B4 Cambridge – An introduction to the B4 community
On this edition of The Business Brunch, we introduce two new B4 members from Cambridge – Ian Mather who is the Chief Executive Officer at Cambridge United Football Club and Chairman of Cambridge Arts Theatre and William Rooke, Partner at Carter Jonas. Richard Rosser CEO of B4 is your host for this first edition of The Business Brunch featuring a new B4 community outside of Oxfordshire.
Ian spoke about how challenging a year it’s been for him at the football club and theatre without a paying audience for either. “It has been a very unusual year on both fronts as you can imagine. This time last year we stopped playing football, we didn’t know when we would start again. We had to go through the process of rebuilding a team but we didn’t know when we would be playing again, and football as you probably know, generates most of its income from fans, and they weren’t allowed in.” Throughout the discussion, Ian spoke about the pros and cons of adapting to a pandemic world and acknowledges that amongst a plethora of negatives, there were some clear highlights. “Live streaming enabled us to attract fans from across the world and our merchandising grew, even though we didn’t have a physical shop open.”
Richard was then joined by William Rooke who gives some insight into his role at Carter Jonas and how the world has been for him and his colleagues over the last 12 months. about what he does. “I was originally at a company called Januarius, a local Cambridge firm who were acquired by Carter Jonas in 2015. We specialise in commercial agency developments, particularly on the investment side.”
“The past year has been extremely challenging for everyone but in the world of commercial property we’ve actually got an undersupply of commercial space for the businesses that are growing that simply can’t work from home.”
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