Manchester: city of opportunity

August 2024

Skyscrapers. Lots of them. All across the horizon. Punching high into the skies above bustling streets.

It’s 25 years since I moved to Manchester, but the towering buildings, etched by the sun into the Manchester skyline, still take my breath away.

The city has been a constant in my life for a quarter of a century, and it has transformed itself in that time.
For me, I started my business here. I created jobs and helped build careers, by helping people find better jobs.
I met my wife and got married in the city - celebrating at the Lowry hotel, a name synonymous with Manchester. The name conjures up the ‘matchstick men and women’ who made Manchester the engine room of the Industrial Revolution and, for a while, the richest city in the world.
In 1872, Benjamin Disraeli said ‘what Manchester does today, the rest of the world does tomorrow.’
And he was right. We have brilliant universities, attracting and keeping talent in the city.
There’s a thriving financial services sector, development businesses, creative and media companies, science and tech, and much more.
We have two titans of world football in Manchester United and City. The managers aren’t bad either: Sir Alex Ferguson and Pep Guardiola came to this city to build footballing dynasties.
Successive council leaders have worked with business to create a thriving dynamic economy , driven by investment and urban renewal.
The skyline and the transformed city centre - from Deansgate, to Ancoats, to Castlefield - are testimony to that.
There was a piece in the Financial Times celebrating the city’s architecture and asking if it can drive economic and social revival.
As the FT writer highlighted, the city is not perfect - there’s still lots of poverty and social disfunction - but the opportunity for Manchester to trailblaze again is there.
For me, the energy, creativity, humour, innovation and invention of Manchester - which attracted me 25 years ago and added me to the tally of millions to fall in love with the city - is as powerful as ever.
Long may it continue, and cheers to the next 25 years.

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