial crash, Liverpool had a very good year. The city became the European Capital of Culture, Liverpool One was up and running, the Arena and Convention Centre opened – and all this before the banks slammed down the shutters.

It was also the time when local leaders began to work out that the city was sitting on a potential gold mine: knowledge. And as the economy began to crumble, Liverpool began to appreciate that one way out of the huge financial hole it faced was to turn this knowledge base into a new revenue stream.

With three first-class universities and numerous centres of research excellence, it didn’t take long to work out that Liverpool was a hotbed of potential revenue-generating ideas as well as being a place that could foster them. True Liverpudlians had always suspected they were smarter than most – and full of good ideas – and they were now faced with an opportunity to prove it.

It was a bold move, and a smart one when Liverpool became the only UK city to have its own dedicated pavilion at the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai, where it welcomed more than 770,000 visitors. Of those who took part in a simulated game of trying to score against the Liverpool FC and Everton goalkeepers, how many were influenced to become involved in the wave of Chinese money that has arrived in the city since then?

And so to 2012, when Liverpool hosted the Global Entrepreneurship Congress, having won it in the face of competition from around the world. How many of the successful startups that are emerging will forget either the main summit day, or the city that held it?

Now Liverpool is to hold an event in October to prove how clever it really is – the inaugural Liverpool Knowledge Festival Fortnight, culminating in the Liverpool City Knowledge Summit. The festival will help celebrate achievements such as the University of Liverpool’s pioneering use of nanomedicines to treat HIV/AIDS, as a result of breakthroughs achieved by Professor Steve Rannard from the university’s Department of Chemistry and Professor Andrew Owen of the Department of Molecular and Clinical Pharmacology.

But by far the smartest move the city may well have made to date has been announced by Liverpool Vision, Liverpool City Council’s economic development company, working in partnership Wirral Borough Council and the Liverpool Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP): the International Business Festival (IBF), scheduled for 2014.

The idea came from Liverpool itself under the City Deal plan, and was the only UK exhibition to be given the green light by the Government. With each of the Northern cities being offered a City Deal under which they could come up with ideas to revive the economy – rather than force a one-sizefits-all policy on them – Liverpool opted for the giant expo.

It won approval, in part because the emphasis was not solely on Liverpool, but on export-led recovery and providing a more balanced economy for the UK as whole – and in part because Liverpool has an enviable track record of staging major events.

To be held over 61 days, the IBF will be the largest business event of its type since the Millennium Fair of 2000 and the Festival of Britain in 1951 – and the figures are still being crunched to see if it might even be bigger. It will not only be a showcase for Liverpool, but for the entire UK business world, and has received full support from the Government as part of its drive to rebalance the economy and boost UK export growth.

Originally scheduled to be held over a month, the IBF will now take place over two months at sites across Liverpool and Wirral at a cost of up to £15 million, with an estimated return of £100m.

One of the key platforms will be for the knowledge economy, including life sciences, creative and digital, advanced manufacturing, and professional and financial services.

The mammoth event, set to attract tens of thousands of visitors from more than 100 countries, was first aired in a joint review of the city by Liverpudlian Sir Terry Leahy and Lord Heseltine, entitled “Rebalancing Britain – Policy or Slogan?”

It is fully supported by UK Trade and Investment (UKTI), the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and the British Chambers of Commerce – as well as by the Peel Group, which is developing the International Trade Centre and the £10 billion Mersey Waters scheme.

Tasked with pulling it all together is Ian McCarthy, director of programmes for Liverpool Vision. “The event is still at a very early stage,” he says, “so we don’t have a detailed plan under the desk to pull out yet. We are currently looking to appoint an international exhibition company as a partner, at which time a detailed plan will be drawn up and agreed.”

While few details have been set in stone, the sheer duration of the IBF will dictate a multi-format approach – a series of conferences, sector-specific

Striking modern buildings: The image of Liverpool is changing in line with its Vision events and a vast array of networking opportunities to stimulate export opportunities.

Mr McCarthy is already convinced that the timing couldn’t be better for Liverpool or for the knowledge economy.

“The city has changed dramatically over the last five to ten years,” he says. “The retail offer is great, the waterfront had fabulous facilities, the Lime Street approach has been revamped – the whole connected plan has come together.

“We are now happy to show anyone round the city. This is a transformed city and one looking to push on with its business base now that the physical side is right. And the knowledge economy locally has really come to the fore of late.”

He admits that Liverpool has experienced negative vibes in the past, but suggests these came in the main from elsewhere in the UK, rather than from further afield. “The further you got away from Liverpool, the more it was recognised as a vibrant international city,” he says. “We have always been known as a key trading city – then when you added the Beatles and football, we became cool. Now even our neighbours recognise how far we have come.”

As far as the 2014 event is concerned, Mr McCarthy says they have had support from the highest level, with mayor Joe Anderson singled out for praise for having opened up a direct line to the Government. While Liverpool Vision has been charged with delivering the event – as they were with the award-winning World Expo pavilion and GEC2012 – they will be working with a high-level partnership group including the Cabinet Office,

Always a key trading city, we became cool with football and The Beatles

Director of programmes Ian McCarthy

the British Chambers of Commerce, UKTI, BIS and the Liverpool LEP. The Deputy Prime Minister has written offering his full support and the Government has already effectively put its hand in its pocket and handed over £5m towards the cost. What is particularly pleasing to Mr McCarthy and his team is that this event is providing a platform not just for Liverpool but for all UK business.

That is why they are calling on the Government to make it an official date on the UK calendar – as the Jubilee celebrations and the Olympic Games have been this year – alongside the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow and Open Golf at Royal Liverpool in Hoylake in 2014. And the knowledge economy is already scheduled to play a significant role in the IBF. “This is a critical area for development in both Liverpool and the UK as a whole,” says Mr McCarthy, “in that it delivers more stable, higher-value jobs which can only benefit the rest of the economy. And the acceptance of this is growing by the day.”

Having seen Liverpool’s progress in recent years, Mr McCarthy cannot help but reflect on the first milestone on the path to prosperity: Liverpool becoming the European Capital of Culture in 2008. “If we hadn’t have won that,” he says, “and we hadn’t had Liverpool One away and the Arena and Convention Centre up before the crash, it is highly unlikely we would be in as strong a position today. We had a bit of luck with the timing then, but everyone needs a bit of luck.”

Tuesday September 25 2012 | the times

14

Business Insight

The knowledge economy

A LEP like no other Liverpool City Region’s Local Enterprise Partnership styles itself as the most innovative in the country

By Michael Cape

L

ocal Enterprise Partnership (LEPs) were announced after the 2010 general election to replace the Regional Development Agencies (RDAs). When the Government wrote to local authorities and business leaders across the country inviting interest and ideas for setting up these partnerships, there was little guidance on structure from Westminster. Instead, in pursuit of its localism agenda, the Government gave cities and regions the opportunity to create organisations best suited to local priorities and opportunities.

Against a suitably blank canvas, various forms of LEP have appeared – none more groundbreaking than in Liverpool City Region, according to its chairman, Robert Hough. “Many visitors to Liverpool City Region, including prime ministers and their cabinets, discover we have a knack of being a bit different here,” says Mr Hough.

“And our LEP is no exception.”

With a career spanning 40 years, Mr Hough brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise to the LEP. He was previously chairman of the Northwest Regional Development Agency, in the late 1990s he chaired Manchester’s Commonwealth Games and in 2004 he served as High Sheriff of Greater Manchester. He has been a director of Peel Holdings since 1986, was its deputy chairman from 1989 to 2009 and is now a non-executive director.

The Liverpool LEP brings together the six local authorities serving the city region and a fee-paying membership of more than 450 other organisations and businesses sharing a common goal to accelerate economic growth across the patch.

These members include major corporates with existing operations in the city region, such as Cammell Laird, Grosvenor, INEOS Chlor, Novartis, NGF Europe Ltd, Jaguar Land Rover, Unilever, Royal London Asset Management, Scottish Power, E.ON and Standard Chartered. Dozens of successful regional businesses without the same global profile are also members of the LEP. The city region comprises six local authorities, with 1.6 million people generating a GVA (gross value added) of £20 billion and with 48,000 businesses. “The City of Liverpool is obviously the dominant influence on the city region,” says Mr Hough, “and with an elected city mayor

with a passion has even greater ambition and leadership – but our wider city region is also critically important. The whole area is mutually reinforcing. And having a city mayor with an effective LEP means we have the right credentials to tap into government policy and funding. Hence the importance of a LEP which covers the whole of the city region, and a LEP with a strong private sector-led membership base such as ours.

“This LEP’s role is to drive forward the city region economy. A strategy and platform has been established for delivery, generating confidence within which the private sector can invest. The LEP creates cohesion, unity and ambition in the city region to capitalise on the strengths of its economy.”

The LEP’s members were originally part of its predecessor body, the Mersey Partnership, with a track record of almost 20 years at the forefront of economic regeneration across Liverpool City Region.

“With its members,” Mr Hough says, “the Liverpool City Region LEP inherited and created a unique structure. Our private sector members understand and want to grow their businesses, whilst the local authorities are also strong and influential partners. So it meant we immediately had a partnership embracing the public and private sectors. It’s a symbiotic relationship of real substance. The LEP promotes the economic development strategy, these businesses and the public sector members drive the strategy forward and the LEP itself creates value for its specific business members. It is a totally rounded interconnected relationship. No other LEP has that structure. They don’t have the membership interface.”

Chief among these attributes has been an evidence-based approach to driving economic growth through a memberfocused Key Growth Sector strategy. Liverpool City Region has identified four key sectors where growth based on existing assets and expertise has the potential to create 100,000 new jobs by 2020. This is an ambitious target and achieving it will represent a material shift, or rebalancing, away from the city region’s public sector dependency.

The key sectors are the knowledge, lowcarbon and visitor economies together with SuperPort – the city region’s impressive port and logistics infrastructure. The city region possesses the assets, opportunity and potential to develop a substantial knowledge- and innovation-driven economy to deliver increased sustainable prosperity and international competitiveness.

“It’s all about aligning resources and investment appropriately,” says Mr Hough.

