July 2007

NEWS

UK leads way as European private equity rebounds

There was a strong recovery in the European venture capital market in 2006, with funding for start-ups and early stage companies growing by 60 per cent, according to a report from the European Venture Capital Association (EVCA). Growing interest in new environmentally friendly projects, such as biofuels and liquid hydrogen, was one of the main drivers of the upturn, which took funding to the highest levels seen since the internet bubble of 2000. “Clean-tech has been the real revolutionary factor that has restored investor appetite for venture capital. Investors have regained hope of another quantum deal,” said Javier Echarri, general secretary of the EVCA.

The UK remained the favourite European destination for private equity, accounting for $28.2 billion, or 33 per cent of all investments last year. France attracted 15.2 per cent and Germany 10.2 per cent. The US was the largest source of capital into European funds, being responsible for 28.8 per cent, though it was closely followed by the UK with 21.3 per cent. France was the next biggest source of funds, with 7.9 per cent, followed by Sweden with 5.1 per cent and the Netherlands with 4.9 per cent.

The report, compiled by Thomson Financial and PricewaterhouseCoopers, said that fundraising by all types of European private equity funds reached a record $134 billion last year, 56.4 per cent higher than in 2005. Seed funding rose $120 million to $2.3 billion, while start-up funding more than doubled from $2.7 billion to $6.7 billion. The figures indicate that Europe is catching up with the US as a destination for private equity investments, said the report’s authors: the US raised some $192 billion in 2006. “Historically we have been at about half the money raised in the US; now we are getting towards two-thirds,” said Mr Echarri.

There was also a big increase in fundraising by large buy-out groups, such as KKR and Permira, which have been involved in takeover bids for some of Europe’s largest companies. Between them, buy-out groups raised $100 billion in 2006, an increase of 45 per cent from the previous year. However, the EVCA also pointed to the reach and variety of the industry, with 90 per cent of the companies financed by private equity having 500 employees or fewer. Firms financed by private equity performed well for investors, with an average 23.3 per cent return on investment. Leading sectors to benefit included communications, consumer, services, medical/healthcare and industrial products and services.

Meanwhile in the UK, total investment by the private equity industry reached $43.8 billion in 2006, according to the 2006 Report on Investment Activity from the British Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (BVCA). Changes in the way investment is calculated meant that the 2006 figures were not directly comparable with the $23.4 billion of investment recorded in 2005, but on a like-for-like basis the total would have been up by 27 per cent. The UK itself remains the most important market for UK-based investors, but the inclusion of new members significantly boosted the share of BVCA investment going into continental Europe, from $8 billion to $20 billion.

In addition to the overall growth, there was particularly rapid growth in venture capital investment in start-ups, with $1.06 billion invested in 245 companies, compared with $320 million in 208 businesses the previous year. The total invested in early-stage companies more than doubled, from $764 million to $1.85 billion, according the BVCA.

London tops the financial charts

A new report on the top 50 worldwide centres of commerce, commissioned by Mastercard, has put London in first place, ahead of New York, Tokyo and Chicago. With cities being judged on six main criteria, London scored particularly highly on financial flows, economic stability and the ease of doing business. The index was not designed simply as a competitive ranking of the ease of doing business, but also took into account measures of output, such as volumes of equity and bond transactions, and indicators of business inputs, such as the ease of hiring workers and of opening or closing a business. It confirmed other recent surveys that have shown New York’s reputation as the world’s leading financial centre being eroded by a falling share of business and complaints about heavy-handed regulation and high levels of litigiousness.

Punjab National Bank International Limited (PNBIL), the global arm of Punjab National Bank (PNB), is to open its international HQ in London this summer. The new base will help UK companies to do business in India and Indian companies to access the UK market. It is planned that PNBIL will eventually act as the hub for all of PNB’s international operations. PNB is quoted on the Mumbai Stock Exchange and has the second largest branch network in India, with 4,525 offices across the country.

“The UK is India’s second largest trade partner, accounting for 5 per cent of India’s total foreign trade in goods. With bilateral trade between India and the UK set to grow further, PNBIL will provide an essential link between these two diverse markets,” said Vinod Rai of the Indian government’s Ministry of Finance.

