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Bernard Ginns: Digital set to take over from the wounded financial sector
PICTURE a saxophone. Now transpose that image onto a graph and you have what some experts are predicting our economy will look like – unless of course we are all wiped out by swine flu.
In other words, after the big fall comes a marginal recovery and then a period of stability, albeit at a much lower level than before.
It won't be financial services that lead this recovery. I am pessimistic about the future of this particular industry, especially in this region where we are watching the death-by-a-thousand-cuts of HBOS and the slow demise of Bradford & Bingley and where the only recent prospect of new jobs comes from the optimistic public sector bid to bring a division of the Financial Services Authority to Leeds (a quango that George Osborne is threatening to abolish anyway).
Financial services will still have a role to play, but it should be a supporting one.
One of the best prospects for future growth for this region comes from the digital industry.
Anyone attending last Friday's launch of the new offices of the Advanced Digital Institute will have had a glimpse of this sector's big potential. Even Lord Mandelson, the Business Secretary, was in on the act.
The ADI is based slap-bang in the middle of what some people call the Creative Corridor, which takes in Shipley, Bingley and Keighley.
This part of Yorkshire is home to some of the country's most innovative digital firms.
Those present last week included well-known names like Pace and EchoStar, the set-top box makers, and Filtronic, the mobile telecoms infrastructure specialist, as well as rising stars such as Red Embedded, the fast-growing video telephony design and consultancy company, Coe, the video surveillance firm, Turnstall, the telehealth business, and Jennic, which specialises in home automation and energy management.
This was an inspiring event and I didn't get the impression that this is a sector that is being talked up.
There is an estimated one billion pounds worth of turnover in the digital industry within five miles of the new ADI office.
I asked Ian Sharp, the commercial director at ADI, about the reasons behind the concentration of digital firms in this beautiful valley, with its solid business infrastructure, proud industrial heritage, good housing stock and easy access to some of Britain's most stunning countryside.
He told me: "Partly its historical, but partly it's visionary. Historically there were one or two technology companies in the area that have spawned a lot.
"The Baird TV plant in Bradford was the biggest in the 70s and 80s and the people who worked there founded Pace and Eldon Technology.
"It was already a centre where there was lots of engineering so it had a good eco-system to draw on.
"The visionary side is what Yorkshire Forward and the Airedale Partnership are trying to do. They are seeing we have all these jobs, we have a great contribution to the local GDP so by helping fund that and the other spin-off businesses around we can really boost the local economy."
He added: "We have helped companies innovate with their products and taken them to market and we are now in a new stage of development.
"As well as the engineering resource, we have business professionals and accounting professionals."
The ADI is pushing ahead in the telehealth market and rightly so; Yorkshire firms are well-placed to take a national lead in this particular sector, which is expected to increase in size on the back of the growing elderly demographic. It's an enormous market.
Mandelson recognises this, and the wider potential of the industry, which is why he accepted the invitation to Shipley. He said: "What we need to do is act together to build both manufacturing and service offers on the back of those technologies."
Hate to say it, but he's probably right.
IT was good to see some activity in the private equity markets yesterday with the announcement that Leeds-based Key Capital Partners has invested 6m in a 24m management buyout at TSC Foods Ltd.
It's been slim pickings in the industry following the credit squeeze.
It seems like an age since the time when there were new MBOs announced daily, a deal market which kept money sloshing around the financial system, making little fortunes for an army of advisers and helping to sustain the growth of financial centres like Leeds.
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Saturday 11 February 2012
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