Dear readers — it's easy to spot the changes in Manchester, driven by the city's rapid growth. New offices, new flats, new money; like them or hate them, you can't ignore them.
But regular Mill contributor, the economist James Gilmour, got in touch to point out something that's not there in the Manchester economic story: any really big, statement, businesses. It gets stranger the more you think about it. While most cities or regions have their calling card, an Astra Zeneca or a Rolls Royce, there's no equivalent here. Our only FTSE 100 company is... AutoTrader. Is that a problem? Or could it be the key to our recent economic success?
There's a reason we keep getting James back: his intriguing, data-led pieces always make us see Manchester in differently, and get people talking.
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Your Mill briefing
🚝 Earlier this week, questions were raised in parliament about the government’s Northern Powerhouse Rail plans, which were announced last month. Most of the concerns surrounded the £45bn budget cap on the project, which ministers say isn’t enough. “His Majesty’s Treasury has capped Northern Powerhouse Rail at £45bn, yet that was the claimed cost back in 2019,” said shadow minister for transport Jerome Mayhew, arguing that inflation will have sent the cost soaring since then. Transport secretary Heidi Alexander said the government will avoid the mistakes of the previous government by only tendering contracts once the design of the scheme is complete. She said that the previous government “gave the go-ahead to HS2 when they did not know what they were asking the contractors to build”, which caused more delays and costs.
📺5 News have covered our story about Andrew Milne, the solicitor who bought up freeholds in Horwich and elsewhere then threatened homeowners with legal action if they didn't buy their freeholds off him. You can watch the clip here, which includes an interview with Phil Brickell, the MP for Bolton West.
🗳️ And finally, a few new the Monster Raving Loony Party have announced a candidate in the upcoming Gorton and Denton by-election. Sir Oink-a-Lot is apparently “hamming it up and bringing home the bacon”, with the slogan: “Think Big, Vote Pig”.
Where are Manchester’s big businesses?
Cambridge: Astra Zeneca. Derby: Rolls Royce. Birmingham (more or less): Jaguar Land Rover. London… well pretty much everyone else. But what about Manchester? Would you be able to name a business that is synonymous with this city?
There are a smattering of property giants (Peel, Bruntwood, Renaker) who have built the houses and the offices for all of Manchester’s new workers; but they aren’t the employers that drew them here. There are retailers, including The Hut Group, Umbro, and the closest thing to a household name in the Co-operative Group, which continues to exert an iron grip on the small corner of the city adjacent to Victoria station. Manchester’s only member of the FTSE 100 is online car vendor Auto Trader. None of these are businesses that bring in a substantial volume of money from the rest of the world.
That absence is curious. Most successful places have their big names doing a lot of the legwork. The UK’s most valuable company at the time of writing, Astra Zeneca, is headquartered in Cambridge (much to the dismay of the residents of Macclesfield, who have to accept the second largest site). France’s Alstom, in Derby, and Japan’s Nissan, in Sunderland, are significant enough to single-handedly put their respective places in the upper economic leagues of British cities. And when production ground to a halt at the West Midlands’ vast Jaguar Land Rover plants after a cyber attack, the slowdown punched a hole in national GDP figures.
In Manchester, productivity is up, demand for office space in the city centre is climbing, and the population continues to grow at a lick. Why does such an economically successful city not have its statement businesses? And should we even care?
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