The Knowledge Economy Plan alone outlines an ambitious framework to generate nearly 60,000 additional jobs by the early 2020s through further investment in and exploitation of these assets. “Within knowledge economy sits advanced manufacturing,” Mr Hough notes. “In the city region we have global companies like Jaguar Land Rover, Pilkington, Unilever and Novartis. It is important that we shine a spotlight on the advanced manufacturing capability in the city region. We also want

to drive forward the life sciences sector and ensure it has the intellectual oversight and support of the universities.”

One outstanding success story in recent years has been Jaguar Land Rover.

The car maker has created another 1,000 jobs at its site in Halewood so it can meet demand for its Evoque and Freelander models. “Jaguar Land Rover’s commitment to expand the Halewood workforce and increase production is not only great news for Liverpool City Region but for the wider UK economy as well,” says Mr Hough. “Their apprenticeships programme has been exceptional.”

As Richard Else, operations director at Jaguar Land Rover in Halewood adds, “Liverpool City Region is making a significant contribution to Jaguar Land Rover’s global success. Engaging with the LEP provides Jaguar Land Rover with valuable, additional opportunities to grow our business and the region’s economy.”

One of the biggest developments for the city region over the next few years will be the rebuilding of the Royal Liverpool Hospital by Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust.

This will include a large biocampus that will be a huge boost for the city region’s life sciences sector. “The depth and sheer quality of the biomedical opportunities here in the city region is tremendous,” says Robert Hough. “Our ambition now is to help grow the biosciences sector in the region and retain established talent.”

A life sciences University Technical College – one of three in the city region – is also being created.

“This will provide outstanding technical, academic and vocational education,” he adds, “in a creative, regional centre of excellence by working closely with local employers and the region’s major commercial players to create the next generation of scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs.”

The location of the Liverpool BioCampus in the centre of the city’s Knowledge Quarter encompasses the University of Liverpool, the Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust, the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, 2Bio and the Liverpool Science Park.

The BioCampus, supported by the LEP, will provide a concentration and co-location of research, industry and healthcare provision collaborating in health-related research and clinical trials, enabling Liverpool to become a centre of global excellence in biomedical sciences.

Since its creation, the Liverpool City Region LEP has delivered a range of ac-

tivities to drive growth, including leading on the bid for the city region being designated by government as a Centre for Offshore Renewable Engineering (CORE), the only such centre on the UK west coast and making the city region a preferred area for investment. Cross-boundary working led to an initiative between the Liverpool City Region, Black Country, Coventry and Warwickshire and Greater Birmingham and Solihull LEPs to focus on supporting automotive and aerospace supply chains in those geographical areas. The Government was so impressed with the Regional Growth Fund bid that they widened the Advanced Manufacturing Supply Chain Initiative (AMSCI) fund to incorporate the whole of the UK. The LEP has also supported successful bids for the creation of two University Technical Colleges in the city region, promoted SuperPort logistics infrastructure to key stakeholders at major conferences in the UK and created a Liverpool City Region national TV advertising campaign in conjunction with VisitEngland.

What Liverpool also has, to the envy of many other major cities, is global recognition. Liverpool is a world-class brand – and, as such, the LEP and its members recognise the importance of using this brand to showcase the diverse assets of the city region to the outside world.

LEP board member Jeanette KehoePerkinson expands on this point. “Collectively the economic assets of the Liverpool City Region have global significance and appeal,” she says. “Having a laser focus on how we market our unique brand of place and people is key to our ongoing growth and success.”

Mr Hough adds: “Overall, what we have in this city region is great vision, ambition and passion together with distinctive assets. These attributes will ensure we rise to future challenges.”

With LEP-led access to Regional Growth Fund and Growing Places Fund allocations, together with three Enterprise Zones and designated Centre of Offshore Renewable Engineering status, as well as Liverpool’s pioneering City Deal agreement with the Government, the Liverpool City Region LEP has its sights set firmly on targeted economic growth and collective action.

“Strong business growth is critical in each part of the city region,” says Robert Hough. “The whole is bigger than the sum of its parts, much like our LEP membership. We achieve more together.”

Find out more at www.liverpoollep.org

Liverpool: To the envy of other major cities, it’s a world-class brand

We have a knack of being a bit different here, and our LEP is no exception

the times | Tuesday September 25 2012

15

Business Insight

The knowledge economy

The investment fund director who is paid to say yes Dr Penny Attridge is in a job that she loves.

An inventor herself, she is now helping life-enhancing biomedical ideas get off the ground, says Mike Cowley

A

t a time when it seems the only way entrepreneurs can get seed capital from banks or major financial institutions is if they walk in wearing balaclavas and carrying sawn-off shotguns, Dr Penny Attridge is virtually unique.

Here is someone whose remit is to take risks. The senior investment director at Spark Impact, which manages the North West Fund for Biomedical, she has £25 million to invest – and is happy to do it in lumps ranging from £50,000 to £1.5 million.

An inventor herself – she helped develop a device to counter sharps injuries now widely used in the NHS – she fully appreciates how difficult it can be to get good ideas off the ground. Having previously spent time with BTG plc identifying and acquiring inventions from academia and SMEs (small and medium enterprises), Dr Attridge is well aware that finance – or the lack of it – is always the elephant in the room, ready to stamp on innovative projects before they have chance to take their first breath.

Yet having been there and done that, she now finds herself in pole position to get excited about certain projects and to keep them alive by providing critical earlystage funding. Projects as complex as potential breakthrough oncology drugs, or as seemingly simple as a urinary catheter bag with a pump and level device attached which enables wheelchair-bound patients to retain part of their dignity by emptying their own drainage bags.

Then there is the company making electronic noses – devices which have been around for a long time but never lived up to their promise – but are well on their way to a breakthrough this time.

With the funding they have received from Spark, they are expected to reach proof of principle with the next year or two – potentially offering breath tests to detect a range of diseases such as bowel cancer.

Of all the projects that excite Dr Attridge – and they all do – it is possibly the one nicknamed “the Wallace and Gromit trousers” that has a slight edge for the moment. Here is a linked series of devices which enable stroke victims do their exercises without a physiotherapist on either

side or being in a sophisticated gymnasium. While still at a very early stage of development, this could mean that patients can learn to stand and take a few steps, reducing NHS costs significantly and having a massive impact on the health recovery scene.

Not all of Dr Attridge’s investee companies make it, however – and she admits that if she didn’t have some failures she would not be doing her job properly.

“We haven’t been at this long enough for companies to have reached exit,” she says.

“However, we’ve had fewer failures than we would have expected. But we should have failures because we are Gap funders, and if we don’t have some failures, we’re not taking enough risk.”

The risk element of the Spark Impact’s biomedical funding is reduced – although far from removed entirely – by the criteria that prospective client companies must meet in the first place. First they must satisfy the European backers of the fund in that they need to be located in the North West and be working in the biomedical sector. The latter is interpreted very broadly in that it ranges from drug discovery, through diagnostic and medical devices, to software and telemedicine, or even service- or manufacturing-related companies.

Clients also need to qualify for the fund in terms of loan availability from £50,000 to £1.5m. And as Spark is Gap funded, applicants must prove they cannot obtain financial backing from any venture capital or other third party funder, a situation that is becoming ever easier in the current financial climate.

From Penny Attridge’s perspective, the hopefuls need to show there is an unmet market need, explain what problem they are solving, prove what is wrong with what is out there already, and say why what they are doing is better than what has been out there before.

Spark then has to identify if there is a need big enough to make it interesting. A niche market where things can be moved quickly is fine, but Spark won’t fund a lifestyle company which in year five is only turning over a modest amount.

Realistically, by year four or five, revenues will be expected to have ramped up from £500,000 to £3m to £4m and the Spark investment will have enabled them to get close to first clinical trial. By this time, it should have been established how much a company is worth and whether Spark’s original investment return will meet the level of risk it has taken.

An investment in a drug discovery company – potentially the most high-risk – is likely to provide the biggest return of ten to 20 times, but the downside is that the fund could see all the money disappear. Spark is most often the source for Pathfinder funding – around £50,000 – which basically provides sufficient funds to prove whether

Many of our companies have a wow factor I get a buzz from

Keeping projects alive by her funding philosophy: Dr Penny Attridge

the business idea is a runner. Then, when substantial investments are required, they will often bring in venture capital or other funders as they prefer to be “not the only chequebook round the table”.

“A lot of times when companies comes to us, they don’t know the answers to all the questions that can determine whether they are going to be successful,” says Dr Attridge. “That’s why we’ll make a Pathfinder investment of as little as £50,000 to get these questions answered. This £50,000 will be mainly spent on third parties – getting market information, looking to see if the idea can be protected, getting an engineer to review a prototype – identifying where the major risks are. Only a little bit of the money will be spent on progressing the technology.”

All of this feedback goes back into the early stage company’s business plan, making it much better informed. By identifying the risks at this stage, Spark faces a fail early, fail cheap scenario, losing £50,000 rather than £500,000. The fund is fairly unusual in that it will invest the £50,000 on standard business terms by way of a convertible preference share, so there is no “silly argument” about what a company is worth at that time.

“We will convert that into equity at the next stage at a discount price,” says Dr Attridge, “so if it fails there is not a lot to unravel. If it is successful the higher they can drive the value before they take a third-round valuation, the lower our equity stake from the initial investment will convert into. We want them to drive the value as high as possible which means our slice will be smaller, but the cake will be that much more valuable.”

Neither does Spark normally seek to put in all the money itself – even up to its £1.5m ceiling. Instead, once the embryonic business plan has been sharpened and so has the management approach, they mainly prefer to have other chequebooks round the table. When the requirement hits the £250,000 mark, Dr Attridge is normally looking for a syndication deal. There is already a network of venture capital and other financial institutions eager to come on board when the idea has been moved forward to market-touching distance.

So who are the people bringing their ideas to Spark’s table? “When we put our bids together to get the initial funding,” says Dr Attridge, “we postulated that a vast number of companies we would be funding were going to be spin-outs from universities – and there is no doubt we are seeing these. But we are also seeing individuals of excellence from all over the place. Quite often they have been in industry – from sales and marketing, from drug development companies – perhaps they have been made redundant

Lifeline: George Gallagher or have been involved in an early exit.

