December 2004

News

UK maintains first-half lead in European FDI
The UK remains the largest recipient of foreign direct investment (FDI) projects in Europe, according to the latest European Investment Monitor, a report published by FDI specialists Oxford Intelligence on behalf of Ernst & Young. The report, which covers the six months from January to June 2004, shows that the UK has strengthened its lead in relation to the other top five recipient countries – France, Germany, Russia and Spain. It recorded 313 projects during the period, up from 271 in the same period of 2003, although its overall share declined slightly from 24 per cent to 22 per cent.

In all, there were 1,432 FDI projects across Europe during the six-month period, an increase of 27 per cent from 1,126 a year earlier. Strong growth in Eastern and Central European countries fuelled a boom in investment, with countries in those regions doing particularly well, according to the survey. Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland and Russia saw numbers of projects rise substantially from 156 to 283, increasing their share of total European FDI from 14 per cent to 20 per cent.

The US remained the largest investing country, with project numbers in the first half of 2004 growing to 396 from 332 in 2003, and maintaining its share at 28 per cent of all projects. Japan, the UK and Germany were the next biggest outward investing countries, with all recording growth in the number of projects they funded. The UK’s outward investment activity doubled, with sales and marketing activities accounting for 40 per cent of the total and manufacturing 36 per cent.

The automotive sector attracted the most projects Europe-wide, with 12 per cent of the total, although there was also a recovery in technology-based investments. Electronics accounted for 109 projects compared with 69 in 2003, while computing scored 30 projects as opposed to 20, and telecoms rebounded from 19 projects to 33. Manufacturing is still the single most important activity, representing 43 per cent of all FDI projects. It accounted for 610 investments in the first half of 2004, compared with 551 in 2003.

Nigel Wilcock, Ernst & Young’s senior adviser to the UK’s development agencies, commented: “The results so far for 2004 show a return to substantial growth, following several years of decline in inward investment. 2003 seems to have been a real turning point. … The most striking trend is the strong growth in the East. To provide some relatives, Slovakia had more projects than the Netherlands, Hungary scored more than Germany, and the Czech Republic, Poland and Russia each secured more projects than Spain. If this trend is maintained, the FDI map of Europe will be fundamentally altered.”

To take one example of the effect of FDI at the UK regional level, the West Midlands has seen investment grow rapidly in the first six months of the financial year 2004-05, with 1,525 new jobs already created, compared with 2,316 for the whole of 2003-04. Inward investment successes include TK Maxx’s decision to open a major distribution centre in Walsall that will create 1,000 jobs, while expansions by manufacturing companies Johnson Controls and ZF Lemforder will create more than 100 jobs in the region and safeguard another 130.


M&A activity shows strong signs of recovery
There has also been a rebound in mergers and acquisitions, with UK companies spending some $49 billion on domestic acquisitions in the first nine months of 2004 – more than the total for the past two years, according to figures from the UK’s Office for National Statistics. The figures are still well below the record levels of 2000, when acquisitions worth $203.1 billion were recorded, but they indicate a resurgence in the market following the bursting of the dotcom bubble. Foreign companies spent $30.6 billion during the period, up from $17.7 billion for the whole of 2003. Major cross-border deals included UCB’s acquisition of pharmaceutical company Celltech for $2.9 billion and Allianz Capital Partners’ acquisition of healthcare company Four Seasons.

Private equity groups have been attracted to the UK by realistic prices, low interest rates and the willingness of companies to divest, according to analysts. The average price paid by a foreign company to acquire a UK company over the period was more than three times the average amount invested by a UK company abroad. David Brooks, head of M&A at Grant Thornton corporate finance, said: “This signals that when foreign companies look to invest in the UK they are taking a bigger bite, purchasing meaningful assets that can make a real difference in their growth strategies.”


