Above: Mike Rusbridge, co-founder of the Events Investment Club
Global exhibition industry figureheads have come together to form an investment and strategic advisory council to help entrepreneurs and fledgling businesses in the exhibition industry.
The Events Investment Club (working title) is the brainchild of former Reed Exhibitions chairman Mike Rusbridge and former Reed Exhibitions’ commercial director Nick Forster, who have pooled resources with a dozen leading lights from the international exhibition industry.
The group, which held its first official meeting at the Petersham Hotel in Richmond, UK, has been conceived to provide funds, strategic advice and industry matchmaking for entrepreneurs eager to fast-track the expansion of their businesses. Whether their aims are to be achieved through strategic guidance specific to trade or consumer events, technological expansion or overseas business development, in the Events Investment Club they will be able to seek assistance from the people who have made their names – and fortunes – doing precisely that.
“The challenge at the moment is that all the middle ground in our industry has largely been consolidated, so everybody is asking where they go for their next deal,” Rusbridge, who spends much of his time advising entrepreneurial early stage businesses, told me shortly after the group’s first meeting.