Or perhaps they have been exposed to ill health in some form and come up with an idea to help.”

The fact that the companies who come to Spark are from the North West ensures they are “lean and mean” according to Dr Attridge. “There’s not a lot of fat on the plans that come to us and they are realistic about what can be achieved,” she says. “They’ve not been afraid to beg, borrow and steal where they can and only pay for it when they have to. So they don’t start off thinking things should be handed to them on a plate.

“And they suffer up here when it comes to funding because the venture capital community is so largely centred in the South. One of the things we have to do is network hard with the venture capital community down there – taking our companies down to them or bringing them up to see us.”

Dr Attridge loves her job and the challenges it brings. “The fact that many of our companies have got that wow factor is the reason I get a buzz out of it,” she says. “I want to build successful companies and support those who are going to make a difference in the future. We are privileged to be running a fund that has the possibility of doing that. The buzz is what gets you out of bed in the morning.”

Not that there is any lack of active appreciation from her North West clients, many of whom had almost given up hope of ever getting their idea off the ground before they found Spark. Typical of these is George Gallagher of Westco Medical, the company behind a solution to the life-threatening issues of positioning nasogastric tubes for administering drugs.

Although a serial entrepreneur who had managed to raise £9m in the past, Mr Gallagher found himself running up against a financial brick wall this time.

“Spark provided the lifeline that no one else would,” he says. “It was all so simple.

No negotiation over valuation, nothing like that. All this when things are so bad on the funding front out there that if you found a cure for death you’d end up being told it wasn’t going to succeed.”

Tuesday September 25 2012 | the times

16

Business Insight

The Times Forum

Now that’s a good idea

Our forum looks at the Knowledge Economy’s potential to deliver a total transformation of Liverpool City region

by Mike Cowley

T

he landmark iconic 70-metrehigh concrete structure towering over the Sci-Tech park at Daresbury bears stark testimony to a different era of research, in that it once contained equipment which now might seem more akin to Frankenstein than to conventional science.

Opened by Harold Wilson in 1977, it was a forerunner in some respects to the giant hadron collider which found the Higgs Boson, until particle accelerator “smashers” stopped going up and down structures and switched to using tunnels.

It was known as a Nuclear Structure Facility Tower and one of its major discoveries was the “superdeformed nuclei”.

While a nuclear physics scientific group can still be found at Daresbury, they now do their experiments overseas.

Quite a piece of kit in its day, then, whether you understand the jargon or not – though old technology in moern terms. And all of the state-of-the-art equipment of the day had to be stacked vertically – hence the tower.

With the majority of the structure redundant, it is still a constant reminder both of Daresbury’s famous past – it celebrates its half centenary this year – and that scientists who are transforming our future still remain on the campus.

The entire Daresbury site on which the tower stands has quite a history in both particle physics research and computing, equipment the first Cray supercomputer in the UK. And you can still find the UK’s fastest computer there in the form of the IBM Blue Joule. Along with SuperSTEM, the world’s most sensitive microscope, Daresbury offers a cornucopia of the latest scientific equipment which is on call to client companies.

Way back when Daresbury first became a scientific centre, it was following on from the work of Lord Ernest Rutherford and Sir John Cockcroft and was seen as “white heat” technology that came under the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. Today it is one of two major national laboratories under the direction of the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), the other being its sister operation at Harwell.

However, a revolutionary project – known as Diamond – developed at Daresbury almost caused its demise, when a decision was taken to move it in its entirety to Harwell. Despite intense lobbying from the North West, the Government’s decision was to move it south.

It was rumoured at the time that pressure from the French who were involved wanted Harwell because it was closer to their entry point at Heathrow. Anyway, it went and Daresbury’s future hung in the balance for a time.

The decision was finally taken to broaden the mission of Daresbury, to retain the centre of scientific excellence but at the core of an innovation centre, where companies would also be encouraged to make their home, turning it into a business incubation nursery.

The end results exceeded the wildest dreams of the planners. Not only have companies flocked there to be close to a centre of advanced knowledge, but it has also attracted an ever-increasing number of top scientists, many of whom are continuing the research linked to what is happening at CERN and the development of a new collider to provide an even bigger bang.

Effectively, then, Daresbury has become a working interface between the scientific and business communities, with both feeding off one another – the perfect example of the Knowledge Economy in action.

So what better venue for a Forum cosponsored by The Times and the Liverpool City Region, on the subject of the Knowledge Economy with all the leading influencers from the area taking part. Seated in the boardroom of Advantage House, the building where embryo companies on the campus move to when success dictates they require more space, the Times Forum turned out to be an exercise in almost total unanimity.

Though delegates were drawn from a wide range of sectors – public, private, education and scientific – they found themselves in the kind of perfect harmony normally reserved for a barbershop quartet. All agreed on the critical importance of the Knowledge Economy to the region, and more or less on the way to move it forward.

Yet whereas the Forum was spent discussing the benefits awaiting companies coming to the region – the knowledge asset infrastructure, the funds available, the cultural delights of Merseyside, the packages of help available – the proof of their success was already staring them in the face, literally. For joining the panel was Peter Jackson, the CEO of Redx Pharma, the prize catch they had hauled in on the strength of their merits. And Dr Jackson proved more than happy to provide them with a blow-by-blow ac-

count of why he turned down other UK centres and chose Liverpool as home for his highly successful pharmaceutical operation.

Redx Pharma is a prime example of a Knowledge Economy player, in that it is a pharmaceutical firm that is enabling a whole range of new drugs to be developed under licence using its breakthrough Redox Switch™ platform. Ensuring lower risk and greater speed in development, the platform has caused significant excitement in the drug industry in that it has already been validated across 11 different therapeutic classes and has recently been acquired by a global manufacturer of statins.

The company has already launched a subsidiary, Redx Oncology, creating 120 new jobs over the next two years – and has yet another in the starting gate to combat the effect of resistance to antibiotics. With this sort of a track record and potential, the fact that Redx Pharma chose Liverpool carries a lot of weight and the company has already been described as the cornerstone of Liverpool’s Knowledge Economy.

“The only reason Redx is in Liverpool is because of the facilities available to us,” was the blunt message to the Forum from Dr Jackson. “We can get access to the right people, but the critical element is the funding package. I think it’s no use just building buildings without having the funding, and there’s no use in having the funding without the buildings, you have to put the whole package together.”

One of Redx Pharma’s founders and co-inventor of the Redox Switch technology, Dr Jackson admitted scouting around for options before giving Liverpool the nod. And he was surprised by the reaction he got. At one of the centres he called for information when he was looking to relocate Redx, the first comment was: “Why would you want to move?” Yet Liverpool welcomed Redx with open arms.

“I can only say we’ve had superb support from the leaders in the city council, from the mayor’s office, from the chief executive, from the senior team, the hospital and the city university folk,” Dr Jackson said. Yet he admits the offer of funding locally tipped the balance, having previously experienced delays of six months to the initial investment into Redx from one of the regional funds.

This had a knock-on effect to the operation of the business and left the chief executive “pulling out what little hair he had left” as a result.

“I think it is pretty clear to anyone that is trying to raise money in the healthcare sector over the past five years that the conventional model for my type of business is just not working,” Dr Jackson told the Forum. “The Gov-

Who’s who in the forum, from left: Professor Susan Smith, Chris Musson, Alan Welby, Ian Rowland, Wayne Locke, Alasdair Nimmo (chair), Dr Penny Attridge, David Parr, Dr Peter Jackson, Alex Clarkson, Kevin McManus

It’s no use just building buildings without the funding... you need the whole package

ernment is now doing some really good things to help with that, so practically all of the funding that has come into Redx so far is from private investors – and that is significantly helped by schemes like the EIS [Enterprise Investment Scheme] so that we can get investment relief on the amount of money we are putting in.

“Up until last year that was limited at £1 million and it has been lifted up to £5m this year, so that is a significant help, but it would have been nice to get the £10m that the Government wanted – but state aid rears its ugly head at these points and so you have got to worry about the European angle.

“But I think it takes a tremendous amount of time for a management team who are growing and running a business to actually try and stitch this type of funding package together,” Dr Jackson added.

“I think what could be done much better is to actually stitch together an investment package behind the scenes, so it’s ready-matched, ready-syndicated – with a bit of private money, a bit of Government money and a bit of institutional money – and focus that properly alongside a facilities strategy. This will get companies like Redx and other companies to move into the region.

“I think we have a pretty good reputation at the start-up level, so again Penny’s fund [Spark Impact, where Dr Penny Attridge is senior investment director – see page 15] is very successful and the science parks in the region are very successful at creating new ventures. What you want is more funding when you want to move from 10 to 50 to 100 people, to 250, and that’s where Redx is as the moment.”

Dr Jackson also used the Forum to deny media reports that implied criticism of the Regional Growth Fund. “De-

the times | Tuesday September 25 2012

17

Business Insight

The Forum Panel

Professor Susan Smith, head of Daresbury Laboratory, which is the Science and Technology Facilities Council national laboratory facility on the Daresbury Campus.

Kevin McManus, head of Digital and Creative for Liverpool Vision, the economic development arm of Liverpool City Council.

Alan Welby, executive director with Key Process Sectors at Liverpool Enterprise Partnership, responsible for the Knowledge Economy, in particular advanced manufacturing.

Chris Musson, chief executive officer of Liverpool Science Park.

Alex Clarkson, chief executive officer of Diagnostic Capital, a corporate finance business specialising in life sciences.

Ian Rowland, head of Research and Development

spite what you might have heard in the press over the past few days and before that,” he said, “we’ve found the Regional Growth Fund process to be absolutely straight down the middle, the most straightforward application. The whole thing has just worked perfectly for us, the people who we’ve been involved with have got it, they understand the need for making fast decisions.” Then, just as his audience had swallowed that message, Dr Jackson added the rider: “I’ve absolutely no idea what’s gone wrong with the other 95 per cent.”

