Liverpool’s second International Festival for Business (IFB) in 2016 is expected to last just three weeks, compared to the six-week extravaganza that took place this summer.

IFB chair Max Steinberg has said the streamlined festival in two years would have around 100 events – less than a quarter of the 424 events of 2014.

Addressing an audience of business people at Princes Dock on Liverpool waterfront, Mr Steinberg, chief executive of Liverpool Vision, suggested senior Government officials believe this year’s event was a huge success.

IFB 2014 took place in June and July and brought thousands of national and international visitors to the city. Mr Steinberg said that as a result of the festival, real deals had been achieved and were “continuing to be done”, and that more would be revealed when the official report into the event was published in November.

Mr Steinberg said:

“In the last 10 days I have been down to 10 Downing Street and almost before I sat down the people there told me that not only did they think IFB had been a success but they did not believe we could have delivered what we did deliver.”

“That kind of testimony does not come lightly.”

He claimed the festival had given a direct boost to Merseyside firms with 21 of the 34 tenders for the organisation of IFB being awarded to companies within the city region.

He also said it was the ambition of Liverpool Mayor Joe Anderson to hold IFB in the city every two years.

“The Mayor’s inbox, the chief executive’s inbox and my inbox continue to be full of messages from across the world about Liverpool and return business.

“The ECHO Arena and BT Convention Centre has already picked up return business from people who came this year and will come back in 2015 and 2016.

“IFB 2016 will be shorter, taking place in June probably for around three weeks. We will not have 424 events because we almost ran out of steam. We will have around 100 events and we will centre it around the ECHO Arena and BT Convention Centre”

“We will have an underlying theme about trade. We will also be picking up the themes of connectivity and the Northern Powerhouse agenda. And we will be asking for input from businesses about what they want to see in 2016 that they didn’t see in 2014.”

Source: Liverpool Echo
Image