- Work Hard
- 2nd May 2026
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£100 billion of the North East’s money, none invested locally – meet the man helping to change that
Simon Rushworth reports on Develop North PLC, the UK’s first private sector-led regional wealth fund, a decade in the making and, finally, open for business.
WAKE UP AND SMELL THE BILLIONS
More than £100 billion belongs to people who live in the North East. Let that sink in for a moment.
Your savings. Your neighbour’s stocks and shares. The pension quietly accumulates for the woman behind the bar at your local. It all adds up, and pretty much none of it is invested back into the region it came from.
“Think of it like a giant holdall of North East cash,” explains Ian McElroy, non-executive director of Develop North PLC. “We drop it off at Newcastle’s Central Station and wave it off to London, never to be seen again. What makes it even crazier is that we then have these trade missions all over the world to ask for the money back. People talk about the North East brain drain – this is the North East money drain. Develop North aims to plug that drain.”
It’s a line that lands differently every time you hear it. This is, for the record, the third or fourth occasion Ian and I have discussed Develop North, and that particular revelation never loses its impact.
THE POLITICS OF THE PURSE
Ian isn’t alone in his frustration. At last summer’s Mansion House speech, Chancellor Rachel Reeves addressed pension reform and pledged to ringfence 5% of local government pension scheme assets for regional growth investment. In the North East, the Tyne and Wear Pension Fund holds net assets of £13.5bn. Under Reeves’ reforms, that translates to a guaranteed £675m invested right here.
“I’ve long advocated for even a 1% contribution, that alone would be £135m,” says Ian. “Five per cent of the TWPF could do so much good for the people who already pay into it. We simply want to retain what’s ours. Keep North East money in North East hands.”
FROM LOAN BOOK TO LISTED COMPANY
Develop North didn’t emerge overnight. Tier One Capital, the firm Ian is part of, first hatched the idea of a private sector-led regional investment fund back in 2015. Nobody really knew what it would look like. But they had people with money seeking consistent returns, and developers with strong projects who couldn’t get bank funding post the 2008 crash. Tier One brought both sides together and built a significant loan book.
Proof of concept. But not quite the transformative vehicle the North East deserved.
The pivot came post-Covid, when Ian sat down with one of the region’s most celebrated business leaders. “I thought I need to speak to someone who knows the PLC world and has been hugely successful in that world,” he explains. “I sat down with Sir Graham Wylie for a couple of hours and tapped into his know-how. The first thing he told me was that having established a PLC, the priority was to try and keep it, because you can scale through acquisition and, by its very nature, it brings credibility.”
With Sir Graham’s steer secured, the newly rebranded Develop North had its strategic direction, its ambition and, crucially, its name. “Does what it says on the tin,” Ian beams.
INVESTMENT WITH IMPACT
Make no mistake — Develop North is in the business of making money. Ian doesn’t shy away from that. But the firm’s ambition extends well beyond shareholder returns.
“Our region is at the top of some really depressing league tables,” he says candidly. “There are parts of this region where you only have to be a mile apart and the difference in life expectancy is 12 years. How is that a thing? We’ve got five top-performing universities and yet some of the highest unemployment figures on record.”
Develop North’s response is to deploy capital with a laser focus on those generational issues — employability, poverty, opportunity. “We’re not a generalist charitable funder,” Ian is quick to stress. “But we are going to use our longevity as a company to tackle some of these social issues. That can only be achieved over a 20-30-year period — but when we deploy our money, that is where we will look first.”
The investment tailwinds are, he argues, uniquely favourable right now. Devolved regional powers, the transformative effect of Saudi ownership at Newcastle United and the attention of serious institutional investors — Blackstone, the Reuben Brothers, the Singaporean Sovereign Wealth Fund — all point in the same direction.
“The really savvy investment managers are starting to deploy their capital into the North East,” says Ian. “That gives us huge confidence that our region is on the cusp of growth.”
THE RIGHT PERSON AT THE RIGHT TIME
Every ambitious company needs a figurehead. For Develop North, that person is Michelle Percy – formerly Director of Investment and Place at Newcastle City Council, with private sector experience spanning commercial and mixed-use developments. She joined as CEO at the start of this year.
“When Michelle became available it felt like the stars had aligned,” admits Ian. “She’s incredibly well-connected — not just in the North East but nationally and internationally. She’s brilliant at managing people and raising Develop North’s profile. That experience of both the private and public sector is priceless at this stage of our journey.”
THE NUMBERS AND WHAT COMES NEXT
The headline figures are already compelling: 12,000 jobs supported; almost £90m in real estate investment raised since 2017; 43 projects with 35 developers; gross development value exceeding £280m. But Ian is emphatic, this is just the beginning.
“We came up with the steam train. We came up with the light bulb. The emergence of Develop North is another first-of-its-kind example of the innovation that’s always enabled the North East to stand out. This isn’t just one person doing one thing. This is a collective.”
A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, he calls it. On the evidence here, it’s hard to disagree.
This feature first appeared in Eyes & Ears North East — a concise, curated weekly round-up of regional news for busy people who care about what’s happening across the North East.
Photography: Christopher Owens Photography
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