Set up in Birmingham
Sitting at the heart of our unique three city-region, Birmingham is home to a uniquely global, multicultural and inclusive population and a major magnet for international investors. It was recently ranked the UK’s Most Investible City by PwC, which also saw it ranked as having the best investment prospectus by over 800 real estate professionals in Europe.
As the UK’s second largest city, with a world-class hub of culture, fine cuisine and contemporary living, Birmingham is an excellent choice for business and pleasure. What once was an 18th-century manufacturing powerhouse now uses that tradition of innovation, productivity and progressive thinking to build the future.
Connectivity
At the heart of the country, Birmingham is a central transport hub and undoubtedly the most connected regional city in the UK. It’s a great city to keep connected professionally and personally.
Getting around the city and borough is quick and easy. The average time people wait at a stop or station is eleven minutes (Moovit, 2022), and research shows that Birmingham is the best-connected city in terms of rail links (The Independent, 2019).
By rail, London, Manchester, Oxford and Nottingham are less than 1.5 hours away, with Liverpool, Leeds and Bristol reachable in under two by direct trains, while by car you can reach over 90% of the UK’s population within a four-hour drive.
By air from Birmingham Airport, which is just ten minutes away by train from Birmingham city centre, you can fly to 400 international destinations.
Birmingham’s sector strengths
The city’s economy has never been reliant on one sector, with Birmingham proving an excellent location for entry into the UK market for multiple professional and skilled industries. That’s not to say that Birmingham doesn’t have its specialities, with businesses in or utilising digital technology benefitting from being located in the UK’s fastest-growing tech sector (DCMS, 2021),
Birmingham is a leading UK core city for:
- Business, Professional and Financial Services (BPFS)
- Digital Technologies
- Future Mobility
- Data-driven Healthcare
- Advanced Engineering
- Food & drink
- Tourism & Leisure
(ONS, 2020)
FDI Projects and new entrants
During 2021/22, five FDI projects landed in the city’s ever-growing £6.2bn BPFS sector. In that same time, there were also nine projects established in its £1.6bn ITEC sector and numerous other projects in its £2.3bn Manufacturing and £8.4bn Public sectors. Overall, Birmingham led the West Midlands region to create more jobs through FDI projects than any other region outside London.
Birmingham also boasts the most significant number of businesses of any regional city (44,190 in 2020) and the largest number of start-ups after London (18,394 in 2020). So why do so many companies choose to start and locate in this hotbed at the heart of England? Skilled talent and high quality of life are always common answers amongst investors.
Skills and talent
Nothing matters more than attracting and retaining the right talent for your business. Birmingham’s deep and diverse talent pool and graduate pipeline is arguably our biggest asset, and it’s growing each year. Fed by 92,000 students studying at Birmingham’s five universities, producing 30,000 graduates per year, with 55% graduate retention in the region, you’re more likely to find the right people to develop and expand your business in Birmingham.
It’s not just a local talent pool, either. Birmingham has more French, German, Polish, Russian, Urdu and Mandarin Chinese speakers than any other regional city, offering businesses more than just English-speaking expertise.
- 298k educated to degree level – more than any other core city
- 85k students studying at Birmingham’s 5 universities
- 29k annual graduate pipeline
- 55% graduate retention rate (regional)
Quality of life in Birmingham
Birmingham is constantly evolving, particularly over the last two decades, where immense amounts of regeneration, investment and reinvention have completely transformed much of the region.
There are hundreds of ways to demonstrate this, but having eleven Michelin-starred restaurants and Goldman Sachs deciding Birmingham is the best place in the UK to create a new national HQ is a good start. Whatever preconceptions you may have about Birmingham, whether based on industrial history or the Peaky Blinders tv series, what you’ve witnessed is potentially a bit out of date.
Enjoy a high-quality lifestyle for less
There are many reasons why more people migrate to Birmingham from London than any other UK city region (6,519 in 2020), and so many companies increasingly choose to bring their businesses and their people here. Just some of those reasons include:
- Overall 40% better off living in Birmingham when compared to the South East
- Birmingham has more green spaces than any other major regional UK city
- Birmingham attracts 42m visitors a year
- Quality of life in Birmingham is ranked higher than Rome, Los Angeles, Osaka, Shanghai and Dubai
We’ve identified three essential quality of life elements where Birmingham and the West Midlands outperform other destinations in the UK, Europe, and the world, summarised simply as Live, Learn and Earn.
