Campaign champions region's potential to grasp opportunities

Law firm Trowers & Hamlins' Birmingham office has launched an exciting new campaign – 'Growth Through Change' – to help firms across the West Midlands navigate, and benefit from, significant changes taking place across the region's business landscape.

The six-month campaign comprises a series of events and commentary that will highlight how business leaders can address key challenges such as the current macro-economic environment and embrace opportunities such as fast-moving technological change and the move towards Net-Zero.

The recent Business Barometer survey, carried out for Lloyds Bank Commercial Banking, found that business confidence in the West Midlands fell six points during September 2023, to 36 per cent.

Despite this drop in confidence, with its rich industrial legacy and diverse economic base, the West Midlands is one of the leading economic zones in the UK.

Research has shown that the region is growing at a faster rate than Greater London and Manchester.

Reference data from research house EvaluateLocate also demonstrates that Birmingham is resilient to economic shocks because it has an increasingly broad-based economy spanning both manufacturing and wholesale/distribution industries, plus an expanding modern service-based city economy.

Additionally, with one of the UK's youngest populations, strong creative and digital growth industries, five (main) universities with a student population of 77,000, there are strong indications that Birmingham is well placed to weather current economic headwinds and consolidate its place at the leading edge of the UK economy.

Commenting on the 'Growth Through Change' launch, Yetunde Dania (pictured), head of Trowers' Birmingham office said; "While the West Midlands business community is currently navigating significant change, we know from history that businesses in the West Midlands are tenacious and resilient.

“The changes we're seeing across so many areas of the economy, not least of all in our gig-economy and digital sectors, offer real hope for the region and this is a real chance to grasp the potential that the new opportunities are bringing.

"Of course, we're conscious that the city isn't without its challenges, including recent developments with Birmingham City Council, which makes the launch of our Growth Through Change campaign very timely.

“However, reassuringly, research from EvaluateLocate found that there was very little economic impact in other areas where councils had entered section 114, such as Croydon and Northamptonshire."

Moad Giebaly, Partner at Trowers, added, "As a leading law firm that has been helping businesses and governments change the way they operate and work for the past 240 years, we have the foundations to extend our thinking beyond the day to day delivery of transactional and advisory legal services and provide our clients with fresh thinking and commercially-driven solutions.

“This means we are expertly placed to cover a range of topics that are right at the forefront of people's mind, such as artificial intelligence (AI), improving sustainability and productivity in the manufacturing sector, improving equality, diversity and inclusion in the workplace, combatting the skills gap in the West Midlands and much more.”

Follow the Growth Through Change campaign by checking the news and insights page on the Trowers & Hamlins website.