Crain's Manchester Business - 23-27 November, 2009 - (Page 8)

8 COMMENT Crain’s Manchester Business / November 23, 2009 Our View Train to gain T raining businesses are a long way down the league table of exciting sectors for private equity investment, but that is only one of the reasons why Amin Amiri’s rescue of Partnership for Learning is likely to raise eyebrows. Amiri has bought PFL Ltd, the trading arm of the Liverpool charity, for a token £1 and has assumed some of its considerable liabilities. The company is well regarded for the courses it runs but financially it has been a basket case. Despite millions of pounds from the public purse, the organisation has failed to wean itself off grant funding and was almost forced to close down when its income streams dried up. Amiri admits that government subsidies will make up about 50 per cent of ‘Oil revenues revenues under his plan to refocus PFL are drying up as a training centre for SMEs. He and the believes that public spending in this area will have to be maintained because financial by fostering small business growth services sector onlythe government hope to replace the can has been hundreds of thousands of jobs which have been lost in the recession. exposed as a Oil revenues are drying up, the finanfalse messiah’ cial services sector has been exposed as a false messiah and creating jobs by printing money cannot be sustained for much longer. Home grown, owner-managed businesses are our only hope. ‘Can’t help feeling we’ve been left with the lesser stuff ’ M anchester City Council’s admission that it pays Peter Saville £10,000 a month to act as its creative director may surprise or even irk some people. Some will ask if it is reasonable for the taxpayer to hand over £120,000 a year to a Hale-born London resident who delivers a service which is often abstract and difficult to audit in terms of return on investment. But Manchester is not just a city, it’s a brand. And brands need celebrities to endorse them. Whatever you think of Saville, to those who know about these things, he is to graphic design what Alan Titchmarsh is to herbaceous borders. He got column inches for the Manchester International Festival in the Los Angeles Times, which cooed over his work for Factory Records. So while his wages may seem high, Saville’s international reputation can get Manchester to places it might not otherwise reach. Industry peers may feel envious about Saville earning twice the average salary for the job, but not many would refuse to take his place. The bitter aftertaste of a sickly fudge Why Manchester should not gloat about scoring the football museum T CRAIN’S MANCHESTER BUSINESS CHRISTOPHER CRAIN, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF ARTHUR PORTER, PUBLISHER STEVE BRAUNER, EDITOR MICHAEL FAHY, DEPUTY EDITOR Crain’s Manchester Business ISSN 1756-056X Entire contents © 2009 by Crain Communications Ltd, unless otherwise stated. All rights reserved. City Tower, Suite 22A, Piccadilly Plaza, Manchester M1 4BD Telephone: 0161 209 5800 “Don’t sweat over it. Let Zenith handle all your office needs.” he trustees of the National Football Museum were about to make the right decision last week. Then somebody passed round the fudge. Instead of doing the sensible thing and moving lock, stock and barrel to Manchester, they opted instead for a half-way house, dual site solution which upset both sides. Manchester still gets the ball from the 1966 World Cup Final and all the other goodies but Preston gets a reception desk, a few exhibits, a warehouse and a library. Far from being placated by this, the Lancashire authorities are giving serious consideration to mounting a legal challenge. If that goes ahead, the issue may still go to a penalty shoot out in court. From the Manchester point of view, the most serious downside of the trustees’ indecision is that the Northwest Regional Development Agency and the European Regional Development Fund will have to write cheques to support the obviously wasteful duplication of splitting up one organisation across two different locations. They happily do this kind of thing for the European Parliament, but woe betide anyone else who asks for it. Opinion Steve Brauner EDITOR sbrauner@crain.com The most likely outcome is that Lancashire County Council and Preston City Council will lose interest and the whole of the museum and its backroom staff will move to Manchester by default. it would probably have gone to London, which would have been an even worse result for Lancashire and the rest of the region. Manchester does need to be mindful, however, that this episode has left a bitter taste in the mouths of its rivals. Senior figures in the region are talking in uncomplimentary language about Manchester’s tendency to throw its weight around. The words “avarice” and “greed” are being used and there is a danger of creating a perception that the Greater Manchester City Region is not a team player. The North West needs a powerful Manchester to counterbalance the centrifugal force of London, but being seen as an arrogant bully by our own neighbours will make us weaker not stronger. CRAIN’S BUSINESS NEWS ALERTS Sustainable future As we have said on these pages previously, this is clearly the right thing to do if a long-term sustainable future is to be found for a museum which has never attracted enough revenues to pay its way in Preston. If it had not come to Manchester, SIGN UP FOR BUSINESS NEWS ALERTS FROM THE NEW AUTHORITY IN MANCHESTER BUSINESS, GO TO: CrainsManchesterBusiness.co.uk and go to the Services tab Free the news Ofﬁce Supplies • Furniture • Print Solutions When you subscribe to Crain’s Manchester Business you unlock our website giving you full access to the online content. This includes exclusive news stories, sector analysis and business data such as county court judgements, public tenders and disqualiﬁed directors. Start your annual subscription NOW from just £79. Call 0161 209 5800. crainsmanchesterbusiness.co.uk t. 0161 688 1707 w. zenithofﬁce.com http://CrainsManchesterBusiness.co.uk http://www.zenithoffice.com http://www.zenithoffice.com http://crainsmanchesterbusiness.co.uk

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Crain's Manchester Business - 23-27 November, 2009

Crain's Manchester Business - 23-27 November, 2009
Index
Taking Stock
Opinion/Our View
City Region: Tameside
Focus: Commercial Property
Crain's List
For the Record
Events, People, Gossip

Crain's Manchester Business - 23-27 November, 2009