Main Board Business Leader's Dinner in partnership with CMS UK

Our most recent Business Leaders’ Dinner event took place on Thursday 20th October at?Silversmiths Restaurant, situated in the heart of Sheffield city centre, in partnership with international law firm?CMS UK. Guests arrived from 6:30pm onwards and enjoyed a fine three-course meal whilst discussing challenges businesses are facing in our seemingly constantly changing world.

Julian Woodman, Managing Consultant at?Main-Board, opened the evening with an introduction where he encouraged guests to share their respective backgrounds. A range of business leaders including Managing Directors, Chief Executives, Operations Directors, Commercial Directors and Finance Directors attended the dinner, representing companies across the staffing, private equity, manufacturing, metal trading, technology and med-tech sectors, with a mix of entrepreneurially-led private companies and private equity-backed businesses.

As starter dishes were served, guests discussed the challenges faced by their businesses. It was mentioned how the UK has enjoyed a period of relative political and economic stability over the last few months which was greatly appreciated despite the ongoing challenges of persistent high inflation and weak consumer confidence. Encouragingly there was a strong positive sentiment amongst the guests with successful acquisitions, rapid growth and burgeoning order books being reported.

After the main course, we were delighted to listen to a guest talk from?Liz Pickering, Relationship Director at?Santander UK Corporate Banking. Liz talked about her experiences of the current climate and the challenges that she is seeing including labour shortages, energy costs, the continued legacy of Brexit and managing stock in a period of high inflation. Liz was able to point to positive signs regarding inflation which is starting to slow and energy prices are reducing. Encouragingly the level of insolvencies, whilst increasing is still well below previous expectations and the recent well-publicised bank failures in the US and Europe have not led to a new banking crisis as had been feared.

Liz helpfully highlighted the ongoing ESG agenda becoming more topical in the SME area rather than just in the realm of large corporates and called attention to the increased risks of cyber fraud to businesses.

One of our guests, a private equity investment director was helpfully able to provide his perspective on the current levels of M&A activity and offered the view that there was a high level of `pent-up’ capital amongst PE firms waiting to be deployed.

Enthusiastic discussion and conversation continued around the table with guests sharing opinions, experiences and building new connections.

We would like to extend our sincere appreciation to Silversmiths for once again providing exceptional food and a first-class level of service throughout. We received some fantastic feedback from several guests who attended following the event.

We look forward to hosting similar events like this in the future. If you would like to attend, or indeed want to volunteer as a guest speaker, we would welcome your interest so please contact?Julian Woodman?to discuss in further detail.