He was more convincing when he told the Forum that he had found having some UK patents could significantly enhance the value of some intellectual property assets held by his company. “I think that needs properly understanding and promoting on an international basis as a good reason [why] companies should come to Liverpool,” he said.

The Redx Pharma boss also found time to heap praise on Liverpool for its lifestyle offering, which is also seen as key to the Knowledge Economy dragthem-in package. “When we talked to 40 or 50 of the new recruits that we have brought in since April – most of them are PhDs or post-docs fresh out of university – they think it is absolutely fantastic that they can go straight into their first job and on to the housing ladder with a small apartment in the city and walk to work.

“Then there is the buzzing nightlife and all that stuff on their doorstep from day one, and that is a great asset for that age group, unfortunately not for me as I’m far too old. But it is hugely refreshing to hear them two or three weeks in after joining the company about how they are straight into really enjoying being in the city, not just being at Redx.”

With that endorsement still ringing in their ears, there was little wonder that the Forum panel – when asked by chairman Alasdair Nimmo of The Times whether they felt optimistic or pessimistic about the future of the Knowledge Economy in their region – gave a chorus of approval.

Here are their reasons to be cheerful:

“I am incredibly optimistic. It’s health issues we deal with and everyone gets sick or knows people who get sick, and the scientists are coming up with the great ideas that are going to solve many of the major health issues of tomorrow and the simple practical everyday health issues that people are dealing with today.” – Dr Penny Attridge of Spark Impact.

“It is not a coincidence that CERN decided that Daresbury would be the first location for their new incubator. It’s interesting when radio and media people say to me – ‘Is this a surprise that this has happened, David?’ – and I generally say, no it’s not a surprise because we have been working for the last 20 years to make it happen and there are a lot of people doing a lot of things behind the scenes that are making these things happen.” – David Parr of Halton Council.

“I have worked in lots of different cities around the world. One of the kinds of things has always struck me about Liverpool and the city region is it’s a creative place, much more than when I worked in Newcastle or Birmingham. It means sometimes it’s a bit more edgy, but that creativity is a real USP [unique selling point].” Alan Welby, Liverpool Local Enterprise Partnership.

“I think there are lots of people who’ve got great ideas and are innovators, and there’s a lot of edginess in Liverpool.” – Kevin McManus, Liverpool Vision.

“I am optimistic for all the reasons people say they are around the table. We have a great infrastructure.” – Alex Clarkson, Diagnostic Capital.

“We have got one of the best underpavement fibre networks of any city in the UK, and to build on that potential is something that will be very extremely valuable for businesses moving into the city.” – Wayne Locke, Ashtenne.

“Things being put into practice by the current coalition Government, particularly on the tax fronts for example and the tax breaks which are coming out, are making things easier relating to finance.” – Ian Rowland of Grant Thornton.

“I think there are some really easy wins now that we have sorted out some of the things that pulled us down. I think that all of the pieces are in place. It needs just a bit more fine-tuning and then let’s go and tell the world not what we want to be but what we are.” – Chris Musson, CEO of Liverpool Science Park.

One person in particular was more than positive: Professor Susan Smith, the head of Daresbury Laboratory. “I have worked in Daresbury, under or around our tower, for 27 years and most of that time we have been hidden away,” she said.

“Now we have come out and are helping people directly. We could help solve so many problems like global warming and healthcare – and make the world a wonderful place. What could be more exciting than that?”

The Daresbury scientists have finally found their place in the sun – and they are enjoying it. Their predecessors who actually built the tower would be certainly surprised at how today’s cohort occasionally veer from tending the latest particle accelerators to helping oil the wheels of the Knowledge Economy.

Tax North West, Grant Thornton Accountants and Business.

David Parr, chief executive of Halton Council and board member of Sci-Tech Daresbury. He was one of the founding directors of the campus some 10 years ago, and also advises the city region on the Knowledge Economy.

Dr Penny Attridge: senior investment director at Spark Impact, which manages the North West Fund for Biomedical.

Wayne Locke, director of Ashtenne, an Aviva-managed industrial and business park fund involved in a joint venture owning assets in the North West, including Liverpool Innovation Park.

Dr Peter Jackson, executive chairman of Redx Pharma, based in Liverpool.

Quotes of the day

On shortage of funding: “I’m not convinced that there is a shortage of funds. Historically, capital has been put in the wrong place. If you have got the right offer there are people out there, whether public or private, who will invest. The trick is ensuring that you have got the right offer and I think it’s how you sell the right offer. When they come with the right offer, you can’t give them the money quick enough because you want to see the return on it, and there is a lot of that happening at the moment.” – David Parr, CEO of Halton Council.

On Liverpool’s Knowledge Economy infrastructure: “I think Liverpool punches well above its weight. It has got three great universities, it’s got a medical school, a veterinary school, it’s got a school of hygiene and tropical medicine and it’s got the Royal Liverpool Hospital Trust that ran over 500 clinical trials last year.

It’s an incredibly vibrant community and it’s very compact. Liverpool Science Park was built in exactly the right place,

right in the heart of it, so you have got people, skills and the buildings and – hopefully, with funds such as mine – you have got some funding to help those start-up companies get going in absolutely the right place for them to be. Hopefully we will have more companies going on to be the Redx Pharmas of tomorrow.” – Dr Penny Attridge, Spark Impact.

On Liverpool in the recession: “The story of how the Liverpool City Region has fared in the recession has been relatively positive – relatively, there is still a recession. But in terms of how the city region has coped in comparison to cities in the UK, it’s done OK, so that’s a positive story.”

– Alan Welby, Liverpool Vision.

On company confidence: “I think companies now are just starting to look around and think: Actually, we are still here, we have sharpened up our act and can we now start to grow? I am certainly seeing that.” – Chris Musson, CEO of Liverpool Science Park.

Tuesday September 25 2012 | the times

18

Business Insight

The knowledge economy

Science campus is a national magnet for new arrivals

I

t has been a momentous year already for the community of scientists, technologists and entrepreneurs at SciTech Daresbury, a national science and innovation campus situated between Liverpool and Manchester which is one of Europe’s leading centres for innovation and business.

Over 25 businesses, including six from overseas, have located there since January. It has undergone a major rebrand – and, perhaps most significant of all, the site assumed official status in April as one of the government’s flagship Enterprise Zones.

If that wasn’t enough, Sci-Tech Daresbury is to be the location for the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) CERN business incubator, the first of its kind to be established by CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research and home of the large hadron collider, which this year announced it had discovered the Higgs Boson. All of this in the year that the campus’s Daresbury Laboratory celebrates its 50th birthday.

Sci-Tech Daresbury is home to about 110 high-tech companies and is experiencing rapid growth. Businesses there had a combined turnover of £28 million last year and have seen average sales growth of 37 per cent per year over the last four years.

The site has seen some 26 new companies arrive in the first six months of 2012. The new tenants come from a variety of sectors, including advanced engineering and materials, biomedical, digital/ICT (information and communications technology), mobile, energy and environmental technology.

Enterprise Zone status will allow business rates to be reinvested in the campus to provide important new campus support infrastructure, along with specialist office, laboratory and technical space which could create up to 15,000 skilled jobs over the next 20 years.

As one of only two national science and innovation campuses in the UK, Sci-Tech Daresbury provides companies with access to world-class science facilities, including the STFC’s ground-breaking Daresbury Laboratory, the Cockcroft Institute, two cutting-edge particle accelerators and the most powerful supercomputer in the UK. Sci-Tech Daresbury is a joint venture between Halton Borough Council, development company Langtree Group plc and the STFC. The Universities of Lancaster, Liverpool and Manchester are all active partners on the site.

The statistics speak for themselves.

Businesses based there developed 125 new potentially life-changing products and services in 2011, delivered over £28m in sales and secured some £75m in investment. Almost half of the companies were involved in collaborative activity with other tenant businesses and many collaborated with universities and the STFC. The location is now, however, at the kind of tipping point that scientists love to identify. Inward investment, infrastructure development and a growing national and international awareness of what Sci-Tech Daresbury has to offer will see it experience dramatic growth in the coming years.

John Downes, managing director of Langtree Group (the development partner at Sci-Tech), says Sci-Tech Daresbury has unique intrinsic assets which make it a standout location for high-tech businesses. “Its connectivity is probably unrivalled in the UK,” he says. “There are few places where blue chip companies, entrepreneurs, investors, scientists, academics and government figures – from across Europe and further afield – co-exist and so readily collaborate.

“It’s therefore a destination with immense potential in terms of the blend it offers – a proper meeting place for the worlds of science and business where they can share and commercialise innovations, ideas and insights.”

David Parr, chief executive of Halton Borough Council, adds: “We’re tremendously excited about the vision we have for Sci-Tech Daresbury. It’s about nothing less than the creation of a worldclass business destination. We’re already one of UK plc’s most important assets for attracting international investment and our growth plans involve a quantum change in scale which will deliver huge economic value to the North West economy.”

Professor John Womersley, chief executive of the STFC, says Sci-Tech Daresbury’s scientific estate offers a worldclass innovative and “value for money” solution for businesses of all sizes wishing to access or interested in co-developing scientific and technical facilities.

“It’s possible for companies to use labs on an easy-in, easy-out basis and to access the expertise of our researchers and scientists from across the STFC,” he says.

“There is a genuine culture of open innovation here and our connections with CERN are an indication of just how close we are to the most advanced thinking in world science.”

Connectivity that is probably unrivalled in the UK Sci-Tech Daresbury: Growing rapidly and already home to 110 companies

O

ne Sci-Tech Daresbury company is trialling a suite of infection control products which could be transformational for the UK health service, making a real impact on reducing the incidence of hospital-acquired infections and helping the NHS save billions of pounds.

Dr Tim Riley, who led the establishment of the National Institute for Clinical Excellence for the government in 1999, says work on a new generation of cleansing products could lead to significantly reduced infection rates and a more cost-effective approach to cleansing regimes in clinical settings in the UK and abroad.

Dr Riley spent a number of years as chief executive of NHS trusts in the North West and is now chairman of Daresburybased Arcis Biotechnology – which has developed a series of cleansing, disinfectant and handcleansing products already widely used in Europe and Asia and due to be deployed in NHS settings for the first time this year.

