When Juergen Maier was ten years old, he came with his family from Germany to Leeds. It was 1974, and the UK had just joined the European Economic Community. He got a job with Siemens UK in 1986 as a graduate trainee after studying production engineering at Trent Polytechnic (now Nottingham Trent University). Maier stayed with the company throughout his career. Sitting in his office at Siemens HQ in Frimley, his abiding memory is “walking through the centre of Leeds and looking down at the River Aire which was this green slush of chemistry… if you had seen some life, you would have thrown it a line to rescue it.” No birds went there. Now, over 40 years later, Leeds is a bustling, attractive metropolis, and the businessman is delighted with the change that has taken place in his home town. “It’s transformed beyond all recognition … that same spot has riverside flats. There are birds!”
Maier, who now lives in Manchester, likes to reflect on how far the region has come since the 1970s, when social unrest was so bad that he and his brother couldn’t go into town for an ice cream, as they had in Germany. “I always enjoy that reflection. I enjoy it in a positive way because so much prosperity has been brought to the North, and we do knock it too much. We’ve come a long way.”
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