BNP Paribas of France is to create up to 370 new jobs in Scotland over the next three to five years, providing securities services and outsourced investment operations to fund managers and other institutional investors. The French bank has secured new premises in Glasgow’s International Financial Services District and will also expand its operation in Dundee, with the help of an RSA grant of $7.4 million from the Scottish Executive. “We have long-established relationships with asset managers in Scotland and anticipate strong growth in our business in the coming years,” said Tony Solway, head of BNP Paribas Securities Services UK.


Big role for renewables in UK’s long-term energy strategy
A new Energy White Paper from the Government puts greater energy efficiency and a secure, low-carbon energy mix at the heart of its long-term strategy. In a statement to the House of Commons on 23 May, Trade and Industry Secretary Alistair Darling (who was promoted to Chancellor of Exchequer by new Prime Minister Gordon Brown on 28 June), said: “We will ensure that we make the most of our substantial remaining reserves in the North Sea, have a diverse range of sources for our imports and make further progress opening up markets in Europe and more widely. ... We will triple the amount of electricity we get from renewables by 2015. We want to lead in the development of carbon capture and storage. And we will consult on the significant role that new nuclear power stations could play in cutting emissions and diversifying our supply.”

Big role for renewables in UK’s long-term energy strategy
A new Energy White Paper from the Government puts greater energy efficiency and a secure, low-carbon energy mix at the heart of its long-term strategy. In a statement to the House of Commons on 23 May, Trade and Industry Secretary Alistair Darling (who was promoted to Chancellor of Exchequer by new Prime Minister Gordon Brown on 28 June), said: “We will ensure that we make the most of our substantial remaining reserves in the North Sea, have a diverse range of sources for our imports and make further progress opening up markets in Europe and more widely. ... We will triple the amount of electricity we get from renewables by 2015. We want to lead in the development of carbon capture and storage. And we will consult on the significant role that new nuclear power stations could play in cutting emissions and diversifying our supply.”

Carbon capture. Picture by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

Environment secretary David Miliband (now Foreign Secretary) said: “For business, we are giving the go-ahead to the world’s first mandatory carbon trading scheme aimed at large commercial and public sector organisations, such as banks, supermarkets and central government departments. The new Carbon Reduction Commitment will be a cost-effective scheme that will save over a million tonnes of carbon per year by 2020, while enabling business to continue to show real leadership in tackling climate change.”

The UK is a European leader in renewable energy, particularly wind energy. Its first pilot offshore wind farm (at Blyth in Northumberland) began operating in 2000, and by 2008 it is expected to overtake Denmark as the leader in installed offshore wind generating capacity. One of the key measures in promoting new forms of energy generation is the Renewables Obligation, which requires energy suppliers to source a proportion of their energy from renewable sources. The figure is 6.7 per cent this year, rising to over 10 per cent in 2012.

A new $16.8 million building has been opened at the Lancaster Environment Centre (LEC) at Lancaster University in North West England, one of the largest environmental research centres in Europe. In addition to space for staff and researchers, the new Geography Department building contains dedicated laboratory facilities, including facilities for remote sensing, wet chemistry and palaeo-environmental analysis.

In Yorkshire and Humber, a new Environmental Energy Technology Centre (EETC) is to be built on land adjoining the Innovation Technology Centre on the Advanced Manufacturing Park at Rotherham, South Yorkshire. The $17.4 million centre, with investment from the European Regional Development Fund, will support more than 30 enterprises engaged in developing products designed for a low-carbon energy economy. Meanwhile German wind energy company Enercon has chosen St Ives in Cambridgeshire as the location for its new UK headquarters.


Fresh initiatives by motor manufacturers
Nanjing Automobile Corporation (NAC), the Chinese owner of MG Rover, has opened a new car production line at its Longbridge factory in Birmingham, West Midlands. NAC plans to produce the MG TF sports car at the site, initially employing up to 200 people and expanding the operation if it proves successful. The company has already invested $500 million in MG and is currently making MG cars in China, using production lines shipped out from Longbridge after it acquired the bankrupt car-maker in 2005. The three MG TFs paraded at the opening ceremony for the new line were only assembled at Longbridge; full-scale production is set to begin later this year, though NAC has not said how many cars might be produced in the first year of operations.

