Profile - Richard May: Positive thinking about a city that is forging a new reputation

THERE are days when it’s wise to tread warily around an Arsenal fan.

Just two days after his beloved team received an 8-2 thumping at the hands of Manchester United, I met Richard May and asked him to reminisce about the late 1990s.

Perhaps for a moment, his mind flitted back to the golden age when Arsenal’s defence was shored up by the likes of Steve Bould. As he gazed out of DLA’S office in Sheffield, Mr May recalled the city he had first visited in the mid 1990s. It hadn’t been a pretty sight. Many people still linked Sheffield with The Full Monty, a film about steel workers who became strippers because their city was in decline.

“When you came to the train station in 1996, it looked like a bomb had hit it,” he said. “Now it’s all been redeveloped. There’s a lovely swathe of concrete going up into the city centre that looks good. The Full Monty had that bit at the beginning which said, ‘Come to Sheffield, a fantastic place to be’ and it had some horrible sights of our lesser- known areas. Now we’ve got a phenomenal reputation through Sheffield Hallam University and Sheffield University and the AMP (Advanced Manufacturing Park in Rotherham) is a world-leading facility.”

As the new head of DLA Piper’s 320-strong Sheffield office, Mr May is well-placed to give an objective assessment of Sheffield’s renaissance.

Mr May joined the firm’s Sheffield office as a trainee in 1995. He has risen steadily through the ranks since then. In his role as head of corporate, he gained an insider’s insight into the challenges facing local firms.

But how did a man whose CV includes a brief stint in a freezer room end up in Sheffield?

Educated in Hertfordshire and at the University of East Anglia, Mr May headed north during the dying days of the last Conservative Government.

“What’s changed about Sheffield in the last 15 years, is the quality of businesses within it,’’ he said.

“We’ve got some cracking businesses, and equally, we’ve got a lot fewer plcs. There’s been quite a big change in the corporate landscape.

“A lot of companies have been taken private. I did three or four transactions with Sheffield Forgemasters in my junior days. They were bought by an American firm, split in half, and now in 2011, after an MBO (management buyout) with Graham Honeyman and his team, they’ve got a fantastic international business.”

How has South Yorkshire adapted to the lethal cocktail of credit crunch and cutbacks in public sector spending?

Better than you might think, according to Mr May, because Sheffield has been here before.

“The impression I get is that our region had been hit so hard before that the businesses knew what they had to do to survive,” he said.

“People made difficult decisions about employment, and made them at an early stage. I think they’ve come through it a lot better than some of the other businesses around the UK, who weren’t so used to dealing with these problems. Some of the most successful businesses around here have continued to invest during that difficult period and use it as an opportunity.”

Retailers, unfortunately, aren’t out of the woods yet.

Mr May recalled: “I was recently sitting around a table of businessmen, and those in the retail sector were suggesting that the last couple of months had seen a bit of a seismic shift in UK spending power and intentions.

“They were forecasting some significant issues for retailers – but these were retailers who were dealing with the UK markets.

“The businesses who weren’t reliant on this fairly flat if not stagnating UK market and were instead diversifying and exporting to Russia, China and India were still forecasting growth and really seemed fairly confident, considering the fragility of the economy.”

Few in Sheffield would ever admit it, but the city’s legal sector is often seen as being in the shadow of Leeds.

Mr May said: “The difficulty is that if you are a lawyer who wants to go to a regional centre, you will probably want to hedge your bets.

“So if you get a job at one place and it doesn’t work out, you have to have somewhere else to go. If you go to Leeds, there are a number of City quality firms. Or perhaps you might go to Manchester.

“We have found that if you are recruiting, you are unlikely to get people ‘on spec’ deciding to come to Sheffield to become an international lawyer.

“Our recruitment is often a little bit of luck. It’ll be somebody who has got a connection to South Yorkshire or they went to university here. The two universities have a fantastic international reach, so they are attracting people into Sheffield who are not just from the UK.”

Law firms have felt the pinch in recent years, because many clients have cut costs. But Mr May believes the global success of South Yorkshire’s manufacturers will lead to more work for DLA.

“The manufacturing sector is still a pretty hot topic in terms of Government attention. Another sector is mining and minerals, where we have got a real specialism here in the Sheffield office. We will be selling that nationally and internationally.

“We also have the national centre for environmental and health and safety law in this office. We are trying to ensure we get the most out of the firm’s international network.

“There’s been an increase in the numbers of overseas trade purchasers who want to invest in the north by acquisition. We’ve been doing quite a few deals with our international office contacts.”

Few firms have as big a global reputation as Sheffield Forgemasters. It attracted attention last year for negative reasons, when the Coalition Government decided to axe an £80m loan which had been set up by Labour before the General Election.

The loan could have provided a shot in the arm for Sheffield’s economy, because Forgemasters would have used it to make components for nuclear power stations.

The Coalition Government said the loan was unaffordable at a time when cuts were needed because of the dire state of the economy.

“The management at Sheffield Forgemasters has had enough of the press comment and speculation about the loans saga,” said Mr May. “There is a positive side. This a business based in Sheffield that exports 80 to 85 per cent of its products into places where you would think the local markets would be able to do things cheaper.

“They are exporting into China and Brazil and it’s all based on a workforce, and research and development, which is based in South Yorkshire.”

It seems Sheffield has finally emerged from the long spectre of The Full Monty.

Richard May Factfile

Title: Office Managing Partner and Head of Corporate at DLA in Sheffield

Date of birth: February 26, 1967

Education: Chancellors Comprehensive in Hertfordshire, UEA in Norwich (BA in History)

First job: Working in the freezer room in Bejam

Favourite film: Monty Python’s Life of Brian

Favourite music: Stevie Wonder or The Stranglers – depends on my mood!

Car driven: Audi A6

Favourite holiday destination: Portugal

Thing you are most proud of: My two young daughters (corny but nevertheless true)