MIPIM 2019 Day one – Our team reflect on the events of day one at MIPIM
“It has been an exciting day in the Midlands Pavilion with a number of key announcements. The Mayor of the West Midlands, Andy Street launched £10 billion worth of housing, regeneration, commercial and infrastructure development opportunities across the region to international investors. This included over £2 billion for the UK Central Hub and HS2 Interchange – a 140-hectare development creating a sustainable urban quarter, including thousands of homes, commercial and leisure facilities and unrivalled connectivity around the West Midlands’ second HS2 station – and a further sum in excess of £1 billion for Birmingham Curzon – a mixed-use development centred on a new High-Speed 2 station in central Birmingham.
“Simon Richards, chief financial officer at Birmingham Airport confirmed the £500m investment at the Airport to improve passenger experience and help take passenger numbers to 18 million by 2033.
“With the region’s population forecast to grow by half a million over the next 20 years -equivalent to a city the size of Bristol or Liverpool – and wage levels expected to rise faster than anywhere else in the UK, the West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) is delivering an ambitious growth strategy, focused on creating good jobs, real skills progression and a pipeline of developments that will benefit all the region’s communities.
“The WMCA’s Strategic Economic Plan and Local Industrial Strategy, which is focused on smart mobility, data-driven health and life sciences, modern services, and creative content, techniques and technologies, is backed by an £8bn 30-year investment programme and a significant annual investment in providing job-specific training.
“But it is not all about Birmingham and the West Midlands – powerful presentations from Coventry showcasing a £120m regeneration programme for the city centre, Derby, the development of the University of Derby Science Park and Leicester’s smart offices provided further compelling evidence of the attraction of the region overall to inward investment.”
Our head of construction, Alex Smith , dived right into the events at MIPIM and reports back below with the hot talking points of day one:
“MIPIM’s first formal day started with a warm welcome from Sir John Peace to those from the Midlands and further afield. Explaining that the Midlands economy is already the same size as that of Denmark, Sir John declared that the “region is the future”.
“As a Multilaw member we hosted a table at their annual MIPIM lunch, well attended by guests working across the construction and property sector, including mine, Neil Walker from Faithful + Gould. Opportunities were discussed with benefit to all around the table. When asked by another Multilaw panel firm from Luxembourg, “how are things in your country at the moment?”, my reply of “difficult” seemed quite an understatement, by the time the Nottingham dinner came around, to which I’d gratefully received an invitation from Max Kwan at Inspired Villages.
“Afternoon presentations on manufacturing and logistics schemes ripe for investment and development were quickly followed by drinks receptions including RSM’s, hosted by Kelly Boorman, and the Nottingham dinner. Finally, the day ended with a cheese and wine reception hosted by 39 Essex Chambers, who were extremely complimentary about colleagues’ perseverance and work in relation to a complicated case, which I was delighted to hear had been resolved to our client’s satisfaction!”
Waking up to day one of the event, Simon Robinson once again donned his running shoes and hit the pavements ahead of a busy day – he has also assured us that it is still sunny, in case any of you were wondering!
Read his insights below:
“This morning I joined 53 early birds again at the Property Sports Network for a 7am run against the beautiful Cannes backdrop. In between the occasional wheeze and cough as I dragged myself around the seafront, I had an interesting chat with some old contacts, who talked about the increasing demand for their tech in asset management – which amongst many other benefits, fills holes in clients’ teams as they look to stay lean.
“I also caught up with Collas Crill teams, from both the Jersey and Guernsey offices, and brought them up to speed on the latest work we’ve been doing in our London office in relation to high value property development. It was also good to see our ex-Shakespeare Martineau colleague Alex Price doing well in his new home at Collas Crill.
“It was then onto the stunning Miramar Plage restaurant to host a table at the Multilaw MIPIM lunch, where there were around 80 attendees from across Europe. It was there that I met with prolific developers Jessup Brothers, who work closely with many of our colleagues back in the UK. We also dissected two of last deals we did in London with Phil Mabb of Bridge Development and came to the decision that we must do more! A special thanks must also be given to Martin Edwards of National Rail and David Hargreaves who made it despite some pretty nightmarish travel. The afternoon was topped off by good food and wine, and a phenomenal view.
“The restaurants are quick to move you on for their next event and so we took solace with a coffee with Anna and Marcin from our Polish Multilaw partner firm, to discuss title insurance issues post Brexit – as the three main players in the Polish market are UK based providers, there is significant worry that no one has quite worked out how it will work post March 29th (or whatever day it may be!).”