Birmingham international trade advocate dies after long illness

A WELL-KNOWN advocate of international trade in Birmingham has died after a long illness.

Jonathan Webber, director of international trade at Greater Birmingham Chambers of Commerce (GBCC), had been battling cancer. He was 58.
 
Mr Webber, who joined the then Birmingham Chamber in April 1999, was awarded the MBE for services to international trade and development in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in 2011 and was made a deputy lieutenant in the West Midlands in 2014.
 
Paul Faulkner, chief executive of the GBCC, said: “Jonathan has fought a brave battle against his illness for over two years.
 
“He will be remembered for his dedication to international trade after criss-crossing the globe to promote UK business.
 
“He had a life-long relationship with Asia and Africa and his expertise and character will be sorely missed by the chamber.”

Greg Lowson, Birmingham Chamber’s president, said: “Jonathan was a strong character in everything he did and this manifested itself in his battle against his illness, during which he maintained a stoical and amazingly realistic demeanour.”
 
Former Birmingham Chamber chief executive Jerry Blackett said Mr Webber was a “real one-off and a maverick”.
 
“He never missed his targets – we were the top performing UKTI team across the country year after year. It was his intelligence and ability that enabled that – he got the best out of his team.”
 
Born in Watford, Mr Webber spent most of his working life involved in exports and specialised in regional small to medium enterprise (SME) export strategy, European programmes, international trading links between the West Midlands and South Asia, East Africa and North America.
 
He was also director of Enterprise Europe Network (West Midlands) and Europe Direct, Birmingham.
 
He was previously an advisor to the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) on trade with Greece and the Balkans, and before that spent 17 years working in Athens and Salonika as a literary agent/publisher.
 
He became chief executive of the British Greek Chamber of Commerce in Athens.
Latterly, he helped deliver European Commission-funded private sector capacity-building programmes in some of the most challenged communities in developing economies.
 
He had worked in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Burundi, South Sudan, Georgia and Ukraine.

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