Remy and Simon discuss Spring Statement reaction, what lies ahead for St Helens, the sale of a North Yorkshire luxury hotel, new investment from one of TV's dragon's and new backing for a North West headquartered recruitment consultancy.
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00:00Reaction to the budget, St. Helens joins its main character era, a luxury hotel
00:06goes on the market, investment from a dragon, and could it be magic for a new
00:11investment? That's what's coming up in today's daily business briefing.
00:19Hello, I'm Simon Keegan. I'm Remy Greasley. So obviously Remy, today and
00:26yesterday, all eyes were on the budget, and anybody that wants to catch up and
00:32get a kind of business view and outlook based on that can head over to our
00:38Roundup. Now in the unlikely event that anybody in the country still has any
00:44money after the budget, I believe there's a luxury hotel on the market. Yeah, so if
00:50you've got 3.25 million to spare, you may be wanting to buy a new
00:55luxury hotel and spa in North Yorkshire. Well, why not? This is the, yeah, I wish I
01:00had that money, but oh well. This is a Feathersham Arms Hotel and Verbena Spa
01:05in Helmsley, and it was originally built as a coaching inn by the Earl
01:11of Feathersham on the site of an older hostelry, but now, unfortunately, the
01:17hotel went into administration earlier this month. Yes, and now the
01:22administrators are putting on the market, and interestingly, they went into
01:26administration because of leverage rather than sort of lack of
01:29profitability. Right, okay. And they're actually doing quite well, and in 2024,
01:35the hotel recorded a turnover of about 3.4 million with a strong profit
01:40margin. Somebody could do something with that hotel then, couldn't they?
01:43There isn't any potential there, is there? Well, there isn't. Talking of potential, we were
01:48over in St. Helens the other day, and we had some great speakers. We had Mike
01:53Rush, the CEO of St. Helens Rugby Club, who was really, he's quite funny actually,
01:56isn't he? Yeah, great story as well. Yeah, yeah. We had Dave Travis from Tritax, who was talking
02:02about the new rail freight interchange over towards Newtonley Willows, which is
02:07the biggest of its kind in the country, and what that's going to do is that's
02:11going to enable freight that's coming into Liverpool or coming out of Liverpool
02:15to be taken off the roads so it can go straight by rail, so part of the net zero
02:22efforts. We also had the likes of St. Helens Council, St. Helens College, we had
02:28Stephen Knowles from MUSE. You also did an interview with Paul Nicholson. Yeah, of
02:35course. So Paul, obviously eponymous owner of the Nicholson Group, yeah, really
02:40fascinating guy. He started off as a property finance solicitor, which I think is
02:45really interesting, then obviously he must have had some sort of
02:48entrepreneurial ambition, because now I think Nicholson Group has about 300
02:54different properties in Liverpool and St. Helens mainly, and I think St.
02:59Helens has been a really fertile ground for them, and they've been doing up
03:05all these heritage sites, including the Beecham's building. Yeah, it's an
03:10interesting one, and really fitting of the event, because they're literally
03:14building on the heritage that was there, but creating the future.
03:20I thought it was nice, there was a lot of activity on LinkedIn from people who
03:24attended, and people were saying St. Helens is entering its main character
03:29era, which, you know, I'm in my 40s, I don't know what that kind of thing means, so I
03:34asked Deputy Editor Robin, who's in her 20s, and she explained, you know, when
03:37you're in your main character era, you're the protagonist, you're not kind of
03:41relying on anybody else, it's all about you being in the driving scene. That
03:45pretty much sums up St. Helens, I think, doesn't it? So from relighting
03:51the fire of St. Helens, I'll just labour that take, that pun, because I believe
03:57that Jason Orange's brother's company, Corpac, making an interesting investment.
04:03Yeah, so they've acquired a majority stake in a Northwest Headquarters
04:07recruitment consultancy, I'm not sure if you've heard of Axon Moore?
04:11Oh yeah, yeah, they're from our dealmakers.
04:13Yeah, yeah, they're a name that's seen around all the time, but they specialise
04:17in supporting businesses to recruit sort of C-suite leaders, and build those
04:21dynamic teams that I think can sort of create that growth within them. So
04:26they'll join Corpac's portfolio, I think it's about 40 companies, all growing
04:31with combined revenues of just under 700 million as of financial year 23. But
04:38interesting is that, obviously, we spoke about Jason Orange, I used to serve Jason
04:43Orange when I was a teenager.
04:45Playing paddle?
04:46No.
04:47Not that kind of serve?
04:48Not that. As in, I'm at a checkout, he's buying bread. But I couldn't remember
04:54the type of things he bought, so we'll leave that there.
04:56Oranges, maybe?
04:58Apples, I think it was, maybe.
05:00Well, talking of celebrities, Sarah Davies from Dragon's Den, who recently
05:05joined one of the Northwest's top companies, Travel Counselors. She's also
05:10invested in a company called AP Race, which is, it's a swimming brand, and it
05:16was set up by an Olympic champion named Adam Peaty, and his training partner, Ed
05:21Baxter. And it's a swim clinic where you can be coached by world-class athletes.
05:29So interesting to see her taking the plunge there. I'm sure that business will
05:34make a big splash.
05:35I knew that was coming.
05:36You did. So, Remy, as we crawl to the finish, I'd just like to remind anybody
05:42that they can check out any of these stories and more on insidermedia.com.
05:47And give me a follow on LinkedIn, Simon Keegan.
05:51Give you a follow on LinkedIn, Remy Greenslee.
05:54And we'll see you next time.