Regional Growth Fund: 12 key players

Worth just £1.4bn over three years, the Regional Growth Fund is a pittance compared to the budgets of the regional development agencies and other targeted regeneration funds of the past. But as the only central funding likely to be available for renewal over the next three years it has taken on great importance.

As announced in July, former Deputy Prime Minister and doyen of regeneration, Lord Heseltine will chair the regional growth fund. He will be joined as deputy chair by Sir Ian Wrigglesworth, the former Labour and SDP MP who has since been active in the business world in the North East, as chairman of the Northern Business Forum, of the Newcastle Gateshead Initiative of the Baltic Centre for Contemporary and of the Port of Tyne, deputy chair.

Heseltine and Wrigglesworth will be joined by ten figures - profiled below - drawn from the world of economics, business, enterprise, banking and economic development - with just one representative, Lord Shipley, coming from local government.

As outlined here, the panel will advise ministers on the best bids to the RGF, but a ministerial panel will make the final decisions. Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg will chair the ministerial panel, alongside communities secretary Eric Pickles, who will act as deputy chair; business secretary Vince Cable; enviroment secretary Caroline Spelman; transport secretary Phillip Hammond; and chief secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander.

Felicity Goodey 

• A businesswoman and a former senior BBC journalist, Goodey   gave up broadcasting to become one of the first directors of the Northwest Regional Development Agency.She led the team behind The Lowry and went on to led the MediaCityUK bid team which won the competition to secure the relocation of parts of the BBC to Salford.Goodey is Chairman of the University Hospital of South Manchester (UHSM) NHS Foundation Trust and a member of the Northern Way’s Private Investment Commission. Felicity chairs the Tourism Forum for the Northwest and is a founder director of the Unique Group, a communications and broadcast media production company. Goodey was awarded the CBE for her services to regeneration in Salford.

Tony Greenham

• Greenham is head of finance and business at thinktank the New Economics Foundation, where he leads a programme of research into reforming the financial sector and aligning the interests of society and business. He also has experience as a corporate stockbroker, commercial accountant and sustainability consultant. Prior to joining nef, he was working with the Transition Towns movement as a director of Transition Town Totnes and a business consultant for Transition Training and Consulting.

Richard Lambert

• The director general of the CBI is a former editor at the FT and member of members of the Monetary Policy Committee.

Jon Moulton

• UK venture capitalist and founder and managing partner of the private equity firm Better Capital. Moulton is best known as the former managing partner of the private equity firm Alchemy Partners, which bid to buy MG Rover from BMW in 2000.Originally from Stoke-on-Trent, Moutlon has in the past been critical of private equity firms abuse of the tax system.

Caroline Plumb

• An entrepreneur, Plumb is chief executive and co-founder of research and recruitment consultancy FreshMinds Group, and is a regular speaker on business, innovation and enterprise. She was twice-named on Management Today’s annual list of ’35 under 35’ businesswomen, the youngest on the list both times. Originally from Manchester, Caroline sits on the board of the Saïd Business School in Oxford, and is a council member of the Small Business Forum. 

Mark Seligman

• An investment banker, Seligman has held senior roles at Barclays de Zoete Wedd and SG Warburg & Co Ltd. He is a former chairman of UK Investment Banking at Credit Suisse and a former member of the bank’s Global Investment Banking Executive Board. He is currently a senior adviser to Credit Suisse asnd a non-executive director of G4S plc and serves as an alternate member of the Panel of Takeovers and Mergers and is chairman of the Industrial Development Advisory Board.

Andrew Shilston

• Shilston joined Rolls-Royce plc in 2002 and became finance director in January 2003, when he was also appointed to the Board. Before joining Rolls-Royce, Shilston was finance director of Enterprise Oil.

Lord John Shipley

• Liberal Democrat peer Lord Shipley was leader of Newcastle City Council until last August. He was first elected as a councillor in May 1975 and led the Liberals and then Liberal Democrats from 1978 to 1998.  He was also Leader of the Opposition for 10 years. Lord Shipley is a member of the Northern Way Steering Group and the Northern Way Transport Compact as well as a board member of One North East regional development agency.

Professor Tony Venables

• Is the BP Professor of Economics at the University of Oxford and is a key thinker in economic geography. He co-authored along with Paul Krugman and Masahisa Fujita the influential book The Spatial Economy - Cities, Regions and International Trade.He is the current director of the Oxford Centre for the Analysis of Resource Rich Economies (OxCarre)

Sir David Rowlands

• Rowlands retired in 2007 as Permanent Secretary at the Department for Transport and is currently non-executive chairman of rolling stock company, Angel Trains and is chair of Gatwick Airport Ltd. He stepped down from chairman of High Speed Two in February 2010. Rowlands is also a governor of Anglia Ruskin University and a member of the RAC Foundation’s public policy committee.

NB- an early list of the panel leaked to LGC included former attonery general Baroness Scotland, who now appears to have been withdrawn.