Studies in the mid-1990s showed that hospital-acquired infections cost the NHS about £1 billion per year in England alone and were responsible for some 5,000 deaths. The Arcis SporeClear products are to be trialled across a number of NHS trusts later this year through the NHS Supplies portal.

Dr Jan Rogers of Sci-Tech Daresbury-based Arcis Biotechnology “Current restraints on the public purse mean that tackling this issue has to be priority number one for NHS administrators and clinicians,” says Dr Riley. “The new technology being applied to cleansing products, aligned with well-managed infection control regimes, creates a once in a generation opportunity to achieve substantial savings and a transformational step change in infection rates.”

Arcis acquired a Californiabased business, Altos Medical, in May this year in a £3.7m deal which included the raising of a £1.2m war chest for accelerating the research and development product pipeline to enable the firm to commercialise a number of promising new products.

Arcis is now in discussions with several global companies keen to utilise its proprietary technology, which has widespread potential in hospitals, dental surgeries and other public health facilities.

Arcis chief executive Peter Whitehurst believes that locating the business at Sci-Tech Daresbury enabled them to access world-class but affordable laboratory facilities, and to be conveniently close to the motorway network and a short journey from both Manchester and Liverpool airports. “Enterprise Zone status brings financial benefits,” he says. “Combined with the very flexible and costeffective lab facilities, plus the brilliant location, it’s a compelling combination.”

the times | Tuesday September 25 2012

19

Business Insight

Best International

An entrepreneurial businessman on a mission in a secular world How a former missionary and a mechanic in the British Superbike Championships are now using their asset management company to help not-so-rich investors play at a higher level

By Michael Cape

B

rad Lincoln is not your run-ofthe-mill chief executive of a successful asset management company. His oft-repeated business mantra is that their raison d’être is to help smaller investors benefit from greater accessibility and gain more than expected – a key differentiator in today’s market and firmly built into the business’s DNA. But what makes him truly different in an increasingly secular world is that he is a committed Christian who finds himself making his way in the world of Mammon.

As a young man, Mr Lincoln chose to leave the more hedonistic lifestyle behind and embark on a five-year stretch in Nepal, working as a missionary for the International Nepal Fellowship, which is heavily involved with health and development work. He subsequently became an awardwinning author of two books on the Christian faith, and is now looking to add a third to his collection – yet to meet with him you will find a suited and booted, hard-headed if highly ethical businessman whose new mission is to boost the wealth of clients and help them circumnavigate the economic pitfalls of our turbulent times.

Mr Lincoln’s colourful past didn’t always lead to a predictable success, but the underlying commitment to the core message has not fallen on stony ground as far as relatively well-heeled and savvy Northern investors are concerned. In just three years, the company – Best Asset Management, trading as Best International (BI) – has grown from three employees handling £3.5 million in assets to 53 looking after £700m.

Not big by the standard of some of the major city centre players, but pretty formidable for a niche market startup. And then there are BI’s funds, which bear more than favourable comparison with many on the market. Governed and tightly controlled by the Malta Financial Services Authority, funds of this type – categorised as Unregulated Collective Investment Schemes – are

only open to what are known as professional investors, high net worth individuals with certified market sophistication which enables them to understand the risks.

Understanding the risks in these cases also means a true appreciation of the rewards, as in the case of BI’s fund returns.

The BI Merlin Fund focusing on care homes in the UK and Spain has increased by 59.7 per cent in value based on net asset value. The BI Lanner Fund – a portfolio of car parks throughout Europe and the Middle East – rose by 11 per cent since its launch in 2010 and is now paying a yearly half-dividend of 6 per cent, making it the number one car park fund in Europe. And BI’s original Saker Fund, made up of properties in the United Arab Emirates, is now worth £19m. In the last two months alone, the car park and care home funds have raised around £3.5m in total.

BI’s meteoric rise has also enabled the Knutsford-based company to acquire Greyfriars Asset Management, the Leicestershire-based discretionary fund management business, which overnight almost doubled BI’s assets under management.

The acquisition has led to an expansion of services and the ability to offer more benefits under one umbrella to the customer.

To cap it all, amid all the changes over the course of this year alone, BI is now launching a corporate bond which is set to reach full capacity in less than three months. BI has also found time to tag on a travel agency purely for the benefit of its clients, as well as developing a Hilton Grand Vacations Club-operated resort in Tuscany, a highly successful project with respectable partners yet just a small part of BI’s activity.

It was only because BI acquired the established Greyfriars and wanted to let their new clients know who they were that the usually reticent company decided to open its doors to The Times. Hence the revelation of their intriguing history: Brad Lincoln, a Nepali speaker and once a keen canoeist competing at a high level, and Jeff Hankin, a keen biker who spends many a weekend trackside, acting as mechanic for his partner, Cath Green, the first woman ever to have won a British Championship race.

The two co-directors have been close friends since Jeff Hankin used to sleep on Brad Lincoln’s floor when they were both taking their MBAs at Cranfield, with Mr Lincoln being sponsored by his then employer, the NHS, and Mr Hankin paying his own way.

They soon went their separate ways – Mr Lincoln with his then fiancée, now wife, off to Nepal, and Mr Hankin to pursue a role with Lafarge where he ended up handling strategic acquisitions. But they kept in touch and, soon after Mr Lincoln’s return,

Mr Hankin put a business deal to him. Unfortunately, as they were to discover, there were inherent holes in the business plan and they were undercapitalised.

As they were winding this up, fate intervened and changed their lives. A contact of Mr Hankin’s who was involved with a group of highly wealthy individuals asked them to manage their international property assets, mainly in Abu Dhabi. “They had multiple assets – were very wealthy – and most importantly they trusted us and respected our ability,” Mr Lincoln recalls. “We didn’t need more than that apart from hard work and a bit of luck.”

The luck came in the form of confusion between Abu Dhabi, which was experiencing good growth, and Dubai which was licking its corporate wounds following the crash. “From this distance people didn’t seem to understand the difference”, says Mr Lincoln.

This geographical misunderstanding created a nervousness in the market which enabled BI to step in and reinforce its UAE fund. As with all BI funds, this was only open to professional investors and could not be promoted to the general public, only through an approved network of financial advisers and wealth managers.

This meant having to spread the message about the fund both nationally and internationally to the wealth management community – while at the same time successfully negotiating all the regulatory hoops in their specific financial sector of choice.

“We didn’t have a financial services background, so it was difficult to attract people without a track record,” says Mr Lincoln.

“So we had to persuade people it was a good idea and credible. To do this, we initially listed the fund on the Channel Islands stock exchange and had to go through all the usual verification processes in order to be totally transparent and achieve the credibility required. It is now regulated in Malta where the procedure is similarly onerous.”

Finally the fund got away with a market cap of £17m, subsequently increased to £19m. With the first success under their corporate belts – and duly noted by the international asset management community – Messrs Lincoln and Hankin found they were in demand. Now they were approached to do something similar around car parks.

This would not be everyone’s choice in a market dominated by the giant NCP and their ilk, but BI have taken a different tack.

Unlike NCP, which tends to mainly work on a roll-up-and-pay model, the BI fund involves contract parking, where someone tends to pay for a month or a year, so cashflow is much more consistent.

Location is also a critical part of the analysis. That is why the fund owns car parks internationally, focusing again on areas such as Abu Dhabi which are in growth mode and where parking has not caught up with infrastructure demands. The final successful ingredient of the fund was easy recognition by the investor. Everyone accepts that car parks in the right places make money, but while owning one is a non-starter, owning a bit of many is what a fund is all about.

Hence the success of BI’s Lanner Fund.

Moving on to care homes, BI simply applied the same rationale. People are well aware that money is made out of the buildings and the need for care homes is not just there but rocketing. However, the fund sticks to owning the actual buildings, so avoiding the operational issues.

With one fund out of the starting gate and two more well on the way, BI focused on what it anticipates will be another growth area and client benefit, Best Travel Services, which operates under the BI group of companies.

Adopting the same ethos that underpins the rest of the business – enabling clients to enjoy the life of big league players – they have decided to throw out the contemporary approach to travel. Instead of a race to the bottom led by budget airlines, they have decided to replace it with “a race to the top”.

In this case, it means employing a qualified team of travel experts who deliver a front end of the plane service for a back end of the plane price. This encompasses not only organising all the travel arrangements at favourable prices, but ensuring where possible that their clients gain more than expected from the service. It sets outs to be a VIP service.

One recent BI guest heard the bong of the intercom, their name called out, then the flight attendant arrived with their favourite drinks and a message from Lara, a member of the BI team extending best wishes for their trip. As the remainder of the passengers were left wondering what was going on, the only issue was when the wife demanded to know from the husband “who Lara was”.

The BI travel operation evolved simply because the BI management team and their client base were doing so much long-haul travelling. They found that even when travelling at the front of the plane, personal service standards had slipped dramatically, while further back the “cattle class” was increasingly living up to its nickname. And the ever-enterprising management team soon discovered there was sufficient margin in long-haul prices to provide their clients with what was effectively a VIP service no matter where they sat on the plane.

“It was a perfect fit for our business,” says Mr Lincoln. “Once again we find ourselves able to make available to our clients the sort of things that are usually restricted to people of much greater wealth. Our mantra is that there are people in this world who play at a much higher level than us, so if we can find a way of getting our people into the game, that’s what we do.

“In most cases, this means funds which open the doors to ownership of things that are usually the reserve of the mega-rich. As far as travel is concerned, this means providing a ticket to the level of service that has previously been the reserve of those with unlimited funds.”

Wealthy contacts trusted us and respected our ability.

We didn’t need much more than that apart from hard work and a bit of good luck

Brad Lincoln, Best International

Tuesday September 25 2012 | the times

20

Business Insight

Special report: Legal 500

25th anniversary guide to the North’s best law firms

By David Kelly, editor of The Legal 500 United Kingdom

I

n common with the legal markets it covers, and the legal industry in general, the Legal 500 series has come far in the past 25 years. The UK edition has evolved from a pocketsized paperback attempting to demystify a closed profession, to a 1,600-page volume analysing some 1,000 law firms across 100 separate practice areas.

