David Parkin on who is hot in business and enjoying a Rare experience

WHEN was the last time you met a hot finance director?

No, I can’t remember either.

Most are quite dry individuals and if you sat them on an Aga for a week they might get slightly warm, but certainly not hot.

This week accountants and business advisers BDO held an awards ceremony in London to announce the top 20 finance directors in the technology, media and telecommunications sector in 2013.

And it had the monicker: Hot 20 FDs in TMT. Well I suppose if you are an accountant then an FD is hot property.

One of the winners was Tim Taylor, finance and operations director at York-based Cellhire.

He joined the mobile telecoms business three years ago and one of the biggest challenges he has faced was leading the firm through the London 2012 Olympic Games where it delivered 28,000 connections.

Of the 20 FDs recognised at the awards, almost all have led a merger or acquisition in the last 12 months and BDO said that the competition has highlighted the mindset of FDs is changing with more now pushing the topline rather than just squeezing the bottom line.

Well that sounds like hot news for all of us.

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ANYONE who has wandered around Leeds city centre in recent months will have seen how many new places to eat and drink have sprung up.

The Trinity shopping centre is an impressive edifice but appears to have as many food outlets as shops.

You would have to eat out every breakfast, lunch and dinner between now and the middle of next year to get around all the restaurants, bars and cafes that crowd the city centre.

And even for a experienced hand like me, that would be a daunting prospect.

Too many of the new arrivals are chains with the usual vanilla branding, decor and food choices.

Try as you might, you can never give enough individuality to a chain.

That’s why I like to focus my eating efforts on the independent players that have emerged amid the cluster of chains.

One of the newest – which only opened this week – is called Rare. Based on Lower Briggate, it is the brainchild of Matthew Firth, who already runs the Roast cafe bar in Whitehall Riverside and events at the nearby White Cloth Gallery

Why is it called Rare? Well all the meat it serves is from rare breeds and to underline that point there is a stuffed longhorn cow in a glass case in the basement dining room.

But the premise behind the food also extends to the bar, where you are unlikely to have encountered many of the beers, wines and spirits before.

Matthew carries the heavy yoke of being the son of Yorkshire International Business Convention founder Mike Firth. And while he has inherited his Dad’s entrepreneurial flair, he fortunately hasn’t got the same sense of humour.

For those of us who remember some of Mike’s gags on stage at the YIBC, that’s probably a good thing for Matthew. Mike’s been telling everyone that the stuff cow is by Damien Hirst.

With a welcoming ground floor bar, bare-brick basement dining room and large outdoor space for drinking and barbecueing, I can see Rare – whose slogan is ‘uncommon excellence’ as a success.

It has already garnered praise from one of the city’s achingly trendy foodie bloggers (the type of bloke who puts his selvedge jeans in the freezer to clean them rather than the washing machine) as serving the best steak in Leeds – and the £60 Porterhouse is a formidable hunk of meat.

In a world of similarity, Rare is just that.

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THE trip to Rare was a good opportunity to catch up with Mike Firth, who, after the demise of the YIBC in Harrogate and more recently Leeds last year, is focusing his efforts on putting on a similar event in Rotherham next March.

We were reminiscing about some of the great speakers that the YIBC brought to Yorkshire. Probably the highest profile and most charismatic was former US president Bill Clinton.

Security concerns meant that journalists were excluded from the event and Mike still rankles about my criticism of him in the pages of the Yorkshire Post.

“I remember you wrote that I stood outside the front of the venue flanked by two security guards with dogs to keep the Press out,” he recalled.

“Looking back, I certainly didn’t need the guards and their dogs to keep Parkin out, I could have handled it myself,” he chuckled.

He was paying the drinks bill, so I let that one ride.

Have a great weekend.