TUESDAY 7th FEBRUARY 2012

Business Birmingham crosses the pond to US investors

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Business Birmingham is visiting the USA to promote the city as a business and investment destination before it becomes the home of the USA Track and Field team for the 2012 Olympic Games. The USA invests more into the wider Birmingham area than any other country, investing £2 billion since 2003, and remains a key market for the city.

The team is targeting both the East and West coasts – starting with a visit to New York at the end of February, meeting businesses and inward investment specialists to highlight how Birmingham is an attractive location for US companies as a gateway to the rest of the UK and Europe. This will be followed by attendance at the Games Developers Conference (GDC), the world’s largest game industry event for professionals, in San Francisco.

GDC (5-9 March) attracts more than 19,000 attendees, and is the primary forum for delegates involved in the development of interactive games – such as programmers, artists, producers and game designers – to exchange ideas and shape the future of the industry.

Sarah Darch, investment manager at Business Birmingham, says:

We are attending GDC to showcase the strong gaming sector in Birmingham, the Black County and Solihull, which is home to 21 per cent of the UK games workforce and contributes more than £2 billion of GVA to the economy. Birmingham has significant experience in attracting businesses from the digital media sector – such as Sega and Microsoft’s Rare Games studio – and we want to develop this existing cluster into a much larger industry for the region to create new jobs.

We will be talking to companies that are interested in setting up a base in the UK, and highlighting the exciting developments taking place in the area – such as the benefits offered by Birmingham city centre’s Enterprise Zone, including rates relief and superfast broadband, and the connectivity provided by HS2 and Birmingham Airport’s runway extension.”

The strong relationship between the US and UK will play a crucial role in encouraging local economic growth; with a number of US-based businesses looking to set up departments overseas, Business Birmingham is continuing to raise the city’s international profile to make the most of these opportunities.

More than 350 North American companies, including Microsoft, Motorola and Kraft Foods, provide employment for 60,000 people in the Birmingham area.