Looking back at the dusty inaugural chapters covering the North of England, some major law firm names

are unchanged, as much as they have developed in size, character and outlook since – Dickinson Dees, Irwin Mitchell and Weightmans, for instance. But the 1988 edition is also a window on the long-running process of consolidation that has been fuelled by a fiercely competitive market, showing an assortment of component parts of today’s major national players; other leading names of the day were Broomheads, Dibb Lupton & Wade, and Alsop Stevens; Addleshaw Sons and Latham, and Booth & Co; and Simpson Curtis.

The landscape for the provision of legal services has changed fundamentally and irrevocably in the time since the inaugural edition, with today’s lawyers (and management partners) faced with a host of new challenges and opportunities.

Developments in IT and the advent of the internet and social networking have

transformed the way in which firms do business. The economic crisis has intensified the focus on efficiency and value for money. Clients are demanding that firms move beyond classic, billablehours models into more client-friendly, less inefficient alternatives. Corporate and social responsibility is more important than ever. Workplace dynamics are changing, and the demand for flexible working conditions is on the increase.

Legal process outsourcing, onshore and offshore, is proliferating. The regulatory changes heralded by the Legal Services Act allow for the introduction of Alternative Business Stuctures to the market.

The Legal 500 looks forward to continuing to monitor and assess the leading law firms in the world’s key jurisdictions, and to dusting off the 25th edition in 25 years’ time to see how things have changed.

Regional Review - North East

T

he legal market in Newcastle upon Tyne seems to be settling after a turbulent 12 months which have seen a significant number of partner moves. While the recession and the Government’s budget cuts have exerted considerable pressure on firms, many are hopeful for a more promising 2012/13.

Dickinson Dees LLP remains the leading regional heavyweight, with strongholds in areas such as corporate and commercial, pensions and wealth management. Ward Hadaway is “innovative, and has managed to maintain a high calibre of staff through very tough times”, and is also noted as “committed to building long-term relationships with clients rather than just

looking at immediate revenue opportunities”. Eversheds LLP remains a prominent player in the North East market, though with a somewhat different perspective to its competitors.

Muckle LLP is a well-respected commercial firm, and received a significant boost with the arrival of Rob Langley and Andrew Cawkwell, who add clout in the areas of construction and insolvency respectively.

2011 was a difficult year for Watson Burton LLP, losing a number of partners in key areas.

However it has retained its leverage in other areas, and has a commanding presence in employment, education and property litigation.

Hay & Kilner’s strengths lie in family, crime and insurance, and it attracts praise for its “friendly, calm and helpful” culture. Sintons LLP continues on a path of steady growth, and is praised as “taking the time to get to know its clients and their people”. Its strengths lie in insurance and healthcare.

Other notable firms include Mincoff Solicitors LLP, which is fast developing strong practices in IT and telecoms and intellectual property; and Jacksons Law, which remains strong in Stockton-on-Tees and continues to develop its Newcastle offering.

All eyes are on DWF LLP, which has the dynamic John Flynn at the helm. After acquiring established insurance firm Crutes Law, it has

substantially bolstered its capabilities in areas such as corporate and commercial.

The North East is now also home to a burgeoning number of niche practices, including Collingwood Legal, established by former Watson Burton LLP partner Paul McGowan; Square One Law, set up by former Eversheds LLP duo Ian Gilthorpe and Alan Fletcher; Silk Family Law; and Neon Legal. Among the more established niche firms, Sharon Langridge Employment Lawyers, Major Family Law and Lowthian Gray stand out.

2011 saw the closure of the Stockton-on-Tees office of Berrymans Lace Mawer LLP, which follows the departure of a number of insurance firms from the market in 2010.

“Ward Hadaway is innovative and has managed to maintain a high calibre of staff through very tough times”

the times | Tuesday September 25 2012

21

Business Insight

Commercial viewpoint

Regional heavyweight looks forward with confidence

N

amed as a “regional heavyweight”, North East law firm Hay & Kilner has once again received a myriad of recommendations in The Legal 500 and will continue investing in its future and developing its range of expertise in the coming months as it targets ongoing expansion.

Manned by what The Legal 500 calls “excellent” and “outstanding” teams, sectors such as corporate finance, commercial property, private capital, employment law, insolvency and construction have all performed strongly at the Newcastle-headquartered business over the last 12 months.

Hay & Kilner’s senior partner Martin Soloman, who leads the firm’s dispute resolution services, is ‘highly regarded by clients’ for his work in commercial litigation, intellectual property, IT and telecoms. He has seen Hay & Kilner double in size and build up a 160-strong workforce over the last decade. He commented: “Our recognition in this year’s Legal 500 demonstrates that we have a spread of genuinely experienced experts across a large range of work. Our strength lies in the diversification of our business.

“It’s important for us to continue to make the right quality of investment in the future and

we are confident that our plans for the year ahead will play a major role in continuing our successful growth and development.”

Two partner-level key appointments have strengthened the firm’s commercial property and private capital capabilities, and takes the number of partners at the organisation to 26. One of the most prominent private capital solicitors in the region, Alison Hall, joined the firm bringing with her a high level of expertise in wealth management which directly complements Hay & Kilner’s offering. She “excels in her advice on tax and trusts”. In the commercial property sector, another key player in the North East’s legal circle, Richard Freeman-Wallace, joined as a partner in what The Legal 500 describes as a “strong” commercial property team which includes Paul Taylor and Nicola Tiffen, who is rated as an “extremely efficient specialist”.

With the full complement of this year’s qualifying trainee solicitors being retained, the firm continues with a busy graduate recruitment programme to further develop its talent pool.

Among the areas of Hay & Kilner’s expertise highlighted in The Legal 500 this year is its corporate and commercial team, which is rated as “absolutely first class in every way”, as is its insolvency practice led by Neil Harrold who is “one of the best insolvency and recovery lawyers

in the area”. The “invaluable” construction team includes Graham Sutton who has “vast knowledge of the construction industry”, and is “calm, logical and methodical”.

The launch of Hay & Kilner’s HR Key online service has assisted the region’s business leaders to steer clear of the rising tide of employment tribunal claims. Clients particularly value the unlimited access to Hay & Kilner’s employment team, led by Neil Dwyer and including “the excellent Sarah Hall”.

In the clinical negligence field, Hay & Kilner is again positioned as a top-tier firm by The Legal 500. Hay & Kilner “goes the extra mile for its clients”, and team head David Bradshaw has “a wealth of clinical negligence experience allied with sound common sense”. Clare Thompson and Helen Morland are also recommended. The personal injury team, led by Bruce Howorth, is rated as “absolutely outstanding”.

As well as making heavyweight appointments and investing in continually improving its services, Hay & Kilner will also step up its support for the regional business community through its comprehensive seminar programme in fast-changing practice areas. With exciting plans ahead for all Hay & Kilner’s key service sectors, the business looks set to continue its growth into 2013.

Martin Soloman, Senior Partner, Hay & Kilner

www.hay-kilner.co.uk 0191 232 8345

Above

Beyond

Results. Delivered.

“Absolutely first class in every way.” -

The Legal 500, 2012

Tuesday September 25 2012 | the times

22

Business Insight

Legal 500

Regional Review - North West

M

anchester is the corporate hub of the North West, and home to offices of all of the regional heavyweight law firms. Liverpool is also strong for smaller corporate transactions, public sector work, transport and commercial property. Chester attracts a flow of significant private client work, particularly agricultural matters, and northern cities such as Preston and Bolton are home to a number of good commercial firms, servicing the region’s SMEs and owner-managed businesses.

As the corporate centre of the region, Manchester is a competitive, lawyerheavy market. The continued pressure on the mid-tier firms means the market is set for further consolidation, with some firms noticeably paring back their corporate practices. There are, however, potential opportunities for smaller and newer players to provide niche offerings and gain market share.

Mergers (and almost-mergers) were a key theme. The well-publicised discussions between DWF LLP and Cobbetts LLP failed to come to fruition, while Pinsent Masons LLP’s tie-up with McGrigors LLP appears to have had a smooth transition, although Eversheds

LLP hired a team of contentious construction lawyers just months before the merger. The insurance sector saw the establishment of DAC Beachcroft LLP and Clyde & Co’s combination with Barlow Lyde & Gilbert, which had acquired large chunks of the Halliwells team.

In Liverpool, the legal market remains fairly stable, with a small pool of leading firms competing for work. Smaller corporate deals, commercial real estate, transport and public sector work remain key, although the city is seeking to attract larger corporates – plans are in the pipeline, for example, to build an international trade centre aimed at attracting Chinese businesses.

Addleshaw Goddard LLP has a strong regional brand, with strength and depth across the board in commercial services and a team able to compete effectively for national work. DLA Piper UK LLP regularly attracts significant mandates on a regional and national scale, and has strong links to private equity houses, multinationals, major clearing banks and leading corporates.

Eversheds LLP is regularly involved in cross-border mandates, and is active for a mix of public and private sector clients.

It handled a number of high-value corporate deals for blue-chip clients, and has a solid reputation in commercial litigation.

Pinsent Masons LLP’s merger with McGrigors LLP added strength and depth to its construction, projects, energy and finance offerings, and closer ties to a local client base.

With regional coverage across Liverpool, Manchester and Preston, Brabners Chaffe Street LLP has a leading reputation for its sports law offering and is also highly rated for private client, particularly tax, trusts and probate work.

Recently merged firm DAC Beachcroft LLP stands out for its capabilities in the insurance, healthcare and real estate sectors, while other areas of focus include employment, fraud/regulatory and corporate services.

While its merger with Cobbetts LLP did not proceed, DWF LLP has been expanding into other regions while remaining focused on its core insurance practice and concentrating services in its Manchester base.

Gateley is taking steps to cement its market position in the North West, and its Halliwells inheritance provides a broad offering across corporate, IP, real

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“We are delighted to have achieved top rankings in many of the key disciplines of the Legal 500 for the North West and this is testament to the skill of our team” Helen Ridge, Head of Manchester office.

