Watch: Insider's Business Briefing - 8th October
In today's business briefing, Miri and Robyn discuss expansion plans for sports brands, the future of Lancashire property and our UK Dealmakers Awards.
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00:00Expansion plans for sports brands, the future of Lancashire property and our UK
00:04Dealmakers Awards. That's all coming up on today's business briefing.
00:13Hi I'm Robin Hewson and I'm Mary Thomas and welcome to today's briefing. So Mary
00:18what's caught your eye today? So today we reveal the shortlist for our Future
00:22Ambition Award for our Lancashire Property Award. So Future Ambition if you
00:25don't know is those projects that we think are going to be catalysts for
00:30development in the years to come. So we found that awards are usually backward
00:33looking so rewarding success is already achieved but Future Ambition is about
00:38those projects that just with an extra nudge can be really transformational. So
00:42in Lancashire for the Lancashire Property Awards we've chosen six
00:45projects. They are Eden Project in Morecambe, the Silicon Sands project in
00:50Blackpool which is a carbon-friendly data centre type offering, Cotton Parkway
00:55which is a new railway station around Preston, the Preston Station Quarter
00:59Regeneration Scheme, Canal Quarter in Lancaster and the Skills and Cyber Campus
01:04in Blackburn which is part of the Blackburn Town Centre Master Plan. It's
01:07all happening in Lancashire. It is and they're really exciting and what's even
01:11more fun about the Future Ambition Awards is that people get to vote on the
01:15one that they like the most so we have no influence over who the winners are
01:19because everybody gets to vote on this one on the night at the awards themselves
01:23so they just scan in a QR code and the one with the most votes wins and takes
01:28home all the glory. Yeah and they'll be doing the same thing at the Liverpool
01:30Property Awards this week. So we've got Future Ambition there I think five
01:33projects there? Yes five projects including a train station. There's always a train
01:37station which is great to see and yeah I think that's the Baltic Triangle and the
01:44other one I can't quite remember. And Daresbury. Oh right. Holton yeah. Okay so
01:50what have you seen today? Yes so in other news we have seen today about the
01:54funding for Foot Asylum which is going to increase its expansion plans. So Foot
01:58Asylum has secured £35 million from HSBC. It was acquired actually by
02:04investment firm Aurelius in August 2022 so it's already been on this sort of
02:07growth journey up to now and now this funding is going to take it to the next
02:11level. So the funding is actually quite interesting because it includes a
02:15sustainability improvement loan. So in order to get reduced interest rates on
02:20the loan Foot Asylum will have to reach certain sustainability targets and I
02:24think we're seeing that more and more now aren't we? Yeah that seems to be coming
02:27through more sort of ESG practices thrown into your funding circumstances.
02:32Yeah definitely yes that was an interesting one. And another similar
02:35story actually is about Thin Cats backing a gym brand One Gym. So this was
02:39originally created in Bishop Auckland and they've already started expanding
02:44across the North East and now they're going to expand even further. So One Gym
02:48was established by Paul and David Pearson and the funding from Thin Cats
02:52is going to enable them to increase by acquiring three to four sites per year.
02:57And in 2022 the business was backed by Middleton Enterprises so it's already
03:01had some backing and been able to open six new sites in the last 18 months and
03:06now they're going even further. So One Gym is absolutely everywhere.
03:09Really ambitious program it sounds like. Yeah absolutely. So staying with
03:13ambitious programs as well. So we've got our UK Dealmakers coming up that's going
03:17to be on the 6th of February and we're talking about it today because we've
03:21added more finalists to that shortlist. So currently we have eight people vying
03:27to be Dealmaker of the Year. So you might see Michael Pay from EMC in the
03:32South East going head-to-head with Geraint Rowe from Wales and Rob
03:37Burden from Clearwater in the Midlands. So we're waiting on four more awards to
03:42be announced. That's the North West of England, Central and East England, Yorkshire
03:46and Scotland and then we'll have 12 in the running to be UK Dealmaker of the
03:51Year. So that's a great one. We also have awards for Management Team of the Year
03:55for Corporate Finance Advisory but you have to wait until February to find out
04:00who the winners for that one are. But if you don't want to wait that long you
04:04can read more on our newsletter this morning and on our website and you can
04:09get all the news you need from insidermedia.com