The great and the good provide the convention with fitting farewell to city

THE Yorkshire International Business Convention welcomed an eclectic mix of speakers to Leeds, from the Dalai Lama to Mary Portas, ‘the Queen of Shops’. The event, at MEPC’s Wellington Place, marked the last to be held in the city. Suzan Uzel reports.

DALAI LAMA

BUSINESS leaders were urged to do more to help those in need by the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan leader.

The keynote speaker told an audience from Yorkshire’s business community: “The altruistic mind is the best way to fulfil your life. And you will feel happy.”

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Mike Firth, organiser of the Yorkshire International Business Convention, told the Yorkshire Post: “It’s nice to have someone come along without an agenda as such. He’s not talking about business, he’s not talking about profit, he’s not talking about political agenda, he’s just talking about how mankind deals with mankind. I think it’s a really timely message.” He added: “I’m just delighted to be able to bring him to Yorkshire.”

The Dalai Lama said to the audience: “You are quite fortunate people. You can do more about equality problems, protection of ecology and reducing gap between rich and poor.” He spoke about the causes of the global financial crisis, listing greed, speculation, ignorance and short-sightedness.

Speaking to the Yorkshire Post after his address, he said it is important not to lose self-confidence and hope in the face of economic troubles. “The European Union has every potential to recover. I think these problems are temporary,” he said.

The Nobel Peace Laureate was greeted by schoolchildren as he arrived in Leeds and he met with Tibetans living in Yorkshire.

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He blessed a man named Tashu Dhondop, who described it as “the best thing that has ever happened to me”.

China, which regards the Dalai Lama as a separatist, reportedly threatened to pull its Olympic team out of the city’s training camp. The Dalai Lama said threats from China have “almost become routine”.

VERDICT: 7/10. Although difficult to follow at times, a powerful message, delivered with good humour and compassion.

MARY PORTAS

LAST year was a busy one for retail guru Mary Portas, who received two “life-changing” commissions.

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One was from Prime Minister David Cameron asking her to conduct a review looking at the decline of Britain’s high streets. The other was a television commission from Channel 4, who wanted to look at manufacturing.

Ms Portas said: “And they came to me and they said, we want to see whether we can compete with the Chinese, the Asian, the Indian market, and can we make a pair of jeans for £5 like Primark? Would I do that?

“And I said no. Now, why would I want to compete with Primark? The truth is a £5 pair of jeans means that someone along the line isn’t having a very nice life and isn’t making the money.”

Ms Portas told an audience at the Yorkshire International Business Convention that 90 per cent of Britain’s clothing manufacturing has gone out of this country, but she said that although the big retailers and designers are getting their products made cheaper, this is not being passed on to the consumer – except perhaps at the very cheap end of the market.

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Meanwhile, twelve towns around England have been selected to be ‘Portas pilots’ as part of a Government initiative to regenerate Britain’s high streets. More than 370 towns applied to take part. It will see each of the 12 towns receive £100,000 of public money and will form the basis of a television series.

Ms Portas argued that community cohesion is needed to succeed in resurrecting the country’s stagnating high streets. She spoke of “the total displacement of place, of a place where people went to each day, a place where people met, whether that was their local shops or their place of work at the factory”. “It was a place where people felt secure and a part of something. And that something was the community,” she said.

Ms Portas, who started her career as a Saturday girl in John Lewis, is credited with transforming the Harvey Nichols brand. She later launched Yellowdoor, offering integrated and creative brand communication to the retail, fashion, luxury and beauty sectors. Known as ‘the Queen of Shops’, Ms Portas now offers her expertise to the worlds of journalism and television.

During the boom years, customer service was lost and internet “came in the back door”, Ms Portas explained.

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“We didn’t think twice about how we spent. We just bought and if it wasn’t right we disposed of it and there was a lot of easy credit about, and that was right across the board, that wasn’t just the wealthy, we were all consuming in that way.

“The minute money got tight and the crash happened all those mediocre businesses where we spent money just went down the hill. They closed.” Ms Portas said these shops didn’t give consumers “anything special”.

“Urban social metropolises”, such as Westfield’s shopping centres, attracted shoppers away from the high street. “They opened up bowling alleys, they opened up restaurants, they opened up fashion shows... and then the poor old high street had no-one looking after it. What hope did it have?”

And with groceries being “the most important retail market in the country”, with 50p of every £1 being spent going on groceries, the growth of out-of-town or edge-of-town supermarkets has left a big gap on the high street, said Ms Portas.

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At the heart of her recommendations to the Government was the need for “a place where people want to go, where they feel safe and that is a part of their everyday lives”. The decision-making on what comes on to that high street should be the responsibility of the people of that town, she added. Ms Portas recommends the setting up of ‘Town Teams’ which include representation from all stakeholders.

VERDICT: 8/10. A passionate, engaging and humorous speech – an interesting insight into Britain’s retail landscape.

WILL WHITEHORN

SIR Richard Branson’s ‘right-hand man’, Will Whitehorn, believes that times of economic decline are also times of great innovation.

He told the Yorkshire Post that too many people allow recessions to “get them down”, adding: “If you think about what you’re doing all the time for the customers, and doing it better and doing it in a more cost effective way for them, then this is a time you can really win through. If you are better than the competition you can do really well in these circumstances.”

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Mr Whitehorn, who worked for British Airways Helicopters, Thomas Cook and TSB Group, before joining Virgin Group as group public relations manager in 1987, went on to become a director of Virgin Rail Group and later president of Virgin Galactic, the company’s commercial space flights venture. He left Virgin in 2011, but remains a consultant to Virgin Galactic.