Nissan’s plant in Sunderland, North East England has been chosen by its Japanese parent company as one of only two global training centres for manufacturing excellence. An $8 million project will see the plant train Nissan production supervisors from across Europe, India, the Middle East and South Africa in ‘lean manufacturing’ techniques. The trainees will learn how to become master trainers themselves and will then return to their own countries to train their workforces, raising standards in both basic and advanced manufacturing skills. The first group of trainees, who will arrive in the autumn, will be managers and supervisors from Nissan’s new plant in St Petersburg in Russia, which is due to start production in 2009. The company’s other global training centre in Oppama, Japan, will perform a similar role for Asia, Oceania and the Americas.

Japanese automotive components manufacturer Takao is to almost double the size of its plant in Wales and will create 80 new jobs in an investment worth $24 million. It was only a few months ago that the company made its initial investment in a facility on Rassau Industrial Estate in Ebbw Vale and its expansion – which has been supported by a Regional Selective Assistance (RSA) grant from the Welsh Assembly – has been hailed as a clear vote of confidence in Wales as a place to do business.

Takao Wales Division (TWD) acquired the former Yajima factory last year and already employs 60 people on the 58,000 sq ft site. It now plans to build an adjacent 43,000 sq ft unit that will house three new transfer presses that will increase its production capacity. In particular, the new facility will manufacture medium-category stamping and weld assembly to service orders from an automotive assembly plant in France. In total, the automotive sector employs 25,000 people in Wales and generates more than $6 billion annually.

Land Rover managing director Phil Popham with (former) Climate Change Minister Ian Pearson

Ford subsidiary Land Rover meanwhile has introduced a CO2 Offset Programme which, it claims, is the largest ever environmental commitment undertaken by a vehicle manufacturer in the UK. It will introduce a range of advanced diesel and hybrid technologies into future models to reduce emissions, aiming to offset all emissions at its UK production facilities and for the first 45,000 miles of use for each vehicle.

New investments boost growing composites sector
GE Caledonian, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the General Electric Corporation of the US has announced a $52 million investment in its Prestwick operations in Glasgow, Scotland, to prepare the facility for the maintenance and overhaul of the company’s next-generation GEnx large-jet engines. The GEnx engines will power the new Boeing B787 and Airbus A350 aircraft, as well as the 450-seat Boeing 747-8, a challenger to the Airbus A380. The model, a derivative of the GE90 engine, is based on advanced composites technology. The company has already secured 78 orders for the GEnx from 17 customers, making it “the fastest-selling wide-body engine ever,” it claims.

SGL Technic, a subsidiary of German-owned SGL Group, is to invest $44 million to expand its manufacturing facility in Scotland. The expansion is in response to growing worldwide demand for carbon fibre from the aerospace, automotive and textiles industries and from new technology sectors such as renewable energy. SGL supplies customers in the aerospace industry such as Boeing and Airbus, as well as renewables companies such as manufacturers of wind turbines.

Bombardier meanwhile is to invest $16 million in a new manufacturing facility in west Belfast, Northern Ireland. The investment, at the company’s existing plant at Dunmurry, will enable it to produce composite components for the aerospace sector using an innovative manufacturing technology known as resin transfer moulding (RTM). The manufacturing facility is the culmination of five years of strategic research, according to Bombardier. Northern Ireland Economy Minister Nigel Dodds commented: “The manufacturing capability builds upon the company’s existing links with Northern Ireland’s universities, particularly the Composites Research Centre at the University of Ulster. This will help to strengthen Northern Ireland’s knowledge infrastructure.”

The South West of England Regional Development Agency (RDA), the South East RDA, the Welsh Assembly Government and the universities of Bristol, Cardiff and Southampton are partners in a new national technology research programme launched by global aerospace group EADS. The company’s Innovation Works UK programme is aimed at forging closer links with the UK government and with academic institutions. It will focus initially on the operations of EADS subsidiary Airbus at Filton near Bristol, a Centre of Excellence for wing design.

