‘You plus two’ invite to the ICAEW East of England Economic Summit

ICAEW East of England virtual Spring 2021 Economic Summit
8.30am to 10am Tuesday 25th May

The all-important booking link for you to use and share: ICAEW East of England Economic Summit registration link

Be part of the discussion, be part of the solution, be part of the recovery
I would like to extend an invitation for ‘you plus two’.
I would be very grateful if you could spare the time to do three things:

1. Register for this event yourself if you haven’t already done so. If you can’t make it perhaps you could invite a suitably senior colleague to attend in your place.
2. Ask a high-potential junior colleague to attend as I would like to involve the voices of tomorrow’s business leaders as well as today’s.
3. Ask at least one of your contacts from another profession to attend. I am keen that the audience combines a range of sectors and industries; accountants and other finance professionals, bankers and investors, lawyers and solicitors, educationalists and charities, NHS organisations and local councils, property agents and developers, entrepreneurs and strategic leaders etc.

Please spread the word as widely as you can.

Event details

The ICAEW periodically produces a Business Confidence Monitor (BCM) based on interviews with 1,000 senior business professionals in a range of sectors and regions. It has historically proven to be a remarkably accurate lead indicator of GDP trends and is widely used by the business community, policy-makers and academics. I think that the next BCM (due for publication in the next week) is going to be of particular interest and value to businesses who will be formulating their recovery growth strategy, recruitment plans and capital allocation decisions in the wake of a difficult year. The ICAEW are running an East of England Economic Summit later this month to stimulate conversation and collaboration at a local level amongst business leaders and professional advisers.

As well as commentary from ICAEW and the Bank of England, this event will include separate breakout room panel discussions with experts from each county in the region about the specific implications for their local economy. There will also be a Skills breakout room and a Funding breakout room, as these topics are considered to be of wider relevance. Attendees will be asked which discussion room they want to join after they have registered.

In each breakout room we will be looking for the audience to make their own contributions through chat box responses to discussion questions. This is where I think the ‘secret sauce’ of the event will come from; the combined wisdom of business, professional and community leaders from across the region. This will be distilled into a report of practical tips, advice and action points to help us all lead our region through the coming recovery.

Our Panellists

I have confirmed the following speakers and panellists for the discussions in our different break-out rooms, you can see it’s a pretty high calibre line-up! I am getting distinct imposter syndrome at the prospect of introducing the event. 😊 If there is more than one panel discussion that is of relevance to your organisation please invite colleagues to come along:

Plenary speakers

• Phil Eckersley, senior East of England agent of the Bank of England

The break-out rooms include:
Cambridgeshire Panel

• Jane Paterson-Todd, Chief Executive of Cambridge Ahead
• Dr David Cleevely CBE, Founder of Abcam, CoFounder of Cambridge Angels and Board Member of Cambridge Network
• Linn Clabburn, Director at Cambridge Norwich Tech Corridor
• Vic Annells, Chief Executive of Cambridgeshire Chambers of Commerce

Norfolk Panel

• Chris Sargisson, Chief Executive of Norfolk Chamber of Commerce
• C-J Green, Chair of New Anglia LEP
• Duncan Baker, MP for North Norfolk

Suffolk Panel

• Doug Field, Chief Executive of East of England Co-op and former Chair of New Anglia LEP
• Mark Taylor, Acting Chief Executive of Freeport East
• Tom Hunt, MP for Ipswich
• Mark Ling, CoFounder of Orwell Ahead

Skills Panel

• Anne Bailey, Chief Executive of Form the Future
• Olga Tregaskis, Head of Norwich Business School at UEA
• Laraine Moody, Vice Principal of Employer Engagement at West Suffolk College
• Fiona McGonigle, Director of Workforce Transformation Solutions and Business Engagement Lead for ARU Peterborough

Funding Panel

• Paul Sullivan, Senior Manager for the East of England at the British Business Bank
• Chris Tilley, Director at Coutts
• George Neville-Jones, Local Director of Metro Bank and CoFounder of Cambridge Future Tech
• Amelia Armour, Early Stage Fund at Amadeus Capital Partners
• Matt McLoughlin, Senior Investment Manager at Foresight Group

It would be great to see you on 25th May and please do help us to spread the word!