COVENTRY COUNCIL CHIEF URGES ‘RADICAL RETHINK’ IN MIPIM TALK 

European cities and regions should use the recession to radically rethink how they attract inward investment according to industry leaders.

Martin Reeves, the chief executive of Coventry City Council chaired a major seminar on how the downturn has affected levels and patterns of investment.

Around 70 international city and regional representatives attended the session during the MIPIM commercial property show in Cannes.

Reeves said that it was imperative that secondary cities discovered new way of attracting investment and that skill levels were a key factor.

“These are very testing times but I am very confident that as the economy improves, many things will have to be done very differently and that includes inward investment,” he said.

“The idea that local authorities can sit down at a table with a pile of money is highly unlikely but we can bring leverage through for example releasing land quickly and through a willingness to approach things in different ways and take measured risks.

“There are many factors in investment decisions – factors such as location and skill levels – but they are still decisions made about and by people and we can influence those.

“We have to rip up the text book of how things were done before because the world is economically a very different place. 

“In Coventry, in our sub region and in the West Midlands, we understand that and that alone gives me great confidence.”

Reeves was joined at the session by Peter Lemagnen, the managing director of Oxford Intelligence which supplies information and consulting to international businesses and government agencies, and Marc Lhermitte, a partner at Ernst and Young based in France,  who leads the Economic Development practice unit ILAS of the company.

Lemagnen identified ICT, life sciences and renewable technologies as future growth sectors but said that 64 per cent of investment projects went to just 2 per cent of the available locations.

He said: “If a location cannot show it has the right sort of skills at the required levels then it will not even get past go and measuring skills is a real problem.”

The event was held in the Team West Midlands Business Suite and the speakers were introduced by Advantage West Midlands chief executive Mick Laverty.

Coventry is represented at the four-day show by a partnership of property professionals including Friargate Coventry, Complex Development Projects, D&P Holt, Jaguar, Martineau, Oakmoor Estates, Shortland Horne, Spyker and Stoford Developments.

Left to right: Martin Reeves, Peter Lemagnen and Marc Lhermitte

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