Initiatives aim to foster creativity and innovation

Film London, the capital’s film promotion board, is planning to hold the UK’s first film finance market in October, bringing together British and international movie producers and financiers. The event, the Film London Production Finance market, has already won support from international film companies such as Paramount, the Weinstein Company and Working Title. They will be joined by private equity funds and investors from the UK, including hedge funds and banks, and film funds, public funding bodies, broadcasters and distributors. “With London’s financial centre now taking on New York and the capital enjoying a cultural resurgence, there is a huge appetite to explore new forms of finance in the film industry,” said Adrian Wootton, chief executive of Film London.

The Royal College of Art (RCA) and Imperial College London have launched a major strategic design partnership in the form of a multi-disciplinary centre called Design London at RCA-Imperial. The centre will bring together the disciplines of design, engineering, technology and business, in an ‘innovation triangle’ between the RCA and Imperial’s Faculty of Engineering and Tanaka Business School. Entrepreneurial graduates will be able to develop new ideas in the ‘Incubator’, a multi-disciplinary environment for business development. The total cost of the project will be $11.6 million, of which 65 per cent will be provided as seed funding over three years by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE).

The Slough Creative Academy in South East England, which trains local people in the creative industries, and the Knowle West Media Centre in Bristol, which works with young people in the South West to unlock their creative entrepreneurial potential, are two of the 12 regional winners in the Department of Trade and Industry’s Enterprising Britain 2007 competition. The competition, launched by the DTI in January, is a key part of the Government’s drive to promote entrepreneurship in the UK. Other finalists include the Edinburgh Science Triangle, a collective of seven leading science and technology parks in the Lothians area of Scotland, and the North Staffordshire Regeneration Zone in the West Midlands. The winner will be announced at the UK final in September, and will then go forward to represent the UK in the European Enterprise Awards later in the year.


Engineering industry records best performance for 11 years
The performance of the engineering industry is at its healthiest for 11 years, according to engineering trade body the EEF. The sector has been boosted by improved competitiveness and the strength of the world economy, although the current strength of the pound poses a potential threat to exports, cautioned the organisation. The balance of export orders has fallen to its lowest level for almost two years, according to a May survey of 907 companies, which also showed the seventh consecutive quarter of positive output and order balances. The balance of companies reporting an increase in output was 23 per cent, the highest since 1996, while the balance reporting an increase in orders was 19 per cent, the same as in the previous quarter. “Manufacturers are continuing to enjoy healthy trade conditions at home and abroad and this is being translated into better prospects for investment and employment,” said Steve Radley, the EEF’s chief economist.

A new Europe-wide regulation on the management and control of chemicals came into force on 1 June. The REACH Regulation, which stands for Registration, Evaluation and Authorisation of Chemicals, is aimed at ensuring high levels of protection for human health and the environment, as well as improving competitiveness and innovation in the industry. It introduces measures for industry to provide evidence of any chemical risks and to ensure that all parts of the supply chain know how to use them effectively, but is also intended to remove some of the administrative burden previously faced by newly developed substances. The first major milestone for businesses is 1 July 2008, the beginning of a six-month window when chemical manufacturers can pre-register their products. More information at: www.hse.gov.uk/reach.

A new body has been set up to harness the potential of the food and drink industry in Scotland, bringing together numerous existing agencies and industry groups in a bid to create an industry worth $20 billion by 2017. Scotland Food and Drink already has the support of many leading organisations, including the Scottish Executive, Scottish Enterprise, the National Farmers Union (Scotland), Quality Meat Scotland and the Seafish Industry Authority, as well as a number of leading food and drink businesses, and is now looking to recruit other major players in the sector.


New funding for innovative science partnerships
A new $100 million science park development is under way in Nottingham in the East Midlands, led by Blueprint, a public-private partnership formed by the East Midlands Development Agency (emda) and other partners. The 12-acre site is an extension to the city’s existing science park, located opposite the University of Nottingham, and is targeted at companies in the science, technology and research sectors. Construction has begun on a 42,000 sq ft landmark building, No 1 Nottingham Science Park, with the first businesses scheduled to move in next summer, and on an automotive training college. The rest of the site will be marketed to companies that require purpose-built premises.

