Peel bosses wooing Chinese investors
BOSSES from Peel Group, including chairman John Whittaker, have been in China in a bid to woo investors to the North West.
Manchester-based Peel, one of the region’s largest private land owners and developers, is a headline sponsor of Liverpool’s presence at the World Expo in Shanghai, which this week has welcomed a 400,000th visitor.
Peel Development director Lindsey Ashworth, the driving force behind the £4.5bn Wirral Waters project which won planning approval last week, said the World Expo has been a great opportunity for Peel, Liverpool and the wider region.
“Since the World Expo started there has been a huge amount of interest in the pavilion and as a regular visitor I can tell you that it is not all about the Beatles and football.
“They may help to attract people to the pavilion, but when visitors are in they see and appreciate the diverse assets of the city and the wider North West region, because there is so much information in the pavilion about business, about education and about tourism.
“The feedback I have received is that they see Liverpool as an exciting place, but also as a credible investment destination.”
The Peel Group has been seeking Chinese investors for their multi-billion pound schemes, Wirral Waters and Liverpool Waters, but also for the wider group business activities.
Mr Ashworth who is now in Beijing with Mike Taylor, deputy chief executive of Liverpool Vision, to meet with an unnamed potential property investor added: “While it’s great to see how popular the pavilion is with Chinese tourists, there is a real opportunity here at the pavilion for other companies to raise their profile by putting potential customers through the Liverpool experience and then take them to the board room for a private presentation.
“It has helped us and others who are committed to helping Liverpool in Shanghai and I cannot stress enough that face-to-face contact is the best way to do business out here, it’s the kind of contact we hope will pay dividends,” Mr Ashworth added.
Peel chairman John Whittaker, visited the pavilion before receiving an honorary degree from Xi’an Jiaotong Liverpool University, together with Prof Zhou Hanmin, the deputy director of the executive committee for World Expo 2010.
Mr Whittaker also spoke with the Consul General for Manchester Mr Ni Jian who was visiting Liverpool’s pavilion at the same time and explained Peels’ plans on the River Mersey and at MediaCityUK in Salford.
