Mani, the Mayor, and the rhythm of a city

At our lunch event with Fieldfisher yesterday the MIDAS managing director Joe Manning explained how Manchester’s global brand, the ability to project cultural power was absolutely integral to its success.

So it was that as Andy Burnham wrapped up the media interviews at Stockport’s Stockroom, after his major speech on the economy, people were visibly rocked as news flew around the room that Gary Mounfield had died.

The bassline from Stone Roses Fool’s Gold, amongst the many, many incredible sounds he created, feels like it’s part of the very rhythm of the city. But Mani also represented a hard working, good humoured, big hearted approach to life, doing so much for cancer charities with his late wife Imelda, which is probably why my Instagram has been full of such warm tributes from far and wide.

That particular tragedy bookended a week that started with the sad news that Mark Fuller, another great bloke in his early sixties, had left us too. Mark was a huge help to me in my early career in the North West, and as the tributes made clear, his generosity and intellect was respected and valued by many.

Andy Burnham’s speech yesterday saw the Mayor back on form, unwilling to be drawn on the Westminster circus, and fully focused on pushing the devolution ambitions ever further.

The build up to next week’s Budget has been a shambles. The expectations are low.

But Burnham not only warned that more dithering on rail investment would be an “intentional anti-growth policy,” and he demanded we stop having to beg for scraps.

“After a decade of doing more for ourselves than they ever did for us, you would think the system would stop behaving as if it knows best?” he said.

He’s right. The begging bowl culture has harmed the North over the last thirty years. The broken promises and shallow gimmicks have made fools of us.

Simon Binns, his new book, and loving football as we do

For 18 years Simon Binns is someone I have known and respected. First as a business journalist, more recently a generous walking companion, consistently as a fellow middle-aged media operator, wherever jobs we did, and also as a profoundly inspirational advocate for mental health self-care.

The banter boy in me would at this stage make an awkward link to his support, like me, of a perennially disappointing northern working class football club. But I won’t. I have been given the honour of an early draft of Red Star Paris, Simon’s book, which we are here to talk about tonight.

It’s brave, revelatory, funny and strikes home to anyone who loves football as we do.

Ladies and gentlemen, Simon Binns.

That was my intro to Simon at the event at George Street Books in Glossop last week.

And here’s what I said to Simon in a message after I’d read his book:

Mate, I loved the book. 

I mean really loved it. 

I think it’s because I’m terribly fond of you and you hold nothing back. 

More than the football, which you joined up so skilfully with your own quest for belonging. 

I’d love to explore that with you at the event, but obviously balance with pale ale, ultra culture, David Bellion and Habib Beye anecdotes for the football hipster element. ❤

https://www.pitchpublishing.co.uk/shop/red-star-paris-more-just-football-club

Closing in on the 92

We went to watch a cracking cup tie at Salford City's Peninsula Stadium today. It had it all. The true magic of the FA Cup.

Salford City FC of League 2 beat League One Lincoln City on pens, and they deserved it too.

It was my 81st ground of the current 92, following earlier day trips this season to Harrogate and Barnet. The quest to complete the 92 before my significant birthday next year is very much on.

It was a very similar sized ground to Harrogate, but not too easy to get to by public transport.

Gary Neville tried to move them to Salford Community Stadium, which also has its own shortcomings, but if he had succeeded it would have saved me the bother as I saw them play a game there.

I just mapped it out. Two Premier League ones are the trickiest because of tickets - Brentford and Everton.

Then Lincoln, Wimbledon and Stevenage in L1, and Barrow, Bromley, Cheltenham, Colchester, Crawley and Newport in L2.

As it stands, I could skip the current bottom two because if they go, then they'll likely be replaced from the promoted teams from National League by two that I've been to. Which would mean that at the start of next season I will have done the 92.

Manchester faces terrorism, again

 

At the Business of Greater Manchester conference I hosted our guests were treated to a powerful eulogy to the late great Sir Howard Bernstein, whose family had built a life in Manchester after escaping pogroms in Russia. 

It was delivered by Mike Emmerich, who is writing a book about the life and times of Howard, as the incredibly humble former chief executive of Manchester city council always preferred to be called.

His legacy was felt in the energetic discussions that coursed through our conference.

Everyone spoke proudly of an inclusive, dynamic and welcoming city. One that opened its arms to businesses looking to locate here, and to attract the talent to come and work for them.

They are the “dreamers and schemers” evoked by the poet Tony Walsh in his epic tome, This Is The Place, who have been “drawn here” collaborating with those who are “born here”. 

It’s a verse that touched my heart when I stood in Albert Square in May 2017, the day after a previous monstrous attack on our city, our place and who we are. Or who we like to think we are.

But a dark side pervades. That Jewish friends of mine now feel they have to wear flat caps to hide their yarmulkes in the city centre is shameful. It is also appalling that places of worship, supposedly a peaceful sanctuary for prayer, have to have private security. But yesterday, thank God they did. 

I’m also calling out the tatty flags and racist graffiti which seek to intimidate communities made up of people who don’t look like me. We have to be better than this. 

Our first responders, especially the armed police, deserve our thanks for what they had to do, but also members of the public we reacted bravely and quickly in the face of terror. 

Manchester has defied those who have sought to divide the city with hate and terror before. In 1996, in 2017 and now, tragically, we will have to do so again in 2025.

Ricky Hatton RIP

What a week.

It started in such a sad way with the tragic news that Ricky Hatton had died at home in Gee Cross on Sunday. Just over the hill from where I live, the news rippled out when we were on a country walk with friends.

The Hitman wasn’t just an elite sporting hero, but a local champion too. It took a tribute from his local MP Jonny Reynolds, the former Business Secretary, to remind us that he was also a businessman who had re-invest the money he made in boxing to his local area.