Work has also begun on another new science park in the East Midlands, on a site next to the National Space Centre in Leicester. The $120 million Abbey Meadows West development has the potential to create up to 1,000 jobs, according to its backers. It will include a high-tech science park together with offices, housing and other facilities. Seven acres owned by emda have been earmarked for use by science-based companies.

Universities and public sector research establishments (PSREs) in London, the South East and the East of England are being invited to submit their top areas of research for inclusion in the internationally recognised Research Excellence Directory (www.researchexcellence.org). The interactive Directory was originally developed by the University of Sussex on behalf of the South East England Development Agency (SEEDA) and currently includes 19 universities and four PSREs, representing 185 areas of world-class research excellence. The extended ‘Greater South East’ area will cover more than 70 universities.

In another collaborative initiative, a new ‘weblab’ has been set up at the University of Cambridge in Eastern England, in collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The weblab enables researchers at other universities around the world to access facilities at Cambridge remotely via the web, allowing them to be used year-round. It consists of a reactor, auxiliary equipment and leading-edge industrial process control devices and software. A major contribution by Siemens Group of Germany has allowed the weblab to be set up as a fully functional ‘plant’, with monitoring, control and data output managed by a Siemens process control system.

At the University of Oxford, in South East England, the Man Group, Europe’s biggest hedge fund group, is paying $28 million to sponsor a new institute for quantitative finance. The Oxford-Man Institute of Quantitative Finance is intended to address the shortage of qualified mathematicians needed to work in the financial services industry. The group will get first refusal on any new techniques developed by the institute and its research laboratory, but is expecting the greatest benefit to come from its wider public exposure on account of its link with the university. The rapid growth in hedge funds has seen fierce competition to recruit the best and brightest PhD students in the disciplines of maths, computer science, physics and astrophysics. The Man Group’s biggest fund is AHL, which runs $18.5 billion in fully automated managed futures trades by using computers to spot trends in derivatives markets.


Green light given for major container terminal schemes
Transport Minister Gillian Merron has given final approval for the proposed London Gateway Port at Shellhaven, Thurrock, in the Thames Estuary in South East England. This follows agreement between the Port promoters, P&O Ports (part of Dubai Ports World) and local planning and highway authorities to ensure that the impact of the development on the local road network is adequately catered for. The Department for Communities and Local Government has also granted planning permission for a proposed London Gateway logistics and commercial centre and business park on an adjacent part of the Shellhaven site.

“London Gateway will be able to provide much-needed capacity for handling the UK’s growing international trade in containers. This substantial development has the potential to provide many new jobs in the Thames Gateway Growth Area – already one of the Government’s priority growth areas in England – including a possible 1,900 jobs which the promoters forecast for the port alone,” said Ms Merron.

London Gateway port, when fully developed, will comprise up to seven container vessel berths and a ro-ro facility along 2.7 km of quayside, all on the site of a decommissioned Shell oil refinery. The planned commercial and logistics centre will utilise the rest of the brownfield site.

Another new container terminal is to be developed at Great Yarmouth in Norfolk, Eastern England. After months of planning and negotiation, the Great Yarmouth Port Authority (GYPA) and International Port Holdings Ltd (IPH) have reached an agreement to begin construction of the port’s outer harbour. A subsidiary of IPH, Great Yarmouth Port Company, has formed a joint venture company with global ports group PSA International to operate a short-sea container terminal at the port.

The company will invest $60 million to develop the first phase of the terminal, which should be operational by the end of 2008. It will have a quay length of 660 ft and a terminal area of 30 acres, and an annual capacity of 250,000 teu of containers. A planned second phase will allow for both the quay length and capacity of the terminal to be doubled.

EWS Loading Wagons

Elsewhere in the transport sector, the Government has announced $88 million in new rail freight grants, which are intended to help transport companies shift freight off the roads and onto the rail network. The latest round of grants, for the period 2007/08 to 2009/10, will remove the equivalent of 2.1 million lorry journeys and 631 million lorry kilometres from Britain’s roads over the next three years, according to the Department for Transport (DfT). Among the biggest recipients of grant funding are Freightliner (various projects, $57.3 million), GB Railfreight ($11.3 million), EWS ($5.8 million), John G Russell (Transport) ($2.8 million) and Kuehne + Nagel ($2.8 million).