FDI accounts for nearly one-quarter of London’s economy
FDI generates $72.2 billion annually for the economy of London, or 23 per cent of the capital’s total output of $306 billion, according to new research by inward investment agency Think London (formerly London First Centre). Overseas companies employ more than half a million people, or one in seven of all workers in the capital. Jobs created with Think London’s assistance are generally highly skilled – 70 per cent of those employed are graduates. Employees are also well paid, with a third earning more than $85,000 p.a., and ethnically diverse, with 60 per cent coming from black or other minority backgrounds.

Inward-invested businesses are generally 60 per cent more productive than the London average, and are growing fast – international investors assisted by the agency over the past ten years have grown by 300 per cent since setting up their businesses. Seventeen per cent of them have used their London operations as a springboard for further investment within the UK and 40 per cent have planned expansions into mainland Europe, demonstrating that companies see London as a gateway to both UK and European markets. Since 1994, Think London has helped more than 750 companies from 35 countries to locate or expand in the capital.

Think London, which is a partnership between the private and public sectors, recently celebrated its tenth anniversary with an event in the City of London sponsored by Gazprom Marketing and Trading, the UK arm of Russian gas giant Gazprom – a recent inward investor. The agency’s new name and rebranding follow an extensive review of its activities. It will continue to market and promote London throughout the world, with a full set of updated messages and new marketing collateral.

London is best European capital to live in
London is the best European capital city in which to live, according to an analysis of statistics from across the European Union by the EU’s official statistical body Eurostat. The UK capital is physically the biggest city, with a population of 7.2 million, compared with 3.4 million in Berlin, 3 million in Madrid and 2.1 million in Paris. Indeed, more people live in London than in Rome, Paris, Vienna and Brussels put together. It is also the only European capital able to compete on the world stage with cities such as New York and Tokyo. It is the richest city in the European Union, with an economic output that is 2.4 times the EU average.

Relaxing in London’s West End

A third of London’s area is green space, and it has double the number of theatres of Madrid and Berlin. London commuters have the longest journey into work (an average of 43 minutes compared with half an hour in Madrid, Berlin and Stockholm) and Londoners only have 0.6 general practitioners per 1,000 people compared with two in almost every other capital. However, healthcare provision is good and the city has the lowest mortality rate from heart attacks for under-65s of any EU state. With the exception of car theft, crime levels are comparatively low – 61.9 reported crimes per 1,000 population, compared with 168.8 in Berlin and 146.7 in Paris. The murder rate is the second highest, but there are still only three murders a year per 100,000 people.

Even the weather is better. London averages 4.7 hours of recorded sunshine per day, compared with Paris on 4.4 hours and Berlin on 4.1 hours – although it is still a long way short of the 7.6 hours per day recorded in sunny Athens. The city is also relatively dry, with 163 days of rain a year compared with 199 in Brussels and a damp 246 in Dublin.

Scotland judged top location in Europe for FDI
Scotland has won the accolade of European Region of the Future in fDi magazine’s prestigious 2004/05 competition. Judging was carried out over several rounds, with 33 individual criteria being used to gauge which locations in Europe offered foreign investors the best deal. In the final round of judging, the panel was asked to rank their top three locations from the winners of the individual categories, which included economic potential, cost-effectiveness, human resources, telecoms and IT infrastructure, quality of life, transportation and security. Scotland emerged from this process as the winning region, while Barcelona in Spain was judged European City of the Future. The award was presented at a ceremony held in Hong Kong.

“Scotland has gone all out to attract FDI in the past decade,” said the October/November issue of fDi, which is published by Financial Times Business. “The country has one of the largest and most active investment promotion networks, which has successfully targeted high-value-added sectors such as microelectronics, life sciences and financial services. [Its] investment incentives and the tax regime particularly favour large companies wishing to invest in research and development and the government has targeted discretionary funding at R&D projects.” The magazine went on to praise Scotland’s highly educated and flexible workforce and a number of exciting urban development projects, such as the new financial services district taking shape in Glasgow and the regeneration of Glasgow Harbour.

