Property giant chief backs Liverpool’s leaders to oversee continued growth

The global head of Toronto-based property giant Avison Young believes Liverpool has the potential, and the leadership, to attract international investment and continue its impressive progress.

New York-born Mark Rose is in the city during the Eurovision Song Contest at the personal invitation of City Mayor, Joanne Anderson.

He is speaking at an event in Sony’s Liverpool HQ on the excitement surrounding Liverpool, the opportunities Eurovision presents for inward investment, and why Avison Young continues to invest in the city.

Speaking with TheBusinessDesk.com at Avison Young’s St Paul’s Square base, he highlighted the “great connection” he has made with Mayor Anderson, and Metro Mayor, Steve Rotheram, who he met at this year’s MIPIM conference in Cannes.

He praised Liverpool’s culture, its people, its opportunities, saying: “Avison Young is a culture-based company, so a lot of what we do is based on social value and there was a quick connection, particularly with Mayor Anderson about what she wanted to accomplish, which was so very much in line with understanding that we are the people for place, meaning that cities are communities and they have a heritage and they have to be treated as living, breathing places in which we work and we play, and that connection is about the people who live in the communities that form Liverpool.

“So it was very easy to get very excited about making sure that we were going to have a very large presence here.”

Avison Young has operated out of Liverpool for a couple of decades and employs around 25 staff in the heart of the city’s business district. Mr Rose said regions, like Liverpool, were the birth of GVA, the predecessor company of Avison Young.

He believes the city’s universities and its cutting edge technologies, such as life sciences, medical, gaming technology and biotech fields help to navigate the way forward for the region.

“If you have your best and your brightest in university hubs, that really does lend itself to an awful lot of investment.”

And, again, he touched on the value of leadership to driving the city’s fortunes: “Liverpool has motivated leaders. In this inflationary environment and higher interest rates, going back to COVID, I think Liverpool has the attributes of what you want for a successful city, meaning your leaders got involved.

“And the leaders are intentional about what they want to accomplish, not sitting back and letting it happen.

“I strongly believe that the public sector is going to be the spark, the match, that allows the private sector to come back in. At the moment you have a banking system around the world that has pulled back, particularly for real estate, so there’s going to be a relationship between the public and private sector, and this city has great leaders.”

Mr Rose declined to comment on the appointment of government commissioners to run certain aspects of the city council in 2021 and what optic that presents of the city.

But he believes this week’s Eurovision Song Contest can go a long way to selling Liverpool around the world: “I was watching a programme last night, there’s twice the amount of viewership of Eurovision than there is the US Superbowl. I think that would make it a couple of hundred million, or more.”

He says this will speak volumes for Liverpool: “It says real city, major city, have confidence it is being supported by its public sector and its private sector. This will go a long way to flushing out the ability for the private sector to feel good about making their total investments.”

He added: “This is a city that we’re focused on and we’re going to be investing in.”