The total number of road vehicles travelling from the UK to mainland Europe in the first quarter of 2007 was 726,400, a 2 per cent increase compared with the previous quarter and an increase of 3 per cent compared with the first quarter of 2006, according to the DfT. The number of powered vehicles grew to 524,600, an increase of 1 per cent on both comparisons, while the number of unaccompanied trailers was 201,800, a rise of 3 per cent quarter-on-quarter and 7 per cent year-on-year. In Q1 2007, vehicles registered in the UK accounted for around 25 per cent of all powered vehicles.

Supply squeeze pushes commercial rentals higher

Demand for office space in central London remains buoyant, with availability falling by 8 per cent from the end of 2006 to stand at 12.5 million sq ft at the end of Q1 2007, according to the latest CORe: central offices research report from property consultants DTZ Research. The ratio of available space to stock is 5.7 per cent, the lowest figure since 2000, with the Grade A availability ratio at 1.5 per cent. A relatively low level of development completions has been an important factor in pushing rents higher, and DTZ expects this trend to continue for most of this year. However, it says, markedly more completions are expected in 2008, particularly in the City.

Take-up for the first quarter reached 3.25 million sq ft, down from 3.38 million sq ft in Q1 2006. However, a number of new deals in the pipeline are expected to push this figure up in the second quarter. Headline rents in the City rose to $115 per sq ft in Q1, up from $110 per sq ft in the previous quarter, while West End rents rose from $165 per sq ft to $180 per sq ft, and prime rents in the Mayfair and St James’s areas reached $190 per sq ft. “Given the near-term shortage of Grade A space in most markets, we expect continued high rental growth in 2007,” concluded DTZ.

Office rents in the regional market, excluding London, grew by an average 4.7 per cent year-on-year in the first quarter, according to Cushman & Wakefield in its Marketbeat UK June 2007 report. This was the fastest increase since September 2005, which in turn saw the biggest growth since June 2001. Rents in the West Midlands, led by Birmingham and other key towns, saw the strongest growth, up 9.5 per cent compared with the first quarter of 2006. Rents grew by more than 7.5 per cent in Yorkshire and Humber, suburban London and the East Midlands, as demand intensified for limited space. After growing strongly in 2006, rents in Scotland stabilised in the first quarter, with only Aberdeen showing an appreciable increase.

Rents for industrial properties increased by only 0.9 per cent countrywide, but there were significant regional variations, reported Cushman & Wakefield. The areas of biggest demand were the so-called ‘golden triangle’ in the Midlands (popular with logistics and distribution companies), the northern end of the M1 motorway and certain key markets in Scotland.


Regional news
London is an international leader in wi-fi access, according to the sixth annual survey of key financial centres by RSA Security. The survey looked at London, New York and Paris and found that the number of wireless access points in the UK capital has grown by 160 per cent over the past year, putting it ahead of the other cities. The city now has a total of 7,130 wi-fi access points compared with 6,371 in New York and just 827 in Paris. In London the vast majority of wi-fi points – 94 per cent – are within businesses, while in New York 15 per cent are public access, being in locations such as cafes and libraries. In terms of security, 76 per cent of business access points in London were secured against casual attack or used wi-fi encryption systems, compared with 64 per cent in New York and 71 per cent in Paris.

Fire Daemon Technologies Ltd, an Australian software development and systems integration company, has relocated its global headquarters from Sydney to Cambridge, Eastern England. The company is a world leader in service management solutions for Microsoft Windows, with its two primary products being FireDaemon Pro and FireDaemon Trinity. Both are aimed at large enterprises, and customers include Microsoft, IBM, HP, Dell, NASA, Sony and the US Department of Defense. “The move to Cambridge was precipitated by the need to liaise closely with our burgeoning customer base in Europe and the US, plus access to the myriad of abundant computing and business resources that Cambridge provides,” said James Bourne, the company’s general manager.