Dundee in Scotland took the title for best FDI promotion strategy by an individual city. Dundee has made a reputation for itself as the ‘City of Discovery’, with particular strengths in scientific R&D, computer games design and the biosciences. Its initiatives include the inward investment project Locate-Dundee, the BioDundee life sciences initiative, Interactive Tayside (for the digital industries) and the co-ordinating efforts of the Dundee Partnership, which includes public, private and academic organisations. The city will host its next BioDundee Conference on 18 March 2005.

In individual categories, Scotland ranked third Europe-wide as the region with the best economic potential. Belfast in Northern Ireland narrowly lost out to Copenhagen as Northern European City of the Future. Liverpool ranked as the top city in Europe for telecoms and IT infrastructure, while South East England was the third best region in this category. The South East was also the third best region in Europe for transport infrastructure.

DTI announces five-year plan for science
The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) has announced a five-year programme to put science, innovation and technology at the heart of the UK’s industrial development. Secretary of State for Trade and Industry Patricia Hewitt wants to make the UK the most attractive place in the world for scientific research. The programme, Creating Wealth from Knowledge, recognises that greater exploitation of science and technology is needed, together with more innovation in workplaces and in the economy. There are also serious challenges from rising economies such as China and India and, closer to home, countries in Central and Eastern Europe.

Concrete proposals to strengthen science and boost innovation will include action to tackle animal rights extremism; the setting up of ‘Newton Funds’, a new fund for high-profile cross-disciplinary research; and a new ‘ideas portal’ that will allow companies and individual researchers to submit proposals to the public sector. A leading business figure will be appointed help implement the Kelly Review on public sector procurement, while the role of the Manufacturing Advisory Service will be strengthened.

Action will be taken to reduce regulatory burdens on business, and there will be more support for small businesses from the regional development agencies (RDAs). A Women’s Enterprise Panel will be set up, and a number of policies will be introduced to help boost workplace skills and improve conditions for employees. All this aims to boost R&D from its current level of 1.9 per cent of national income to 2.5 per cent by 2014 and, according to Prime Minister Tony Blair, represents a “major strategic shift” in the focus of the DTI. Business leaders and industry groups have given the plan a cautious welcome, generally praising its aims but questioning some of the detail as “sketchy”.


UK continues to close R&D gap on US
In the meantime, the DTI’s fourteenth annual R&D Scoreboard shows that the UK has maintained its leading position in R&D investment in the pharmaceuticals, health, biotechnology and aerospace sectors. Worldwide, it is second only to the US. The scoreboard, which looks at data for the top 700 international and top 700 UK R&D investing companies, shows that companies investing in R&D benefit from higher sales growth and increased share prices, as a result of their higher value-added products and services. Total spending last year declined by 1 per cent, however, to $31.5 billion.

GlaxoSmithKline retained its position as the largest single investor in the UK, followed by AstraZeneca, which has moved up to second, and BAE Systems, which has moved up from sixth in 2003 to third. The survey showed that the overall business climate for R&D-active companies was more favourable in 2003-04 than in the previous two years, with profitability doubling. In a new category designed to measure R&D vigour, the number of UK-owned companies with an R&D intensity above 4 per cent and sales above $47.5 million has increased by 66 per cent since 1999. The number of companies meeting these criteria rose from 65 in 1998 to 108 last year, with software and computer services firms accounting for 30 per cent of the total.

The UK has the fourth largest number of companies in the international top 700, with 41, after the US (294), Japan (154) and Germany (54). Among the top 700 UK companies, 39 per cent of R&D spending is in the pharmaceuticals and biotechnology sector and 12 per cent in aerospace and defence – both well above international averages. UK software companies figure strongly in the list of 200 R&D-intensive small companies (with sales under $95 million), which bodes well for the future and promises to help close the gap on the US.

