Firm to boost Notts' status

Nottingham Trent University is strengthening its bid to become a "truly entrepreneurial university" by appointing an enterprise company with a board of business leaders.

The company, to be known as Nottingham Trent Enterprises Ltd, will be wholly owned by the university as well as being a holding company covering all the university's subsidiary companies, such as Nottingham Law School and the Hive enterprise development centre.

Its role will be to maximise opportunities for the university to generate income from external sources, through ventures such as technology transfer and commercial research.

Alan Meers, Nottingham Trent's director of business development, said:

"This is an opportunity for us to draw on business expertise to affect our overall efforts to become more entrepreneurial. Most areas of the university's portfolio are under consideration for development."

He said the company would also establish the university as an important economic force in the region and it would be useful in addressing issues that could "only be satisfied so far by an academic infrastructure", for example the development of spin-off companies from the university's enterprise centre.

The university has ten spin-off companies and more than 20 technology-transfer partnerships involving company staff, university specialists and graduates working together on a range of projects.

The board will be led by Eric Barnes, chairman of information solutions firm Experian and deputy chairman of the board of Great Universal Stores. Other members include media entrepreneur Graeme Radcliffe and Wendy Gordon, head of marketing firm Insight.