Wednesday, 11 March 2015

MIPIM 2015: First day blues

Leicester and Leicestershire at Mipim 2015: Day One


It is a measure of how far Leicester and Leicestershire have come in terms of inward investment over the past year that the delegation launched its presence at this year's Mipim with a jobs story most people could relate to.

Insurance firm Hastings Direct's announcement it is to create 230 jobs in the city centre - likely to be at the Blue Tower - marks both another big inward investment coup and the near full capacity of a huge complex thousands of people travel past every day.

Just over a year ago the imposing blue building was still three-quarters empty. Now it has an international student training centre run by Study Group and a household insurance name. This is not forgetting that it includes one of the UK's top 10 best performing Premier Inns.

On the first day of Mipim last year city mayor Sir Peter Soulsby and county council leader Nick Rushton jointly announced a bid for £400 million of public funding for the area, with the promise of tens of thousands of jobs if this was successful. However, there were few details and the sources of funding were diverse and a lot of it was already known about. Although a good message of intent, it was hard to pitch the story above the plethora of investment wins and other major announcements surrounding Europe's largest property conference.

Of course it's always important to do something to announce your presence at an event such as Mipim, where cities, counties and regions all vie for attention. Today's news about Hastings, like IBM's arrival in the city earlier this year, will cause a stir in the property and professional services community both regionally and nationally and help to put Leicester on the map in some major boardrooms.

As I tweeted earlier this evening, Sir Peter and Coun Rushton's decision not to attend Mipim this year has led to some negative comments from business people I've spoken to so far, both inside and outside the Leicester and Leicestershire business delegation. However, I have to say that most of it was fairly measured.

The value of being at Mipim has once again been highlighted to me in my first 12 hours here. I've already heard enough rumour and gossip to keep be busy digging for details and confirmation for many hours next week and beyond.

Before I sign off, I have to thank MDA Consulting for, literally, squeezing me into their dinner at Le Manoir earlier tonight. There's never really a free dinner or lunch at Mipim, of course.



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