Today senior officials and business leaders from Leeds met with Martyn Warr, Director of Trade and Investment, Iberia to discuss and progress collaborative efforts to support commerce and cultural exchange between the two like-minded international cities.

The Director of Trade delivered an upbeat briefing to some of Leeds’ most prominent business leaders alongside Deborah Green, Chief Executive of Marketing Leeds, the organisation which has spearheaded the initiative in collaboration with UK Trade and Investment.

A showcase event, ‘Leeds in Barcelona’, will take place from 23rd to 25th March where over 100 Leeds professionals will present the city’s business and cultural strengths to pre selected Spanish business leaders.  It will provide an initial, high profile platform for sector groups and organisations such as Leeds Legal, Financial Leeds, Creative Leeds, Leeds Hotels Association and the cultural and education sectors to showcase Leeds as a dynamic and internationally competitive city.  

Leader of Leeds City Council Cllr Andrew Carter said, “We are delighted to welcome Mr Warr to Leeds and to be able to demonstrate first hand our sector strengths and achievements as a significant international city of commerce and culture.  We know that exchange of best practice can only benefit both parties and there is much that we can learn from Barcelona.  The phenomenal success of the 22@ concept has created an international hub for five sectors including creative industries and our Leeds counterparts have an agenda to extract key elements of this success to progress Leeds as a centre of excellence. Similarly Barcelona’s bar association which represents the legal sector is keen to access the successes of Leeds Legal that has already established Leeds’ status as the most important legal centre outside of London.  There is real and constructive exchange being made and I wholly support it.”

Martyn Warr, Director of Trade and Investment Iberia said, “There are many similarities between Leeds and Barcelona – both are recognised as major business hubs for their respective countries and the two cities can certainly learn from each other.  We are committed to the two cities building a long term relationship and are certainly delivering an appropriate business audience in Barcelona for the Leeds delegation to achieve successful business exchange.”

Leeds in Barcelona is the second international business initiative organised by Marketing Leeds and UKTI and follows the successful Leeds in Milan initiative which was launched in 2008.  The three day event provides an effective platform for prominent business sectors in Leeds to present their capabilities, successes and proposition to Spanish business audiences.

Leeds in Barcelona has an robust schedule of meetings and events including a public private partnerships seminar, a ‘meet the buyer’s’ workshop organised by Leeds Hotels Association, a prestigious civic reception, and an event on university- industry collaborations organised with a speaker from the University of Leeds, as well as various international business networking opportunities. These are set to introduce hundreds of Spanish business leaders to Leeds, build relationships and develop commercial opportunities for both cities.

The cultural centrepiece event will the ‘Live from Leeds’ performance and gala dinner featuring Northern Ballet Theatre, Opera North and Phoenix Dance Theatre in a joint performance piece created specifically for the Leeds in Barcelona festival, which will be attended by a key audience including the British Ambassador for Spain.

Deborah Green of Marketing Leeds concludes, “It is our intention to establish Leeds as an international city for business excellence and to incentivise international collaboration to the benefit of Leeds economic future.  The series of ‘Leeds in...’ events aims to achieve just that and we believe that our continued investment to provide a platform for our prominent sectors to present themselves will deliver great benefits in the longer term.”

<< Back to News