Recent Investors

Private Sector

Barclays

Barclays Commercial Bank has acquired over 98,000 ft² (approx. 9,100 m²) of new office space from Ballymore, the international property development company, and will bring together 1,000 sales and operations staff from Barclays Commercial Bank division in the Midlands, currently located across the Greater Birmingham area. Barclays will occupy four floors from levels three to six of One Snowhill, the first phase of the state-of-the-art, mixed use development next to Snow Hill Station that includes conferencing facilities, restaurants, bars and Birmingham’s only five-star hotel. Barclays’ offices will also feature a dedicated customer reception and meeting suite.

Deutsche Bank

Birmingham was the fourth city to be run under what is known as the DBOI Global Services operating model, a wholly owned subsidiary of Deutsche Bank. The purpose of these centres is to provide Deutsche Bank with flexible choices on how to support business areas, i.e. business lines operating from London and New York can now use support services from DBOI Global Services. These support services are provided from near shore offices like Birmingham and Jacksonville (Florida), as well as off-shore offices in India and the Philippines.

A number of factors were considered when selecting Birmingham as the nearshore location to London for Deutsche Bank operations. The Deutsche Bank team evaluated the availability of talent in the local market, and Birmingham having a maturing financial centre certainly met that need. DBOI Global Services now occupies nearly 69,000 sq ft of space at One Brindleyplace. The Bank is already employing around 550 permanent staff at the new operational processing centre.

EC Harris

EC Harris moved within Birmingham recently and took the opportunity of that move to introduce a wide range of new and flexible working approaches e.g. agile and mobile working, use of touch down facilities etc. The success of this approach underlined the adaptability and openness to change of our excellent Birmingham people.

Martin Silverster, Managing Partner

Islamic Bank

Islamic Bank is the UK's first FSA (Financial Services Authority) approved Islamic bank, established in September 2004. With headquarters based in Birmingham it is the first standalone Islamic retail bank in the Western world and operates by the principles of the Sharia - to make money from money is forbidden – wealth can only be generated through legitimate trade and investment in assets. Money must be used in a productive way.

PricewaterhouseCoopers

PricewaterhouseCoopers set up our national Employee Service Centre in Birmingham some years ago. It required a wholesale re-orientation of the way in which we approach this vital task in a wholly people centred business. We found ourselves able readily to recruit a workforce with the skills and attitude which this new approach to our business required; the continuing flexibility of our people in the centre has allowed us to develop the centre continuously.

Mark Smith, Regional Chairman

Public Sector

Amey

Nurturing talent is key to Birmingham’s future economic growth, an objective which the city drives through link-ups between the private sector and the city’s educational institutions. This is demonstrated by the recent commitment by Amey, one of the leading public services providers, to train its employees at an International Design Hub located in the city centre.

Amey has a long history and association with Birmingham and last year we decided to base our International Design Hub in the city, creating up to 500 jobs with another 1,000 likely to be created in the coming few years in the area. We decided to base it in Birmingham due to the highly skilled workforce and the strong history of innovation and engineering in the city. However, it is one of many cities and towns across the UK that needs public as well as private sector investment to ensure long term employment and we will continue to implement initiatives such as local apprentice programmes and recruitment drives to support this.

Mel Ewell, Chief Executive

Big Lottery Fund

The Big Lottery Fund (BIG) found two particular features of Birmingham that were very important to our business and really helped to make the case for locating in the city. We are in effect serving a national network of organisations that make use of BIG funding – the accessibility and connectivity of Birmingham was invaluable to us. In addition as an organisation with a mission to serve all communities in the country and to reflect that fact in our own staff. The cultural diversity of Birmingham and its workforce were really important and provided something that couldn’t be matched or even approached elsewhere outside London.

Mark Cooke, Director, Finance and Corporate Services

Gambling Commission

The Gambling Commission moved into its new head office in Victoria Square House in 2006 and is home to 220 staff permanently based in Birmingham. Chief Executive Jenny Williams is delighted with the building, its location and the welcome she and her team have received. “It is hard to argue for a better location that provides such easy transport access,” says Williams.

This is vital to our operational efficiency, with so many of our compliance and enforcement staff, as well as our stakeholders, spread across the country.

Jenny Williams, Chief Executive

Highways Agency

The Highways Agency is an Executive Agency of the Department for Transport (DfT), and is responsible for operating, maintaining and improving the strategic road network in England on behalf of the Secretary of State for Transport. It employs a 700-strong team at its regional head quarters in Birmingham. Relocating from Broadway Plaza at Five Ways, the team have begun their move to their new 60,000 sq ft, BREEAM Excellent offices at The Cub with state of the art facilities. The Highways Agency have taken around half of the building's 120,000 sq ft of office space. On completion, the property will receive a BREEAM Excellent rating, and has also achieved an Energy Performance Rating Certificate rating of B.

Legal Ombudsman

The Legal Ombudsman is being established by the Office for Legal Complaints under the Legal Services Act 2007 to make sure consumers of legal services can go to an independent and impartial Ombudsman scheme to resolve disputes involving their lawyer. It is set to open towards the end of 2010. In late February 2010 it was confirmed that the office will be located in central Birmingham, meeting the Government’s commitment for the Ombudsman scheme to be based in the West Midlands.

National Grid

National Grid is an international electricity and gas company and one of the largest investor-owned energy companies in the world, with headquarters in Warwick. National Grid owns the high-voltage electricity transmission network in England and Wales and operates the system across Great Britain. It also owns and operates the high pressure gas transmission system in Britain and its distribution business delivers gas to 11 million homes and businesses.

Service Birmingham

Capitalising on technology partnerships to boost efficiency. Service Birmingham is a unique strategic partnership between Birmingham City Council and Capita, which is supporting a transformation in the way the council works; improving services and contributing to its efficiency agenda. Service Birmingham aims to transform the council’s use of technology, firmly placing it at the leading edge of the local government sector. The ICT programme is designed to deliver a world-class ICT service to support the future delivery of council services. It provides all ICT services to the council, including service desk, application development and support, internet, networks and server infrastructure.

Severn Trent Plc

Severn Trent Plc is an international utility services and environmental solutions company based in Coventry. Severn Trent Water serve over 8 million customers across the heart of the UK, stretching from the Bristol Channel to the Humber, and from mid-Wales to the East Midlands.