Holy Stone, a Taiwanese manufacturer of ceramic capacitors, is to set up a European subsidiary in the UK. Holy Stone (Europe) Ltd will be based in Norwich in Eastern England. The company, which specialises in high-voltage high-capacitance and application-specific capacitors, already has a US base to serve markets in the Americas, but this is first venture into Europe.

Palm Paper, Germany’s largest family-run paper company, has chosen a brownfield site in King’s Lynn in Norfolk, Eastern England for a $660 million investment. The new paper mill it plans to build on the 100-acre site will house one of the biggest and most advanced paper machines in the world. The mill will use recycled waste paper to produce 400,000 tonnes of newsprint annually, and leading-edge technology and the use of 100 per cent recycled fibres will ensure high-quality, environmentally friendly newsprint, according to the company.

A number of new developments are under way at the 1 million sq ft Butterfield Business and Technology Park in Luton, Eastern England. They include The Village, an office development offering high-quality office space in units from 1,500 sq ft to 20,000 sq ft, and the Innovation and Business Base, which provides small managed workspace facilities for knowledge-based start-up firms. The scheme’s developers have secured their first big-name tenant, Hilton Hotels, which will build a 155-bedroom, mid-market Hilton Garden Inn hotel, the first of this international brand to be built in the UK.

York in northern England has been named Europe’s top city visitor destination in a new award scheme launched by European Cities Marketing (ECM). The European Cities Tourism Awards are designed to provide a benchmark for best practice and professionalism in tourism organisations. Finalists in the category for Best European Tourism City were York, Gothenburg in Sweden and Valencia in Spain. York won out on account of its long history and variety of attractions, festivals and events that make it a premier destination all year round. What most impressed the judges, however, was a record of public-private partnership that has led to substantial investment. Over the past decade, York has achieved a 52 per cent increase in visitor spending, a 26 per cent increase in tourism overnight volume, a 21.5 per cent rise in average length of stay and 12 per cent more employment in tourism.

The Mersey Partnership’s Sector Development Programme has announced its third and final phase of funding, of $8.6 million, to help support eight high-performing growth sectors in this part of North West England. The programme, set up in 2002, is estimated to have stimulated turnover growth of $169 million and to have created or safeguarded some 1,110 jobs. The latest round of funding, to be utilised in the period up to September 2008, will be used to improve skills levels and drive up productivity in the automotive and manufacturing, digital and creative, environmental technologies, food and drink, life sciences, port and maritime, financial and professional services and tourism sectors.

Quintiles Transnational Corp plans to build a new Scottish base at the Alba Campus in Livingston for its Product Development business, which includes Quintiles Laboratories and the NovaQuest Group. The development will create around 150 jobs over the next four years. Quintiles Transnational is the largest life sciences contract research organisation in the world, providing a range of professional services and information and partnering solutions to the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and healthcare industries. The new facility, part-funded by an RSA grant of $2.5 million, will initially extend to 104,000 sq ft, of which 80,000 sq ft will be dedicated to laboratories. The company also has an option to increase the facility by an additional 30 per cent to cater for future growth.

Life sciences companies in Scotland are generating a combined turnover of $5 billion a year, according to a report by Young Company Finance, presented at the BioEquity conference in Glasgow in May. The sector now employs 30,000 people in 590 organisations and is growing at 7-8 per cent a year, adding more than $2 billion to the value of the Scottish economy. Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that the sector’s rate of growth in gross value added is four times the medium-term average growth rate of the Scottish economy as a whole. The majority of revenues, according to the report, are generated through the production of drugs, diagnostics and medical devices by large foreign-owned companies.

Fujitsu Services Inc is to make a $36 million investment in Northern Ireland that will create 400 new high-tech jobs in Belfast and Londonderry. These comprise 328 new positions at a new IT centre in Londonderry and a further 74 at the company’s existing facility in Belfast. The new Londonderry facility, a Managed IT Service Centre of Excellence, will be located at Timber Quay, and will deliver services to Fujitsu’s growing European customer base. The investment includes $11.3 million of grant assistance from Invest Northern Ireland. Fujitsu, one of Europe’s leading IT services companies, has had a presence in Northern Ireland for more than 30 years.

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