Banking chief talks economic uncertainty

The annual session was held in the Rose Bowl at City Campus as part of Leeds Business School's public guest lecture series.

Speaking after the event, Mr Vosa commented: "What we've essentially found is that Yorkshire businesses have been slightly better than the UK average in both manufacturing and services. This is even more surprising since Yorkshire lacks one of the major drivers of the UK economic activity over the last year which is a large car industry. Car manufacturing has clearly had a big boost from global sales, Yorkshire is underrepresented in transport and machinery, and so private businesses have had to run even faster.

"In terms of the outlook for the education sector we haven't seen huge amounts of job losses despite the government's discussion of austerity, only about 5,000 jobs were lost in the education sector in the Yorkshire region from peak to trough. So the sector still looks to be good. Now remember, Yorkshire services have been outperforming the UK average since 2010, education sectors are of course one of those service sectors. It remains one of the UK's biggest exports in terms of Higher Education with inward students coming to the UK. That strength will continue.

"The global economy continues to heal. We are optimistic about the outlook for the UK and the world for about seven years. But there are plenty of pressure points throughout the year including the European elections, the Scottish referendum and events in the United States over the budget which could derail what should otherwise be a fairly solid recovery."

Mr Vosa added that potential concerns for the future economy were that sterling could drop and that "interest rates look to be slowly nudging higher".

As well as Chief Economist, Mr Vosa is Head of Market Economics for Yorkshire Bank which is part of the National Australia Banking Group. He joined National Australia Bank in 2001 from the Bank of England and his role involves keeping the bank abreast of relevant economic and financial market developments and to have extensive interaction with clients.

The lecture was the first in a series of eight high profile lectures hosted by Leeds Business School from January to May this year. The others are: Michael Woodford, the former chief executive who blew the whistle on a £1bn corporate fraud at Japanese electronics giant Olympus; Tom Riordan, Chief Executive of Leeds City Council; Rob Forkan, Co-Founder of Gandys Flip Flops; Judge Mervyn King, one of the world's foremost authorities on corporate governance and sustainability; Hugh Pym, Chief Economics correspondent for the BBC; Chris Clements, a partner in Grant Thornton, heading their Forensic & Investigation Services team in Yorkshire and Tom Griffin, Head of Corporate Communications, University of South Wales.