“There is a lot of research historically, when you look into all the big economic declines that the world has had, like the Great Depression of the 1930s or the 1880s. In both cases it was a time of great innovation, where the new companies of the future sprung up in a big way.

“The airline industry owes its origins to the 1930s.”

In his speech, Mr Whitehorn said it is product innovation that can keep a business going even through a recession.

“And if you’ve got a leader that understands that and realises you’ve got to keep investing in the business regardless of the economic circumstances, think about your market, don’t think about the global economy, think about your market, and you can grow even in difficult times.”

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Mr Whitehorn spoke of the importance of the Virgin brand being able to be associated with lots of different products, like Yamaha and Sony.

VERDICT: 6/10. Informative and interesting, but at times came across a little like an advert for Virgin.

CLARE BALDING

BROADCASTER Clare Balding said that a blunder in 2009 where she told jockey Liam Tredwell to “get his teeth fixed” changed her approach to her job.

Mr Tredwell had ridden Mon Mome to victory at odds of 100/1 at the Grand National.

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Ms Balding told the audience: “I’m thinking in all of this, the one person that might be forgotten, that might get left out is Liam Tredwell. I thought I’ve got to do something that will make him be the story, be part of the story.

“So I’m talking away to him, and I’m watching him talk, and I’m seeing... I think his teeth have been kicked out. Lots of jockeys get their teeth kicked out so I thought I’ll ask him where he got his teeth kicked out because there’ll be a story in this.” So she asked him to give her a smile.

“He smiles, properly smiles. And I’m thinking, oh God, he hasn’t had his teeth kicked out. He’s just got really bad teeth,” recalls Ms Balding. So she told him that now he could afford to get his teeth fixed, attracting hundreds of complaints from viewers.

However, Ms Balding explained that two dentists rang him up and offered him free treatment. “So a year later, I went to interview him and he’s there beaming, with his beautiful, sparkling ‘Simon Cowell’ teeth. And I said, I just wish I’d never said it. And he said, I’m glad you did.”

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But Ms Balding said that she felt “lacking in confidence” after the incident, adding: “I genuinely didn’t know if I could walk out there and present racing again.”

“Sometimes you do just need to shut the computer off, you need to reboot, you need to just say, you know let’s shut this down and start again.” She said she was “trying to make a joke all the time”, adding that now she realises she can step back and “give people a bit of space”.

VERDICT: 7/10. Great job of hosting the event, accompanied by an amusing speech.

MICHAEL PORTILLO

A GREEK exit from the eurozone is needed as a way of rehearsing what happens if a country leaves the euro, according to former Conservative politician Michael Portillo.

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Mr Portillo, an ex-Cabinet Minister who is now a journalist and broadcaster, said: “I think the macroeconomic outlook is the slow disintegration of the euro and therefore a very tense period indeed for the British economy, and not one where people can expect to see any growth.”

He made his comments ahead of Sunday’s election in Greece where the pro-austerity New Democracy Party came in first, immediately proposing to form a pro-euro coalition government. Mr Portillo, who last week said he expected the Greeks to vote against austerity, said that the policies being applied to Greece have “no chance of success whatsoever”.

“You may say well that’s puzzling because what the Greeks are being asked to do is to deal with their deficit, to balance what they take in in a year and what they spend in a year. That is perfectly true, but the important thing is they’re not in a position to devalue”, he said.

“Greece continues to be uncompetitive because it has a completely uncompetitive exchange rate. And that’s because the exchange rate in the eurozone is set by an average of the performance of all the economies.” This means the euro exchange rate is “wrong for everybody”, remarked Mr Portillo.

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The euro has been “a vanity project”, he said, adding that many European poiticians have said over the years it would be “unthinkable” for any country to leave the currency.

“Now the problem when someone says something is ‘unthinkable’ is that it means they are not thinking about it.

“And if people are not thinking about it then they aren’t going to find a solution,” said Mr Portillo.

VERDICT: 7/10. Topical economic commentary with some comical anecdotes.

STEVE CRAM

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STEVE Cram got a little less than he bargained for when he bid for £5,000 worth of tickets for the Olympic Games this summer.

“I wanted them for kids, friends, whatever, and I got two tickets for the women’s beach volleyball final,” he told the audience. To laughter from the crowd, the retired althete said: “I’m serious. My son was delighted.

“All former Olympians actually get four tickets as well which is really nice. And two of those tickets are guaranteed for your event. So I got two tickets for the men’s 1500m final. I said to my son, ‘I’ve got the beach volleyball or I’ve got the... ‘can I go to the beach volleyball, dad?’ ”

On a more serious note, Mr Cram, who is a BBC presenter and commentator, said: “I think we should all be incredibly proud really of the role that GB plc has played in getting us to this point.

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“When we won the chance to host it in 2005, there was a lot of people around, in the media but I also think around the rest of the UK as well, that were a bit, oh it won’t be very good, they won’t do it very well, will the costs overrun?”

But he said it is “a fantastic advert for the country as a whole” that the project has been delivered on time and on budget, with people coming from around the world to see the big event. He said the atmosphere is going to be “phenomenal”, adding: “I’m going to stand here now and say to you, we are going to win more than 20 gold medals. And you know why I say that, because I trust the systems we have in place now.”

Mr Cram’s achievements include six gold medals at the Commonwealth Games, European and World Championships. At the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, he returned from injury to take a silver medal for the 1500m, and the following year broke world records in the 1500m, 2000m and the mile.

VERDICT: 6/10. An entertaining address, but perhaps not particularly relevant to a business audience.