The THES compiled the listings by surveying 1,300 academics in 88 countries and by collating data on research produced by faculty members, the ratio of student numbers and the success of institutions in attracting foreign students and internationally renowned academics. Harvard, which boasts an endowment of nearly $23 billion and whose faculty members have won 40 Nobel prizes, was a comfortable winner. It was followed by the University of California (Berkeley), Massachusetts Institute of Technology and California Institute of Technology. Stanford, Yale and Princeton took seventh, eight and ninth positions, while the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland was in tenth place.

Tokyo University, in 12th, was the highest-ranked Asian institution, followed by Beijing University in 17th place. Australia had six universities in the top 50, though France could only manage two and Germany one. The UK was home to 18 of Europe’s top 50 universities and six of the top ten. Another survey, by academics at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China who compiled a world league of the 500 best research universities, put Cambridge third behind Harvard and Stanford, with Oxford eighth. In this survey, British universities ranked second overall behind those of the US.

Academic institutions forge cutting-edge links
In a round-up of university news, HM the Queen officially launched the newly merged University of Manchester on 22 October. The university has been created by combining UMIST (University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology) and the Victoria University of Manchester, to form the largest single-site university in the UK. Its principal, Professor Alan Gilbert, will oversee an annual budget of $950 million, with 28,000 students and 9,000 staff, while around $570 million is being spent on new facilities at the institution. It intends to become an academic powerhouse, recruiting at least three Nobel Laureates over the next three years to help establish itself as one of the top 25 research-led universities in the world. As part of the reorganisation, Manchester Business School will also get a higher profile, and has already launched a national advertising campaign aimed at attracting new students.

In South West England a new institution, the Combined Universities in Cornwall (CUC), has opened its doors to students. The CUC’s main campus is at Tremough near Penryn, for which the South West Regional Development Agency has supplied $24.3 million of the total cost of $95 million. The Knowledge Spa, a start-up facility for health-related businesses, has opened in Truro. The CUC expects to create 2,000 jobs over the next ten years and to increase Cornwall’s GDP by more than $1.1 billion by 2025.

In a separate development, a new academy of radiology is to be opened at Plymouth International Medical and Technology Park. The Peninsula Radiology Academy will train radiologists for the NHS, admitting its first trainees in autumn 2005. Other radiology academies will be established in Norwich in Eastern England and Leeds in Yorkshire and Humber. In the West Midlands, Aston University has signed a long-term agreement with Australian-owned pharmaceutical manufacturer Mayne Pharma plc to run the first dedicated medical manufacturing clean room in the region. The facility will be used to produce specialist cancer and other drugs.

In the South East, a $90 million expansion plan for the Universities at Medway has been unveiled as part of the regeneration of the Thames Gateway region. The expanded campus, based at the key Chatham Marine site, is currently used by the University of Greenwich but will also be used by four other institutions, boosting student numbers at the site from the current 2,700 to 6,000 by 2010. New buildings will be constructed and existing facilities, including laboratories, will be refurbished.

BAE Systems and Cranfield University in Bedfordshire, Eastern England, have developed a range of tutor-led online learning courses that will improve the skills of the company’s engineers, while making substantial cost savings over traditional classroom methods of delivery. The e-learning courses, in mechanics and structures engineering, will be delivered via both the company’s own corporate intranet and the university’s website. The courses are currently being piloted and will be rolled out from February. BAE Systems expects to enrol 150 delegates in the first year, rising to 300 a year from 2006. Also in Eastern England, Great Yarmouth College has opened a new Engineering Technology Centre and is developing a partnership with luxury car-maker Lotus, which is based nearby.

The Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre (EPCC) at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland has acquired the first IBM Blue Gene supercomputer to run in Europe. In partnership with IBM, the machine will allow chemists, biologists, physicists and environmental modellers to tackle complex problems that cannot be solved on existing machines. The technology has many scientific, medical and industrial applications, and promises to keep EPCC at the forefront of computational science. The University of Abertay Dundee is pioneering an R&D programme based on games-based learning, in partnership with digital industry organisation ITI Techmedia. The University of Dundee meanwhile has been named Scottish University of the Year 2004 by The Sunday Times Good University Guide.

