Member Article

Businesses have chance to follow in BIC footsteps

One of the region’s leading businessmen is backing a search for top entrepreneurs who can follow in his footsteps by winning free office accommodation at the North East Business and Innovation Centre (BIC).

Paul Callaghan, Chairman of Leighton Group and Board Member of One NorthEast, has lent his support to the BIC’s accommodation competition in which budding business people can win a package worth up to £2,000 at the same location in which he created the Leighton Group.

Paul Callaghan said: “In the fourteen years since its doors opened, the North East BIC has established itself as a leader in the development of an innovative and enterprising culture in the North East. “It has helped over 2,500 businesses to start up in the Tyne and Wear area, and some of the region’s most successful businesses, including the Leighton Group, have begun their existences on the BIC site.”

Today the Leighton Group is a multi-million pound turnover business, trading in 40 countries on five continents, with 100 employees in Sunderland and in London.

Paul Callaghan said: “We moved into the BIC as a small publishing outfit in the 1990s, and found ourselves in a community of like-minded businesses which had a similar sort of interest to us, effectively creating a network of suppliers, partners and customers. “There was also excellent general support from the BIC itself which took away many of the headaches - from broadband connectivity to a mail service - you would normally have in starting a business. This allowed us to concentrate on our main business.”

To enter the competition visit www.ne-bic.co.uk or call 0191 516 6200 to request an application form.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .