Bromford Holdings, the Birmingham aerospace company, has acquired the trade and certain assets of Leicester’s H Beesley from administrator KPMG. The acquired business will now trade as Bromford Technologies Leicester. The business, which employs 99 people at two sites in Leicester, is complementary to the existing Bromford businesses, being involved in the fabrication of components for the industrial gas turbine market and high precision machining for the aerospace and marine sectors. It also shares many customers with Bromford. For Insider comment, click here.

Following on from the overwhelming success of last year’s East Midlands Dealmakers Dinner, this year’s event is proving equally attractive with only a few tables remaining. Chris Barrie, star of TV’s Red Dwarf, will compere the event and our guest speaker this year is Andy Raynor, chief executive of RSM Tenon. If you would like to purchase tickets for the event, which takes place at the East Midlands Conference Centre in Nottingham on Tuesday 6 May, please contact Amanda Steele.

Coventry’s Deeley Construction has created a special projects division to carry out a range of works from property alterations and refurbishments to niche projects. The division will be headed up by Clive Rattenbury, who was formerly at the company’s Northampton office. He said: “Some people may see that we have worked on projects such as Belgrade Plaza and, therefore, think we wouldn’t consider a smaller conversion or refurbishment.”

There are positive signs the professional services job market in the Midlands is set to improve this year, according to the latest survey from recruiter Robert Half, which has operations in Birmingham, Nottingham and Leicester. More than half (52 per cent) of the Midlands chief financial officers (CFOs) and finance directors it quizzed said they felt more or slightly more confident at the economic prospects facing their companies in the next six months. Nearly one in five (18 per cent) of the CFOs said their companies would be looking to hire permanent accounting and finance staff over the next six months.

Solwise, the Hinckley telephony company, has won contracts to provide digital communications services for another round of rock and pop festivals across the country. It has already secured contracts for Glastonbury, the V Festivals, T in the Park, the Download Festival, T4 on the Beach, the Big Chill and the Latitude Festival. Now the company will be supplying telephone links for the Reading and Leeds music festivals which run over the August bank holiday on 27, 28 and 29 August. In addition the company will be supplying digital communications at the Shambala Festival in Northamptonshire and for events at Hampden Park in Glasgow.

Solihull law firm Harris Cooper Walsh (HCW) is opening an office in the Birmingham suburb of Harborne. The branch office will open in High Street on Monday and follows the first initiative in HCW’s expansion plans, the launch of an office in Stratford-upon-Avon in March. Other branch offices are planned. Mike Gahan, senior partner, said: “The Harborne opening is very important to us. It is the part of a major expansion plan for the company.” HCW has been established for 30 years and currently has a staff of more than a dozen specialist legal advisers.

Advent Communications, a Coventry PR company, won a contract with CPP Manufacturing, the business producing cars for Dutch-based supercar maker Spyker. Spyker announced earlier in the year that it was moving production of its Aileron car to a new assembly unit at CPP’s headquarters in Wheler Road. Now Advent has been retained by CPP to promote its work with Spyker – which has just bought Swedish car company Saab – and other clients including Aston Martin, Rolls Royce, and Bentley.

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The new leader of Leicester City Council, councillor Veejay Patel, has met with Prospect Leicestershire’s chairman Nick Carter to understand their work and plans to bring investment into the city. Councillor Patel reassured private sector partners about his support for the initiatives already approved – in particular the development of the science park centred on the National Space Centre and the housing-led regeneration around Abbey Meadows. He is also keen to see the city’s masterplan and further development of the business quarter in the area around Leicester railway station.

Craig Straw of property consultancy Innes England has sold a 25-acre site on the Colwick Industrial Estate to Chris Allsop Holdings on behalf of Leec Developments. The site, originally a British sugar beet factory, is located on Private Road No 2 and includes more than 160,000 sq ft of industrial buildings, which are currently occupied by a range of tenants. The deal is one of Nottingham’s largest land transactions in recent years.

Superfast broadband is helping to attract high-tech businesses to Nottingham, according to developers at No.1 Nottingham Science Park where a private fibre optic connection has been installed. Blueprint, the developer of the building, reports that all four tenants have signed up to a deal arranged with Virgin, enabling download and upload speeds of up to 1Gb per second – 20 times faster than a typical domestic broadband connection.

Derwent Living has appointed a new service manager for its mechanical and electrical division.The Derby-based housing provider has appointed Matthew Whittaker-Stokes to oversee the day-to-day running of its mechanical and electrical divisions. In his new role he will be responsible for the client management of the gas servicing, mechanical and electrical service areas and will provide improvement maintenance and servicing of mechanical and electrical appliances to all Derwent Living homes. Whittaker-Stokes joins Derwent Living with ten years experience in the housing industry and has worked for Derbyshire County Council, Derby City Council, Derby Homes and Nottingham City Homes.