Pinsent Masons LLP

estate, dispute resolution and HR. Hill Dickinson LLP has a leading position in the Liverpool market, and is building its presence in Manchester, recently hiring corporate partner Ian Riggs from Cobbetts LLP. It has restructured its management, to focus on its traditional strengths in the marine, trade, insurance and health sectors.

With strongly rooted local corporate and private client bases, Pannone LLP is experiencing something of a transitional period; a firm restructuring included the launch of a “white label” legal services division and an increased focus on developing its London office, along with the closure of two smaller regional offices.

Following its transatlantic merger, Squire Sanders LLP has increased its focus on cross-border opportunities, with particular activity in sectors such as chemicals and renewables. Key regional clients include Manchester City FC, Begbies Traynor Group, and The Co-operative Bank. Weightmans LLP’s key selling points include its insurance and public sector expertise, but it strengthened both its private client and commercial offerings through its merger with Mace & Jones.

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the times | Tuesday September 25 2012

23

Business Insight

Legal 500

Regional Review - Yorkshire and The Humber

L

eeds is the centre of the Yorkshire market and remains as competitive as ever. Sheffield is the region’s second-largest legal market, while York, Hull and, to a lesser extent, Bradford and Harrogate all offer a broad selection of firms.

Each of the “Big Six” firms has offices in Leeds, which is one of the UK’s largest legal markets. The city is renowned as a bustling financial centre, and benefits from convenient transport links with London. Despite the obvious economic challenges, firms had a busy 2011 as the market began to adjust to the “new normal”, often picking up work that had been priced out of London; many can offer equal quality at a competitive price.

The same can be said of Sheffield the region’s “second city” has a strong background in manufacturing and industrial services. Elsewhere in Yorkshire, Hull, Harrogate, and Bradford each have a complement of wellrespected and successful law firms.

Ian Gilbert, managing partner at Walker Morris in Leeds, says: “In a market where there is an increasing pressure to allow new entrants and consolidation I think it is very impor-

“In a market where there is increasing pressure to allow new entrants, it is important that law firms do not lose sight of their clients’ needs”

tant that law firms do not lose sight of their clients’ needs and the importance of retaining their independence and professionalism. Consequently the overriding objective at Walker Morris will be to continue to develop our business so as to adapt to our client’s needs, offering a fast and flexible, cost effective service.”

On the merger front, Keeble Hawson and HLW Commercial Lawyers joined forces to become HLW Keeble Hawson; Sheffield firm Taylor & Emmet LLP merged with Hallam Mediation, bolstering its family law offering; and Lupton Fawcett LLP combined with Davidson Large LLP. Addleshaw Goddard LLP’s banking and finance capabilities are undisputed, as is its quality and strength in real estate and competition. DLA Piper UK LLP is a dominant force across both Leeds and Sheffield, with quality teams across the board; corporate, real estate, and environment are among the areas in which it excels. In 2011, banking and finance partner Sarah Day was appointed office managing partner in Leeds.

Eversheds LLP saw a few notable departures but remains hugely well

respected, and often works closely with other offices in the UK on significant mandates. Pinsent Masons LLP has a longstanding reputation in the region. Its merger with McGrigors LLP in May 2012 coincided with a number of departures, including former office managing partner Mark Owen, who left for Dickinson Dees LLP. Squire Sanders LLP seems to have found its feet again, in the wake of its transatlantic merger at the beginning of 2011.

Walker Morris differs from its peers in that it operates out of a single office, in Leeds. The firm is something of an institution in the region, and has prospered across a number of key practice areas such as corporate, real estate and litigation.

Irwin Mitchell, a key player in both Leeds and Sheffield, is synonymous with the personal injury market in which it dominates. Nabarro LLP is a solid player in Sheffield, particularly within real estate, where it is an undisputed leader. Hill Dickinson LLP, also in Sheffield and home to a number of former Halliwells LLP partners, has made inroads during its first full year.

The Hull market is dominated by its own “Big Three” firms: Andrew Jackson, Gosschalks and Rollits LLP. York’s main players include Langleys Solicitors LLP and Harrowells LLP, while Harrogate is home to McCormicks, which has been particularly successful in the areas of TMT and sports.

Dickinson Dees LLP made the decision to move its York practice to Leeds, relocating in 2012 amid plans for substantial growth. Whether the move will pay off remains to be seen, but it was not the only firm attracted to the city; Birmingham firm Gateley also opened a new office there in 2012. William Ballmann was recruited to oversee the new venture; his former firm, Cobbetts LLP, had an unsettled year, but remains a key national player.

Ward Hadaway had a busy year of recruitment, increasing its headcount substantially as part of its strategy to become a major name in the region.

Other Leeds players to note include Clarion; DAC Beachcroft LLP; DWF LLP; Gordons LLP; and Schofield Sweeney, which also has a Bradford office. Brooke North LLP closed its doors, with key figures moving to Ward Hadaway, Schofield Sweeney and Lupton Fawcett LLP.

An independent law firm, challenging convention and achieving great results for their clients. www.walkermorris.co.uk

Ian Gilbert Managing Partner +44 (0)113 283 2558 ian.gilbert@walkermorris.co.uk

Tuesday September 25 2012 | the times

24

Business Insight

Legal 500

Corporate and Commercial Addleshaw Goddard LLP, Manchester DLA Piper UK LLP, Manchester Eversheds LLP, Manchester Pinsent Masons LLP, Manchester Brabners Chaffe Street LLP, Liverpool DLA Piper UK LLP, Liverpool Hill Dickinson LLP, Liverpool Aaron & Partners LLP, Chester Brabners Chaffe Street LLP, Preston Hill Dickinson LLP, Chester Napthens LLP Blackburn, Preston Dickinson Dees LLP, Newcastle Muckle LLP, Newcastle Ward Hadaway, Newcastle Baines Wilson Solicitors, Carlisle Burnetts, Carlisle Dickinson Dees LLP, Tees Valley Endeavour Partnership LLP, Stockton on Tees Addleshaw Goddard LLP, Leeds DLA Piper UK LLP, Leeds Eversheds LLP, Leeds Pinsent Masons LLP, Leeds Squire Sanders LLP, Leeds Walker Morris, Leeds “Very client-centric, combining practicality and commerciality, with sound understanding of the law”, Addleshaw Goddard LLP handles significant

transactions and commercial matters for clients such as Wolseley, Capita Group and Gazprom. Highlights included acting for Tata Chemicals on its £93m acquisition of British Salt, and advising PZ Cussons on setting up an international joint venture.

DLA Piper UK LLP “demonstrates a high degree of technical expertise and the ability to provide innovative solutions” on transactions, and acts for a client base including private equity groups, regional private companies and multinationals.

Eversheds LLP’s “very strong team of hands-on partners provides solid advice”.

The “excellent” Daniel Hall and Jonathan Robinson, who has “the rare ability of a lawyer to rise above the detail and drive the big picture”, advised Endless on the sale of Crown Paints.

Pinsent Masons LLP’s “very commercial and pragmatic team takes the time to get to know a client’s business”. Its strength remains private equity transactions, and corporate head Gregg Davison recently advised CPBE Capital on the £148m cross-border Stewart Group sale.

Brabners Chaffe Street LLP’s nine-partner team mainly acts for owner-managed businesses and plcs on mid-market transactions.

DLA Piper UK LLP has “specialists for all areas and provides excellent service” to corporates, start-ups and private equity houses.

Hill Dickinson LLP’s “excellent” team is led by “quality operator” Jonathan Brown, and includes Sue Russell and Craig Scott. All three are noted for their “commercial acumen, technical ability, negotiating skills”, and Sally Wightman gives “superb M&A advice”.

Aaron & Partners LLP’s focus on SMEs and smaller venture capital transactions kept the practice active in M&A and fundraisings.

Brabners Chaffe Street LLP’s Gill Gardner focuses on corporate finance, recently advising City Block on its private equity investment and funding.

John Boydell heads the department.

Hill Dickinson LLP’s Sally Wightman gives “superb M&A advice and makes complex issues appear less so”. Clients include Hawker Beechcraft, Fullwood Group and Chester Race Company, and the team is also noted for its expertise advising NHS trusts on corporate transactions.

Napthens LLP is active across private equity and M&A transactions. Practice head Keith Melling acted for Intrinsic Technology on its £30m management buyout; and advised shareholders on the multimillion-pound sale of Chas Kendall bookmakers to Gala Coral Group.

Dickinson Dees LLP’s 11-partner practice is “very competent and responsive”. Recent work highlights include handling a £1.6bn multi-

“Pinsent Masons’ very commercial and pragmatic team takes the time to get to know a client’s business”

jurisdictional reorganisation of a chemical company; and acting for longstanding client Grainger on its £285m acquisition of a 50 per cent interest in two joint venture LLPs. Robert Phillips’ team at Muckle LLP recently advised UK Land Estates on its investment and joint venture into an industrial property company; and Addison Motors on the acquisition of Colebrook & Burgess Holdings.

Ward Hadaway’s team is led by Martin Hulls. It recently advised Aesica Pharmaceuticals on the acquisition of three manufacturing plants, in Germany and Italy, and advised the Centre for Process Innovation on a £5m joint venture with Tata Steel. Richard Butts and Imogen Holland “deliver an exceptional service”, and commercial lawyer Colin Hewitt has “an excellent understanding of the dynamics of the public sector and its interaction with the private sector”.

Baines Wilson Solicitors’ “excellent” team is jointly headed by “driving force in the business” John Wilson and Andrew Hill. Hill has “impressive experience and attention to detail”, and recently advised French-based company Onet on the acquisition of the entire issued shared capital of Bradtec Deacon Technologies.

Dispute Resolution Finance Banking litigation Addleshaw Goddard LLP Manchester DLA Piper UK LLP Manchester Addleshaw Goddard LLP Leeds DLA Piper UK LLP Leeds, Sheffield Dickinson Dees LLP Ward Hadaway

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ddleshaw Goddard LLP’s practice spans financial regulatory, fraud, professional negligence, and mis-selling claims. It successfully defended a bank against a £40m claim in relation to a development project. Michael Isaacs leads the team, which acts for major UK banks and achieved new panel appointments with HSBC and Santander.

