Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to this first podcast for the Spectators' Economic Innovator of the Year

Awards 2020, sponsored by Julius Baer. Today, we have been talking to the regional finalists for

the Midlands and the Northeast. That's a rather curious piece of the map. It's a sort

of diagonal stripe of the map, but it takes in everything from the Midlands through the whole

Yorkshire and Humberside region right up to Newcastle and Northumberland up there. And we have

judges representing all parts of the area. So we have with us today

four judges. We have Caroline Fiebold from Newcastle, Gordon Black, representing Yorkshire, Clive

Borden from the Midlands, Martin Cuthbert of Julius Bear, who's the regional director across this whole region.

And myself, Martin van der Weir, I'm business editor of the spectator.

Before we talk about the finalists, we've got four to talk about.

I'm going to ask each of the judges to introduce themselves very briefly

and to say a word about how they see business life

in their particular part of the region at the moment. So let's start with you, Caroline.

Thank you. And it's lovely again to be part of this competition, Martin. Thank you. And thank you,

Julius Bear, too, for making it happen. I am a co-founder of a company called First, Face to Face. I'm also have a passionate

interest in business ethics and set up an initiative on business ethics in the North East.

And I'm the chair of Newcastle Business School at Northumbry University, amongst other things.

But I think that's enough. Business up here is very tough. I mean, we always go into

recession first. We always come out of it last. My business actually sort of focuses on young people,

and I'm just terribly worried about the tsunami of unemployment there's going to be as a result of

COVID, despite what the government has done, which is substantial,

obviously, you know, how they can continue to support businesses. As ever, during a pandemic,

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