UK is one of world’s most sophisticated ICT markets
Businesses in the UK are among the most sophisticated worldwide in their use of information and communication technology (ICT), according to a survey produced for the DTI by Booz Allen Hamilton. The eighth International Benchmarking Study, which examines ICT deployment in the G7 countries plus Australia, Ireland, South Korea and Sweden, shows the UK moving up four places from 2003 to third overall. Key findings include the facts that 69 per cent of UK businesses are now using broadband and that xDSL connections increased by 11 per cent last year. Thirty per cent of micro businesses are now trading online, up from 17 per cent in 2003, as are 31 per cent of small businesses, up from 22 per cent. In all, 73 per cent of UK businesses now provide customer information about their products and services online.

The latest monthly survey of internet service providers (ISPs) shows that the number of active subscriptions to the internet (for both business and domestic users) increased by 5.1 per cent between September 2003 and September 2004, and by 0.2 per cent from August to September 2004. The market share for permanent connections continues to expand, and they now account for 34.4 per cent of all connections, compared with 18.7 per cent a year ago.

BT has announced that the quarter ending 30 September was its best ever for wholesale broadband connections, with more than 600,000 new connections, taking BT Wholesale’s total user base to 3,294,000. The UK has now overtaken Germany in terms of broadband use per 100 population. BT Retail’s share of the market has improved from 29 to 30 per cent, with its installed base of customers growing to 1,283,000. BT has recently introduced a new Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service for small businesses. BT Business Broadband Voice enables subscribers to use a standard telephone handset to make calls via a high-speed internet connection, allowing them to connect either in the office or remotely, and to make substantial savings on multiple line rentals. The penetration of VoIP services in the UK is expected to increase by up to 300 per cent over the next three years.

In addition, BT is planning to launch a mobile phone service that will allow users to make cheap calls via the internet from airports, stations, hotels and cafés. Handsets will incorporate wireless internet Wi-Fi technology, which will operate in up to 17,000 ‘hotspots’ around the world. BT Group is planning to introduce its ‘Bluephone’, based on Bluetooth technology, in spring next year. In the meantime, the company has struck a cooperative deal with mobile operator T-Mobile that gives it access to 1,300 existing BT Wi-Fi hotspots in the UK and in Ireland.

The UK businesses of PSINet Europe have been acquired by Telstra Europe Ltd, a wholly-owned subsidiary of global data solutions company Telstra Corporation, in a deal worth $95 million. Based in Cambridge, Eastern England, PSINet UK is a leading provider of e-business infrastructure solutions and corporate IP-based communications services, and was previously controlled by the Israel Corporation Ltd. The acquisition will help Telstra to meet growing demand for converged voice and data services.


Profitability and productivity show rapid growth
Corporate profitability reached its highest level in almost five years in the second quarter of 2004, according to the Office for National Statistics. The net rate of return for non-financial companies was 13.8 per cent, up from 13.2 per cent in the previous three months and the highest since the final quarter of 1999. Oil and gas companies enjoyed a rate of return on capital of 33.5 per cent, up from 28 per cent in the first quarter, with some companies such as BP reporting record profits. Oil companies and large manufacturers have benefited from strong demand from China. However, the ONS believes that earnings may have peaked and that rising oil prices will act as a brake on further growth.

Productivity has also grown rapidly, with output per worker (the new headline measure of productivity for the whole economy) increasing by 2.9 per cent in the second quarter of 2004 compared with the same quarter a year earlier, up from 2 per cent growth in the first quarter. Quarter-on-quarter, growth stood at 1.1 per cent for the second three months, compared with zero growth in the first. Unit wage costs increased by 2.1 per cent year-on-year, down from growth of 2.7 per cent in the previous quarter.

