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Eye on the global horizon
Cameras flashing, schoolgirls screaming and fainting, and bodyguards straining hard to keep the crowds at bay. Such scenes might be common in Leicester Square, but on a wet June evening in 2007 outside the normally sedate and very business-like Queens Hotel in Leeds? What was the background to all this hoo-hah?
It was in fact, the IIFA awards, an annual get-together and celebration of all things Bollywood that had until then taken place in London (twice), Amsterdam, Dubai and Johannesburg. When it was announced that Yorkshire was going to be the venue for this year’s event, winning its bid over the likes of New York, there were the usual sniggers. What would the likes of Shilpa Shetty and Amitabh Bachchan, used to the heat and dust of Mumbai, make of the mist and grime of the north? And for that matter, what would the average Yorkshireman make of the awards? Were most of them even interested in Bollywood? Was this another example of a worthy but unfulfilling public-sector project?
As it happened, no it wasn’t – as the crowds who turned out attested. But the fact that such an international and unusual event could successfully take place in Yorkshire speaks volumes about the changes that have been taking place in the region in recent years.
A recent survey by accountancy firm BDO Stoy Hayward, for example, revealed that over the past three years Yorkshire has seen faster growth in exports to India than any other UK region – including London and the South East. And by quite a margin too. While exports to India from Yorkshire had gone up by 273 per cent, the next fastest rise had taken place in the West Midlands – but that was a rise of only 83 per cent. Yorkshire’s significant Asian ethnic minority population might be a benefit here of course, but the region had also seen the fastest rise in exports to Japan.
It’s clear this is a region that increasingly has its eye on the global horizon. That’s one reason why household names from North America like McCain’s food and Hallmark cards see no difficulty in locating their European headquarters in the region – even in secondary towns like Bradford and Scarborough.
There are improvements that still could be made, clearly – such as giving the region its first serious international airport. Too many Yorkshire executives still have to swallow their pride and cross the Pennines to Manchester to fly to real business destinations overseas.
But there are hopes here too. Two years ago the UK’s first new commercial airport for 40 years – memorably named Robin Hood Airport Doncaster Sheffield – opened, with a runway perfectly capable of taking all the next generation of superjumbos. And in 2007 Leeds Bradford Airport was bought out of local authority control by venture capital firm Bridgepoint, which immediately announced a £70m investment programme in an airport that many think has been slow to realise its potential.
Even on the national front, Yorkshire is looking up. In 2008 South Yorkshire is losing its Objective One status. But hardly anyone in the region is viewing this as a cause of woe. The region would not actually have qualified for the special status even if it had been able to rebid for it this time, so successful has its transformation been.
The area has had the odd flood to contend with this year, of course, but as it ably showed, it was up, running and open for business just a matter of days after the water subsided. An admirable example, if it were needed, of how the region can cope with whatever is coming.
Peter Baber is editor of
Yorkshire Business Insider magazine