On Tuesday I heard with my own ears the claims of Andy Burnham that you don’t need to go south to advance your career. He was speaking as Zopa Bank outlined how they are creating 500 jobs in Manchester as the fintech neo-bank continue their quest to become the “home of money”.

I watched the Starmer - Trump love-in at Chequers yesterday and wondered how Andy Burnham would have handled some of the outrageous things the US President was saying, and the loopy questions his client media were asking to provoke our PM. 

Our Mayor is charming and authentic, and on the occasions when I’ve had my turn at chairing his Mayor’s Question Time he’s faced down hostile questions very effectively. He’s at his best when he’s taking on bullies and using his power to stand up for those that don’t have it. The very opposite of the blustering orange monster. 

But he also has people pleasing tendencies, and it would take a particular skill - to come out with your domestic credibility intact.

The rise of the creative class

There’s been a debate raging amongst city leaders for the last two decades about how to become a city that attracts “the creative class” that propels a city into the global fast lane.

Name drop alert, but it was Tony Wilson who was the first person to tell me to read The Rise of the Creative Class by American urbanist Richard Florida, back in 2003.

Wilson, who sadly passed in 2007, was always a strong advocate for Manchester’s cultural capital being an important plank for the city’s economy.

Florida’s central argument was that civic leaders make their cities as attractive as possible to this so-called creative class. Economic development will naturally flow if they do.

You see evidence of this throughout modern Manchester. The rich Kuwaitis playing Padel, the expansion of global brands like Booking.com and BNY Mellon in the city and this week, a great party to launch iconic Swedish denim brand Nudie Jeans.

The signing of a special relationship between the Mayors of Greater Manchester and Japan’s second city Osaka today is just the latest in a series of high profile relationships that stimulate not just tourism, but hard business investment between city regions.

But some people are left behind by this hipster influx, or priced out, making once cool places one-dimensional and boring. Even Richard Florida has also been rethinking his original idea. More recently he has spoken of “a deep and dark side” to urbanism and regeneration that we are all too familiar with.

It’s important then that any economic vision is inclusive. That’s what has shaped the agenda of our Business of Greater Manchester conference on the 1st of October, where we will plenty of vision, and lots of business, but also a real focus on cultural opportunities. 

There are also some “international” investors you probably don’t want. 

The absolute fiasco at Salford Red Devils Rugby League club looks likely to drag on after legal tactics bought the “owners” some time before HMRC next presents a winding up petition in October. In the meantime, the squad depletes, the debts pile up, and the pipe dream of a sports and entertainment complex at the Salford Community Stadium fades even further into fantasy.

I’ve been feeling bleak recently, watching the unchallenged hate spilling onto our streets, and hearing too many stories of bad guys getting away with it. 

I feel we have a responsibility to balance our news with stories of achievements, as well as to tell it like it is.

On balance there is still much to be optimistic about, I think coming to the events I put on are as good a place as any to plug into that positive energy..

First new column for the Manchester Law Society magazine

August is meant to be silly season. Full of slow news days where news editors fill their pages with editorial landfill.

Not this August we haven’t. I’m going to be writing a monthly column for the Manchester Law Society on what’s been happening in Manchester business over the course of the month, so I’ll run through some highlights you might have missed whether you were on your holidays in the Algarve, Tuscany, or Prestatyn, after a brief introductory hello. 

I’ve been writing about business most of my professional life, I started out interviewing pop stars, artists and models for a music paper in Australia, but even then as a chippy English kid, I only ever gave five star reviews to New Order, Stone Roses and the Happy Mondays.

Through the 90s I was a reporter, then an editor, for the media trade press, covering the rise of satellite TV, Granada Television and the tech revolution in video and film production.

I rocked up in Manchester in 2000 to be the editor of a business magazine based in Minshull Street behind the court house, where I was frequently approached by local ladies to discuss business, but not of the variety I was employed to write about. 

I love the life that I’ve built here and remain that chippy northerner. Though I do cover crooks, liquidations and shady deals, I do so from the position of wanting to police the boundaries of a business community so good people aren’t ripped off. I take being a journalist seriously, something I cherish having been offered the chance to return to the frontline after a period as a political adviser.

This August some big exclusive stories came thick and fast.

We’ll start with the big positive one first. The sale of a stake in cult female fashion brand Adanola, which values the Manchester-based business at £400m (US$530m) is a huge lift for the city.

Further south, Dr Nyla Raja known locally as the "Botox Queen" sold her aesthetics business to an American “consolidator”. I’ll keep an eye on this one. She received a stinging assessment from the Care Quality Commission in 2023 for the hair transplant service and she used to be in business with footballer’s wife Dawn Ward, a star of Real Housewives of Cheshire.

The investment into Leonard Curtis by Pollen Street Capital was also a big deal for the city, as a really well-run, deadly focused business in the flux world of professional services looks to an exciting next phase.

I also attended court to get some more insights into the case of Stockport accountancy firm Bennett Verby and the charges they face for failing to prevent tax evasion.

We also saw the conclusion of the scrap to buy Assura, a North West based healthcare property investment business where Primary Healthcare Properties beat off American private equity firm KKR, three initials that are known to send a chill down the spine of even the toughest business executive.

Finally, it was with a very heavy heart that I pressed send on a breaking news alert on a sunny Wednesday afternoon about the Greater Manchester Chamber filing a notice of intention to appoint administrators. 

There are plenty of people there who I have the utmost respect for. The reason they gave for their financial perils is that its Chamber Space co-working and meeting room rental venture has become “an unsustainable part of the business” since the pandemic. 

I’ll be sure to keep you posted on these stories, and more, on TheBusinessDesk.com.