The UK has become one of the biggest beneficiaries worldwide of offshoring and leads the world in business services, according to a government-funded report by the Advanced Institute of Management Research. Despite concerns about call centre jobs being outsourced to countries such as India, the UK has in fact made a net gain of hundreds of thousands of jobs as companies across the world move their operations here, says the report. They are attracted by strengths in areas such as computing, legal services, advertising, recruitment and architecture. The UK has a $32 billion trade surplus in business services that has been growing steadily for 20 years and is larger than that of the US. Employment in business services grew by 92 per cent between 1984 and 2001, accounting for more than half of all new jobs created in the UK during that period.

Meanwhile, a separate survey by employers’ organisation the Confederation of British Industry of 150 of its members shows that jobs moved offshore out of the UK are likely to be unskilled or semi-skilled, while most of the new jobs created within the UK are at the skilled or graduate level.


Recognition for contributions of investor agencies
TEChINVEST, the business angel introduction and equity advisory service provided by the Northwest Regional Development Agency (NWDA), has been named Private Investor network of the Year for 2004 at the Investor Allstars Awards, organised by GP Capital and Business XL. The network was commended for its long-term commitment to angel investing over a period of 11 years, as well as the part it has played in launching four new investment funds in the Northwest. In that time, some $33.6 million of direct funding has been invested in TEChINVEST’s client companies, unlocking another $60.6 million of indirect finance. In 2003 the service registered its 500th private investor and 500th company introduced to investors, while 2,000 other companies have benefited from its services since 1993.

Catapult Venture Managers, working with the East Midlands Development Agency (emda) won the Allstar award for Regional Venture Capital Fund of the Year. Since the beginning of 2002, Catapult has completed a total of 31 investments in 21 businesses in the region, involving funds of around $11 million. The awards were presented at an event attended by 600 people at London’s Intercontinental Hotel in October.

Manufacturers in the North East put in a strong showing at the national Best Factory Awards, run by the Cranfield School of Management in partnership with Works Management magazine. The region took five of a possible 13 awards at a ceremony held at the Institute of Directors in London. Nissan’s car plant at Sunderland won the awards for best supply chain, best engineering plant and best North East factory, while Rocket Medical, based in Washington, Tyne and Wear, picked up the awards for innovation and best small company. Also shortlisted was the Nestlé Rowntree plant in Fawdon, which was highly recommended.

The North West is the UK’s leading exporter of pharmaceuticals, according to NWDA’s biotech cluster group Bionow. The region overtook the South East in 2003, recording exports with a value of $6.5 billion. The North West is home to many leading companies, including AstraZeneca, GSK, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Sanofi-Aventis and Eli Lilly. In another sector, a new working group has been launched to investigate the development of interactive textiles. The Northwest Smart Textiles Network, part of NWtexnet (Northwest Textiles Network) will work on innovative technologies such as performance-reactive sportswear, clothing that monitors health and responsive medical dressings.

A new guide to technical services, facilities and research collaborations for biotechnology businesses in Eastern England has been made available by i10, a business support service provided by ten higher education institutions in the region. The Biotech Expertise Guide provides a comprehensive audit of available resources; for more information, visit: www.i10.org.uk. Meanwhile Improve, the sector skills council for the UK’s food and drink manufacturing industry, is moving from London to new offices at York Science Park. The Yorkshire and Humber region is a national centre for the industry, employing 200,000 people – a higher proportion of the workforce than any other UK region.

Around the Regions
Citigroup, the world’s largest financial services group, is to set up a technology centre in Belfast, Northern Ireland, creating up to 375 new jobs and contributing $120 million to the local economy over the first five years of operation. The company, based in New York, offers banking, insurance and investment services and employs 275,000 people worldwide. It manages 200 million customer accounts in more than 100 countries. Invest Northern Ireland will contribute $14.5 million to the project. Also in Belfast, Australian electronic document and records management specialist Tower Software has opened a new office, to service clients such as the Northern Ireland Office and the Northern Ireland Civil Service.