DLA Piper UK LLP “has a good range of expertise in order to provide the knowledge that is necessary on each case”, and represents asset finance lenders, banks and payment service providers.

Addleshaw Goddard LLP has a strong presence within financial services. Recent mandates within the litigation sphere include advising a major asset finance provider on an appeal to the Traffic Commissioner Appeals Tribunal.

DLA Piper UK LLP is “a market leader” in this area. It represented

HSBC following borrowers’ attempts to overturn the appointment of LPA receivers to a property portfolio; additional claims for breach of contract were made against the bank, but all were dismissed and judgement was awarded.

The team at Dickinson Dees LLP is “outstanding in all areas. It is professional and responsive, and delivers as agreed”. Craig Monty heads the practice, and divides his time between the Newcastle and Tees Valley offices.

Paul Stewart and Ged Flanagan, who is now full time in Tees Valley, are “expert solicitors”.

Ian Collinson’s team at Ward Hadaway recently represented Nottingham City Council in a judicial review over the termination of Building Schools for the Future. Other work included professional negligence and shareholder disputes.

“The team at Dickinson Dees is outstanding in all areas.. professional and responsive”

Banking and finance Dickinson Dees LLP, Newcastle Ward Hadaway, Newcastle Addleshaw Goddard LLP, Manchester DLA Piper UK LLP Manchester, Liverpool Eversheds LLP, Manchester Addleshaw Goddard, LLP Leeds DLA Piper UK LLP, Leeds, Sheffield

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ickinson Dees LLP delivers a “first-class service, aided by a regional presence”. It recently advised Grainger on a £120m syndicated facility led by HSBC, and Gentoo Group on a £100m RSL refinancing with RBS. The practice has a strong base of borrower and lender clients; panel memberships include National Australia Bank Group and Barclays Bank. John Ralph has “in-depth knowledge of property sector and the local market”.

Ward Hadaway’s “outstanding” practice acts for clients such as Barclays Bank, Santander, Lloyds TSB and RBS. It advised Barclays on providing working capital and bond facilities to Tekmar Energy, and Santander on providing acquisition finance to Chemcare.

“A first-choice firm” with great strength in depth, Addleshaw Goddard LLP handles a wealth of corporate banking, real estate, acquisition and asset finance mandates, as well as financial restructurings for major lenders and corporate borrowers.

Recommended for complex, crossborder financings, DLA Piper UK LLP’s Matthew Christmas “provides sensible, commercial legal advice during challenging negotiations”, and real estate finance partner Hans Scheiwiller is “knowledgeable and commercial”.

Eversheds LLP’s “strong banking team” combines “local knowledge with quick response times”, and remains focused on acting for borrowers. Nigel Dale has “a depth of knowledge, enabling him to give practical, informed advice”, and recently acting for lenders and borrowers on various refinancings, including HSBC’s global refinancing of Olaer Group.

Addleshaw Goddard LLP’s “exceptional” team provides a “premium” service with “partner involvement in key decisions”. The firm is on the panel of major banks such as HSBC and Santander, and new client wins include Royal Bank of Canada and Credit Suisse.

DLA Piper UK LLP is a “flexible, friendly and human firm to deal with”, and the team displays a “genuine desire to help achieve objectives”.

“Addleshaw Goddard’s exceptional team provides a premium service with partner involvement in key decisions”

the times | Tuesday September 25 2012

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Business Insight

Commercial viewpoint

Ward Hadaway going from strength to strength

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MBITION is a word which has characterised Ward Hadaway right from the firm’s roots.

The UK Top 100 firm was established in 1988 via a merger of several smaller firms who pooled their skills and resources with the clear intention of becoming a real force in the sector.

From its base in Newcastle, Ward Hadaway has grown to become one of the biggest law firms in the North East with a respect and reputation that has attracted and developed some of the country’s leading legal experts in their fields – a fact acknowledged in the latest edition of Legal 500.

However, the ambition which led to the firm’s founding has ensured that Ward Hadaway has never rested on its hard-won reputation as a leading light in the North East.

In summer 2008, the firm took the

plunge and established an operation in Leeds, targeting the ultra-competitive Yorkshire legal market.

Managing partner Jamie Martin explains: “We had been looking at options to develop the business outside the North East for some time.

“We already had a number of partners with established reputations in the Leeds and Yorkshire market and we wanted to capitalise on the opportunities that this presented.

“Despite launching the office against an extremely challenging economic backdrop, it has proved to be a major success for Ward Hadaway and has helped to take us to another stage in our development.”

From a standing start in 2008, Ward Hadaway’s Leeds office is now home to over 60 staff, delivering a wide range of legal services to businesses, individuals and organisations.

More than 1,000 clients, including major national and international

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groups, have been advised over the past four years and Ward Hadaway’s sustained growth recently led the firm to double the size of its premises in Leeds.

Buoyed by its success in Leeds and by record annual results for the firm, earlier this year Ward Hadaway continued its expansion across the North with the opening up of a full-service office in Manchester.

This built on the momentum generated by the success of the firm’s award-winning Creative Industries team, which has been based at east Manchester digital media and production complex The Sharp Project since summer 2010.

Teams offering partner-led advice in areas including corporate finance, property, employment, commercial litigation and corporate recovery and insolvency are already in place in Ward Hadaway’s Manchester office in the heart of the city centre and Martin Hulls, Head of Corporate and

Partner in Charge in Manchester and Leeds, expects more to come.

Martin Hulls says: “Manchester is a terrific city and a great place to do business and we are looking forward to working with clients in Manchester and to developing the services that we offer to them in the North West.

“We have already assembled an excellent team of lawyers in Manchester with experience and expertise across a wide range of areas and we are actively recruiting in the market place with a view to expanding the team still further.”

Managing partner Jamie Martin explains: “We now have the offices in place to enable us to meet our aspiration to be a ‘Northern law firm for National business’.”

“We believe that the combination of a keenly competitive cost base with some of the finest legal minds around is a potent one for a wide range of clients, not just across the North but across the country.

“The feedback and instructions we are receiving would appear to bear us out on this and, while caution is also a watchword at Ward Hadaway, we feel we are well placed to meet the continuing challenges with confidence.”

Jamie Martin, Managing Partner

www.wardhadaway.com

Make a considered choice When it comes to your choice of legal services partner, consider > > > > > >

experience and expertise team depth and firm breadth people and personalities cost and return past, present and future your gut feeling

And then choose Ward Hadaway.

For more information, contact Managing Partner Jamie Martin on 0191 204 4328 or jamie.martin@wardhadaway.com

“Committed to building long-term relationships with clients rather than just looking at immediate revenue opportunities" Legal 500. 2012

wardhadaway lawfirm Newcastle | Leeds | Manchester

Tuesday September 25 2012 | the times

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Business Insight

Legal 500

Finance Insolvency and corporate recovery Addleshaw Goddard LLP Leeds DLA Piper UK LLP Leeds, Sheffield Walker Morris Leeds Dickinson Dees LLP Newcastle Eversheds LLP Newcastle Addleshaw Goddard LLP Manchester DLA Piper UK LLP Liverpool, Manchester

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ddleshaw Goddard LLP, “the obvious choice on more complex cases”, is commended for its knowledge of the sector and quick response times. Recent mandates include advising Deloitte as administrators of Discover Leisure, and Silentnight Group on refinancing and restructuring. Graham Briggs is “excellent at project managing, and running the more complex cases where direction and leadership are required”. Andrew Smith has “solid

intellectual capital and experience”; Richard Bellamy has “an excellent client-focused personality”; and James Davison is “very proactive, and his attitude is that nothing is too much trouble”.

DLA Piper UK LLP’s team is “excellent, proactive and commercial”, and “understands the issues well”. A recent highlight was acting for Sun European Partners on its acquisition of Alexon. As well as acting for a solid base of banking clients, it advises corporates such as Dyson, which it assisted on the sale of its Saffil business. Mark Jackson, who heads the group, is “at the top of the market”; he is “commercial and dynamic in getting a deal done and always tries to exceed expectations”. The Leeds team also includes Richard Obank and Colin Ashford, while Duncan Mosely leads the Sheffield team.

Walker Morris is “a strong competitor in this area”, and is noted for its ability to “inject pace into negotiations”; “the service is excellent, as is the advice given”. The

firm was involved in the administration of Romag and its subsidiaries, advising Lloyds TSB and Deloitte.

It also acted for the latter in relation to the administration of shoe retailer Barratts. Philip Mudd heads the team, which includes the “calm and considered, but also commercial” Simon Clark. John Roche is “approachable and personable”, and David Hinchcliffe and Duncan Lole are also recommended.

Dickinson Dees LLP’s practice is led by the experienced John Pennie and Sally Dallow, who have an impressive client base which includes the Big Four accountants and niche insolvency practitioners. The group recently advised on the turnaround of international media production company Chorion, which involved salvaging the majority of jobs and paying all unsecured creditors.

Eversheds LLP’s “first-class” team has an excellent client base and array of panel memberships, acting for HSBC, Barclays and PwC, among others. It recently acted on the administration of retail chain

Officers Club. “Pragmatic and commercially astute” practice head Paul Dutton is extremely well regarded by clients.

Addleshaw Goddard LLP is experienced in complex matters, and is noted for its focus on delivering “the best solution” to issues.

National head John Joyce advises lenders on restructurings, and Ged Barnes is also recommended. The firm acted for the administrators of TJ Hughes and Sports Media, and for JD Sports as purchaser of Blacks Leisure. Clients include major UK banks, and firms such as BDO LLP and Grant Thornton.

DLA Piper UK LLP acts for UK clearing banks and asset based lending groups, and recently acted for the administrators of Homeform Group and Stanleybet. Practice head Martin Keates provides “a balanced view”, and is valued for his “strategic forward thinking coupled with practical legal mindset”.

Liverpool-based John Vickery leads on restructurings and contentious insolvency matters.

“Walker Morris is a strong competitor in this area and is noted for its ability to inject pace into negotiations”

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the times | Tuesday September 25 2012

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Business Insight

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