Finance Yorkshire chief executive is guest speaker for Yorkshire Fastest 50

The man heading up the £90m Finance Yorkshire fund will be the main guest at the Yorkshire Fastest 50 Awards in Leeds next week.

Alex McWhirter, chief executive of Finance Yorkshire, will deliver the keynote speech at the event at Leeds City Museum on Friday 25 March.

The Yorkshire Fastest 50 Awards have been developed by top 100 UK law firm Ward Hadaway in association with The Yorkshire Post and are aimed at highlighting and celebrating the fastest growing companies across the region.

Last week, the Yorkshire Post published the A to Z list of Yorkshire’s fastest growing businesses ranked by annual turnover growth for the past three years.

Representatives from those businesses, along with leading business figures from the region, will now gather at Leeds City Museum for the Yorkshire Fastest 50 Awards on Friday March 25.

There awards will be handed out to the fastest growing large business, fastest growing medium business and fastest growing small business. One of these three winners will then be crowned as Yorkshire’s overall fastest growing business.

Alex McWhirter is well placed to deliver the keynote speech at the event.

Finance Yorkshire is set to play a major role in the development of Yorkshire’s businesses with a £90m fund drawn from the European Regional Development Fund, the European Investment Bank and regional development agency Yorkshire Forward to invest in small and medium sized businesses across the region.

The organisation offers a range of funding from £15,000 to £2m via seedcorn finance, business loans and equity-linked investments to back businesses through critical stages of growth, from start-up to more mature enterprises.

Alex helped to launch Finance Yorkshire last year and was made acting chief executive of the organisation in October 2010.

Mr McWhirter said: “I am delighted to be asked to deliver the keynote speech at the Yorkshire Fastest 50 Awards.

“Occasions like this are an excellent way to recognise and celebrate the achievements of businesses right across the region and I am looking forward to meeting representatives of the Yorkshire Fastest 50 at the event.”

Martin Hulls, senior office partner at Ward Hadaway Leeds, said: “Finance Yorkshire has a potentially crucial role to play in nurturing and growing successful businesses in the region so in many ways Alex is the ideal person to be the keynote speaker at the Yorkshire Fastest 50 Awards.

“We are very grateful to him for kindly accepting the invitation to deliver the keynote speech, which I am sure will prove to be of great interest to everyone at the event.”

Note: this news article is from Finance Yorkshire’s previous fund. Read more about Finance Yorkshire