ICAEW's Downing Street invitation

Last month, ICAEW was invited to take part in a meeting at 10 Downing Street with Jimmy McLoughlin, the Prime Minister’s special adviser on business, to discuss the creative industries.

Shaun Beaney, Manager, Corporate Finance Faculty, represented the advisory and investment community, taking part alongside several prominent entrepreneurs, academic and organisational directors from across the digital and creative world.

The invitees included Charlotte Tilbury, founder, Charlotte Tilbury Beauty; Matt ‘Millz’ Miller, co-founder, ustwo; Carmen Busquets, founder, Cabus Ventures; Françoise Ortalo-Magnè, Dean, London Business School; Pat Loughrey, warden, Goldsmiths; Alice Black, director, Design Museum; Jeremy Silver, chief executive, Digital Catapult; Denzyl Fiegelson, founder, Platoon; and Malcolm Murray, head of corporate, Lee & Thompson.

The meeting was organised by Carolyn Dailey, founder of the Creative Entrepreneurs network. Shaun recently worked with this network devising a series of evening seminars for young start-up entrepreneurs for the Design Museum at its new building in Kensington.

Lowering risk profiles

The Downing Street discussions included the government’s general support for the creative industries (with the Industrial Strategy ‘sector deal’ still to be announced), advocacy of the sector by prominent entrepreneurs, and education and the perceived downgrading of creative subjects in state secondary schools in favour of ‘STEM’ subjects.

Shaun spoke about how investors and advisers (including chartered accountants) view the relative risk profiles of different types of creative businesses, and how seed funding for scale-up companies from agencies such as Innovate UK, as well as ‘investment readiness’ programmes help to lower those risk profiles.

Ongoing contribution

This visit built on ICAEW’s ongoing contribution to the UK government’s Industrial Strategy. In the creative industries, this has included: membership of the ‘Financing Growth’ working group of the government sponsored Creative Industries Council; Shaun’s chairmanship of Immerse UK's Access to Finance working group; and continued interest in ICAEW’s publications Creative Industries - Routes to Finance (published with 52 government, creative and investment organisations) and UK Television in Focus (published with PwC).

April 2018