A message from the British High Commissioner, HE Paul Madden
Happy New Year to all our readers. Over the summer break I have been reflecting on the year which has passed since I took up my job in Australia last January. Working with business is one of the major things I do, and it has been a busy period. At the macro-economic level, UK goods exports to Australia increased around 30% in 2011. That’s helped of course by the strength of the Australian economy and the competitiveness of sterling. But it also results from a lot of hard work by dynamic business men and women from both countries. It was also supported by the UK Trade & Investment team at our High Commission and Consulates around Australia who helped hundreds of individual companies.
We have also seen a strong flow of Australian investment into the UK, most notably Westfield’s massive new shopping mall in Stratford, East London (right next to the Olympic Park), which I had the pleasure of visiting in September just after it opened. UK companies continue to expand their presence in Australia, for example Global Switch is expanding its data centre in Sydney to become the largest data centre in the Southern Hemisphere. You can read about some of the other success stories on the UKTI website.
2011 began well, if you were an England cricket fan, and we organised a series of popular business networking functions for visiting British business people alongside each Test, culminating in an event in Sydney addressed by Sir Victor Blank, Chairman of Lloyds Banking Group. During the course of the year, a number of our high level visitors were able to engage with the business community. Foreign Secretary William Hague, here for the annual AUKMIN ministerial meeting, addressed a packed ABCC lunch in Sydney. Later in the year, FCO Asia Pacific Minister Jeremy Brown met businesses in Sydney and Trade Minister Lord Green (former head of HSBC) carried out a series of business engagements in Perth, Melbourne and Sydney.
Prime Minister David Cameron was in Perth in October for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, and made sure he carved time out from his packed programme to meet senior business figures, including some of the biggest names in the resources sector for a fascinating round table discussion. There was a significant British presence at the Commonwealth Business Forum which ran alongside CHOGM.
As part of our world-wide drive to engage more closely with China, we stimulated China-UK business forums in Sydney and Melbourne, which were so successful that we are hoping to repeat the exercise again in 2012. We have also worked with visiting British trade missions at some of the biggest shows around Australia. I particularly enjoyed meeting aerospace and defence companies at Avalon. I’ve also had good opportunities to engage with the defence sector during my visits to Adelaide over the course of the year.
Looking ahead to 2012, we will have a very strong delegation at the Australian Oil and Gas show in Perth in February. And in March the Lord Mayor of the City of London will lead a mission from the Financial Services Sector to Sydney and Melbourne. With the current focus on the challenges of the EuroZone, I’m sure people will be fascinated by what he has to say.
We will soon be announcing the winners of our Go UK competition (there’s still time to enter though), which will help give four Australian and New Zealand companies the chance to expand their operations in the UK. Just last week I met the winner of the new UK Business Journalism Placement award who, with the support of the Financial Times and BA, will undertake a placement in London in March.
But the main reason the UK will be in the headlines in 2012, is of course the Olympic Games. I am sure this is going to be hugely successful. Judging from the very well-attended business networking event we held last year to mark 500 days to go, and the Australian Olympic Committee functions I spoke at all around the country, the London Olympics are going to generate massive interest in Australia. UKTI is running a high profile series of business events in London in association with the Games. I hope some of you get the chance to visit.