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Sir Howard welcomes Downtown's arrival
TheBusinessDesk.com | 12th March 2010

MANCHESTER City Council supremo Sir Howard Bernstein welcomed the newest arrival on the city's business networking scene and said he looks forward to "constructive debate and challenge from it."

He was speaking at the launch of Downtown Manchester in Business, the latest version of a successful model already established in Liverpool and Preston by former politician turned businessman Frank McKenna.

Sir Howard jokingly described Mr McKenna as '"a Scouser with a difference" -in that he has always been able to set aside traditional rivalries between Liverpool and Manchester and see the bigger picture. He praised him for being a "consistent and powerful advocate of Manchester."

On a more serious note Sir Howard said it was important for the business community to interact with the council to help it set "a very clear direction for the future" and said that in recent past this had helped Manchester weather the storm of the recession better than it would have done previously.

"We all face major questions going forward - how cities create a low carbon economy, respond to climate change, how we create a labour market for this new economy and how we develop a transport system to get people connected."

He said if Manchester was not able to thrive and grow the North West region as a whole would not fulfil its full potential.

Mr McKenna pledged to bring "new ideas" to Manchester and promised to deliver business support to entrepreneurs and "quality and diverse" networking events.

He said the concept of Downtown had been born out of a conversation with the late Tony Wilson, the former boss of Factory Records, after the 1996 IRA bomb.