May 2009
Just how is Midlands dealmaking faring in the recession? With mega-deals seemingly a thing of the past, and access to finance still a major problem, how is the region’s dealmaking community adapting to new circumstances?
It’s the biggest night of the year for the East Midlands’ dealmaking industry. As an appetiser for the event Insider profiles the shortlisted deals, companies, firms and advisers as voted for by senior members of the region’s dealmaking institutions.
It may have a dispiriting town centre, but Telford is emerging as one of the Midlands’ great investment opportunities. Over the next few years the population of the Shropshire new town is set to top 200,000, making it bigger than cities such as Newcastle, York and Oxford.
It’s the big one – Insider produces its 2009 review of the Midlands’ biggest players. Using exclusive research, our ninth annual review names the region’s Top 500 companies based on turnover and profit.
It’s still the big event of the commercial property calendar, so how did the Midlands fare at MIPIM? We speak to the major developers, public-sector bodies and service providers to find out what they go out of this year’s mega-networking event on the Med.
Your headquarters is literally the flagship of your business: it often determines the type of company you run in terms of staff, efficiency, administration and style.
If there’s one legacy the Midlands’ long industrial heritage has left it’s an abundance of brownfield sites ripe for development. For years the government’s planning policies have actively promoted bringing these plots back into useful, productive life, often with spectacular results.
Shrewsbury biscuits, Lincolnshire sausages, Midlands mild, Melton Mowbray pies, Staffordshire oatcakes, Bakewell tarts – with names like these why isn’t the Midlands’ massive food and drinks industry more widely recognised?
The Black Country, it’s been claimed, is the real opportunity for the renaissance of the Midlands: a massive cost-effective workforce, huge swathes of land for development and a superb communications network.
Sourcing the right skills and experience to help your company survive, and even flourish, should be a priority right now. With businesses under pressure, the focus should be on getting the very best talent into your company to see it through the downturn to calmer waters beyond.
A one-off advertisement is like going to the gym: it makes you feel good for a while, but achieves little. If marketing is to succeed it needs to be sustained, long term and well thought out.
Ireland is arguably the country with which Britain has the strongest cultural links, and one of our great trading partners: a shared language, shared legal system, shared business culture and entwined history.
The stock markets are still volatile, markets are chaotic and the recession looks even deeper and longer – perhaps there’s never been a better time to consider floating on the stock markets.
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