US conglomerate Dupont, based in Wilmington, Delaware, is to invest $70 million in its Maydown manufacturing facility in Londonderry, Northern Ireland. The investment will be used to expand its global production of Kevlar, the strong and lightweight artificial fibre used for a variety of security clothing applications. Invest Northern Ireland has provided selective financial assistance worth $4.5 million towards the expansion, which is expected to create 40 new jobs. DuPont has been active in the province for nearly 50 years.

Nestlé Rowntree, a subsidiary of the Swiss-based Nestlé food and drinks group, is to boost its investment in its chocolate crumb factory in Girvan in Scotland. Unused plant facilities will be recommissioned, with the aim of nearly doubling the factory’s output by the end of 2005. The investment will safeguard the existing 55 jobs at the plant and create 10 new ones. The move follows a company review that saw a factory in the Republic of Ireland closed down, with resources to be concentrated on Scotland.

Marketsafe.com of Sweden, an online supplier of business information, plans to open its UK headquarters in Bridgend, South Wales in January, creating 90 new jobs. The company, which is part of the Swedish Creditsafe Business Information Group, has been operating in its home country for three years. Its new, purpose-built premises in Bridgend will house a team of 24 telesales specialists, as well as customer services, IT, marketing, human resources and accounts departments. It will provide business and financial information specifically for sales and marketing professionals via the internet.

Yorkshire Forward has produced a new DVD to highlight the strength of the digital industries in the region. Yorkshire and Humber supports 13,000 companies in the sector, which between them employ 100,000 people (13 per cent of the national workforce in this sector) and generate $5.4 billion annually. The DVD – called Digital Landscapes – focuses on clusters in areas such as electronics and software, ICT, games and creative industries, and culture and media companies. For more information, visit www.yorkshire-forward.com.

Blue Titan, a provider of service-oriented architecture (SOA) deployment based in California, has begun international operations with the launch of a new office in London. The company’s clients include Pfizer, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Sony and British American Tobacco. Also coming to London is financial services firm Northgate Capital, an alternative asset and fund-of-funds manager. The company, based in Danville, California, has more than $500 million in committed capital.

Marvelous Entertainment of Japan and Bergsala of Sweden are to form a London-based joint venture, trading as Rising Star Games. The company will distribute and publish video games software in Europe and other PAL-format territories, from Marvelous Interactive (a subsidiary of Marvelous Entertainment) and other companies. It will also acquire merchandise rights and develop games software in-house.

Sleepycat Software, a California-based supplier of open source developer databases, has launched Sleepycat Europe, which will provide sales, marketing and support services across the EMEA region from a new office in Woking, South East England. The company claims more than 200 million deployments worldwide for its Berkeley DB family of products. In the same region, Visual Networks of Rockville, Maryland has opened its European headquarters at Amersham. The company, a provider of computer network and application performance management solutions, has been doing business in Europe for some years and is now looking to capitalise on growing market opportunities.

Varian, a US supplier of scientific instruments, vacuum technologies and specialised contract electronics manufacturing services, is to acquire Magnex Scientific, a superconducting magnet specialist based in Oxford, South East England, for $32 million. Magnex is a leading designer and manufacturer of magnetic resonance (MR) imaging magnets, together with vertical, high-resolution nuclear MR magnets and associated technologies. It currently supplies Palo Alto, California-based Varian with equipment worth around $10 million each year.

Also in the South East, Japanese company Fuji Seal Europe, a specialist in shrink-wrap packaging, is to double the size of its manufacturing, printing and warehousing facilities at its base at Gillingham Business Park in Medway, Kent. The company has won more than 40 packaging, design and print awards in the past five years, and has experienced strong customer growth.

Pictures copyright VisitBritain.

To find out about business exhibitions and events happening around the United Kingdom click on the EVENTS button.