In Brief: Recruitment firm kicks off year with major contract; Businesses urged to go for Commonwealth gold; and more

A Midlands-based recruitment company has started the year with one of its largest ever assignments just months after launching an international arm.

Apex Recruitment, which specialises in the automotive, engineering and advanced manufacturing sectors, started to work in Sweden last year and has now agreed a deal to recruit 100 software experts for the country’s largest consultancy company.

Sigma, which employs more than 3,000 staff across a range of disciplines in IT and software, has turned to the UK to find the new staff for permanent roles at its headquarters in Gothenburg.

It hopes to fill the roles by the summer and is using Apex partly due to the Midlands’ high level of skills in software.

Richard Marchington, sales and marketing director at Apex, which is based at Tournament Fields in Warwick and celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2018, said the deal had been reached less than six months after the company had started operating in Sweden.

“We have worked hard over the last 18 months to access Swedish companies because we realised the strong synergy between the market over there and the sectors in which we operate in the UK,” he said.

“That, and our position right at the heart of the Midlands which has an international reputation in the engineering and manufacturing sector, has proved a powerful combination.

“Obviously there is huge change in the manufacturing and automotive engineering world and software experts are in high demand.

“We started to work with Volvo – part of the Geely Group which owns LEVC the makers of the London Taxi – to recruit staff to work at their Swedish operations, and that is how Sigma heard of us.

“It is a major development for Apex, and means we are off to a very strong start in 2019 which everyone expects to be a testing year for all sectors of industry.”

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Businesses in Coventry and Warwickshire will be given an insight on how to go for Commonwealth gold at an event this March.

The Chamber has successfully secured a briefing session with the senior team behind the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games on the potential business and procurement opportunities that will be up for grabs in the build up to and during the event.

Around 80% of contracts for previous Games have been secured by firms in the region around the host city.

The briefing will take place on Friday, March 15, at Stoneleigh Park.

Louise Bennett, chief executive of the Coventry and Warwickshire Chamber of Commerce, said: “The Commonwealth Games coming to the region is huge and we want companies across Coventry and Warwickshire to understand what opportunities are already available and what there is in the pipeline.”

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Richard Doe, managing director for commercial lending at Paragon

Paragon’s Commercial Lending division has doubled new lending in the past year.

Asset finance and development finance at the Solihull-based specialist lender led growth within the division, the Q1 trading update to 31 December 2018 revealed.

Acquisitions of property finance company Titlestone and legal finance firm Iceberg have also delivered on growth potential for Paragon, which serves SMEs in the UK.

Paragon Banking Group reported a 41% increase across all business lines to deliver £661m of new lending in the first quarter of 2019. Commercial lending reported the highest levels of growth across the group, to achieve a 105% increase in lending to £212m, compared to £103m in the same quarter last year.

That was helped by a 56% increase in lending by asset finance to £93m, compared to £60m in the same period last year. That volume includes £19m from Iceberg, which joined Paragon in December 2017. Like-for-like asset finance growth was 27%.

Development finance reported a 451% year-on-year increase in lending with £79m of new business written in the quarter. That is in line with the £321m of new advances achieved by the combined Paragon and Titlestone teams in the year to September 2018.

Elsewhere in the division, motor finance increased lending by 25% to £36m and structured lending brought in over £3m of business in the quarter.