12 Interview City Profile: Jane Forbes, Chair of pro manchester Jane Forbes of PwC LLP, is the Lead Partner of the NW Government & Public Services Team. Jane recently took over as Chair of pro-manchester from Manchester solicitor, Alison Loveday. After completing a Masters degree in European Politics at the University of Leeds, Jane joined PwC’s Leeds office in 2001 and qualified as a Chartered Accountant in 2004. She moved to the Manchester office in 2009 to set up a Risk Assurance business in the Government and Public Services market. Jane was made Partner in 2013 and has since then led PwC’s Government and Public Services practice across the North West. Jane’s clients have included both national and regional Government agencies and public bodies, including three Regulators, ten Registered Social Landlords and five of the North West’s Higher Education Institutions. Jane has a keen interest in the Social Housing sector and spent two years on secondment to the Housing Regulator where she headed up the Internal Audit and Risk Team. Jane is PwC’s National Lead Partner for Social Housing, a role she took on in June <strong>2017</strong>. Jane became directly involved with pro-manchester in 2010 when she joined the Skills Committee. Jane says “As a newcomer to the city, I became involved with pro-manchester as a way of establishing new contacts and building relationships within the business community. Pro Manchester is fantastic for providing you with a ready-made network, it certainly worked for me.” Jane describes pro-manchester as the leading B2B organisation in the North West, the natural gateway to business in our region, which excels at bringing businesses together, providing a forum for collaboration and innovation. One of its key successes has been the strength and depth of its sector group programme which provides business development opportunities and knowledge sharing between organisations and professionals. The sector groups are: Green Economy Sports Industry Creative and Digital Science and Technology Healthcare Hotels and Leisure Retail and E-Commerce Transport and Infrastructure Food and Drink Regeneration and Property Advanced Manufacturing Pro-manchester has over 330 members, including the biggest names within the Financial and Professional Service sector and a select number of corporate members from across the region. Within these companies sit over 5,000 individual members. At the start of Jane’s tenure as Chair she outlined her goals for the coming year. Her first priority is to promote and champion the work and expertise of the Financial and Professional Services Sector, which she sees as being the “enabler” for the city region’s growth. Secondly, Jane believes that pro-manchester’s breadth of knowledge and collaborative approach means it is perfectly positioned to be the ‘voice for business’ in Greater Manchester; and her third priority is to extend the reach of the promanchester sector groups to strengthen linkages across industries for its members. Jane believes there are clearly challenging and uncertain times ahead for Manchester businesses in the post-Brexit era, but is confident that the region will ‘weather the storm’ as this uncertainty also creates opportunity, and strengthens the case for redoubling the focus on collaboration and innovation within the business sector. The Financial and Professional Services sector has an important role to play in this as not only does it successfully deliver its own growth engine but it support the four key growth sectors in the Greater Manchester Strategy: Advanced Manufacturing; Creative, Digital & Technology; Energy and Environment; and Life Science & Healthcare. Jane says that one of the key objectives of the pro-manchester Skills Committee is to ensure that there is the skills pool to enable these industries to grow. The Skills Committee works alongside member firms to determine their skills needs whilst also developing relationships with the region’s universities, professional bodies and skills providers in order to support and develop appropriate solutions. Pro-manchester also runs a series of 60 Hot Topic seminars each year featuring talks from expert speakers on a range of issues such as corporate finance, marketing, risk management, so- Jane Forbes, Chair of pro Manchester cial media and insolvency. Pro-manchester continues to focus on the importance of the local economy and last month hosted a major economics conference focused on the Economics of Greater Manchester and inclusive growth. This follows the success of last year’s conference which focused on China and the opportunities for the region’s economy. Jane lives in Manchester with her husband Martin and 5 year old daughter Evie who has just started school. Jane is a life-time supporter of Manchester United and a self-confessed shopaholic. She also plays the piano and has recently started to take golf lessons with Evie, who according to Jane, is already a much better player! For further information visit: www.pro-manchester.co.uk Julia Baskerville Browne Jacobson signs ‘best friends’ agreement with leading Chinese law firm Law firm Browne Jacobson, which has an office in Manchester, has strengthened its international offering by entering into a formal ‘best friends’ agreement with one of the leading law firms in China. The firm has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Guanghe Law Firm, the largest law firm in South China. The MoU will allow both firms the opportunity to provide a more integrated service offering and will include sharing information and knowledge on topical issues in areas such as intellectual property and brands, immigration, corporate and property, environmental, corporate finance and technology. Guanghe Law Firm is the largest law firm in South China with over 600 lawyers across 13 locations. The firm has its headquarters in Shenzhen - a city which links mainland China with Hong Kong and is widely known as the tech design and manufacturing capital of the world. Its other office locations are in Beijing, Chengdu, Wuhan, Guangzhou, Zhuhai, Dong- Guan, Qianhai, Longgang, Taipei, New York City, Toronto and Montevideo. The firm specialises in securities, corporate and finance, litigation/arbitration, commercial transactions, construction and real estate, intellectual property, entertainment, labor and employment, taxation and international transactions. The arrangement will complement Browne Jacobson’s existing membership of Pangea Net- an international network of independent law firms, which it co-founded in 2009. Dominic Offord, head of Browne Jacobson’s Commercial Disputes Resolution team, along with intellectual property partner Selina Hinchcliffe, met with representatives of Guanghe Law Firm. Dominic Offord said:“Although this is not an exclusive relationship, we have already worked collaboratively on some client matters and this agreement builds on the well-established ties we have established with colleagues at Guanghe Law Firm over a number of years. “Many of our clients have global ambitions and so having a close relationship with Guanghe Law Firm, one of the most highly respected and leading law firms in China, will prove to be a significant advantage. “Our clients will be able to mutually benefit from our combined sector and local market expertise in two of the world’s leading economies. We are also planning to explore opportunities where we can pitch jointly for projects and work where there is a strong synergy between our sector specialisms.”
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