Marketing Birmingham starts hunt for top investment specialists
Jul 2 2010 by Tom Scotney, Birmingham Post
Birmingham is looking to recruit a crack team of the country’s top investment specialists to form a new outfit promoting the city as the place to do business.
The city council, along with promotional bodies Marketing Birmingham and Locate in Birmingham, are looking to create a business ‘A-Team’ to bring in further foreign and domestic investment to the city.
This follows the co-location of Locate in Birmingham and Marketing Birmingham earlier this year and prepares the way for the transfer of Birmingham City Council’s inward investment function to Marketing Birmingham, planned to take place later this summer.
Council leader Mike Whitby said: “We are looking to recruit a well motivated and highly qualified team of investment specialists to build on Birmingham’s reputation as a place to do business, promote the acres of opportunity we have and contribute to Birmingham’s decade of delivery.
"Last week George Osborne laid down the gauntlet by saying Britain remains open for business and Birmingham wants to rise to this challenge by seeking major levels of inward investment that will drive the city’s regeneration and support the UK’s growth agenda.
“It is imperative that we drive our private sector job growth through the attraction of further investment, a priority that I take very seriously, as I speak to businesses and investors across the globe.
"I’m keen to see a surge in effort with Birmingham’s public and private sectors working even more closely together to address the significant economic challenges we face as a city.”
Marketing Birmingham has already started the hunt for the investment specialists.
This development follows initial research carried out by IBM – PLI, which identified a number of sector opportunities for the city in terms of attracting further investment.
These included; shared service centres and business process outsourcing; transport technologies; financial services and the emerging opportunities of low-carbon research and development, digital media and medical technologies. The city is also keen to attract further public sector relocations.
The new strategy will include the recruitment of sector specialists with the relevant experience to actively stimulate and secure investment commitments from business globally. This process will streamline the existing Locate in Birmingham function from 16 to 6 executives focused specifically on developing new business, with Marketing Birmingham providing marketing, PR, research and administrative support.
These developments follow a scrutiny committee report carried out by Birmingham City Council last year which called for a greater alignment of promotional activity and integration of Locate in Birmingham and Marketing Birmingham.
Neil Rami, the chief executive of Marketing Birmingham, said: “We now have in place an ambitious strategy that has been informed by some of the best business brains locally and will, I’m sure, provide the city with both clarity and purpose as we compete for much needed international investment.
"The city’s connectivity, its strong university and research base and our ability to adapt to new technologies and ways of working will be key messages in our sales and marketing strategy moving forward.”
Gary Taylor, the director of Argent and deputy chairman of Marketing Birmingham, added: “This is a hugely significant development in the promotion of the city as a place to do business.
"I’m sure that the local business community will be very encouraged by the fact that we have put a strategy in place with ambitious targets.
"This remains a difficult period to attract corporate end-users but the city has a wider offer and a better range of opportunities to grow the economic base than ever before. We cannot miss this chance to get moving.”
