Thinking big at MIPIM

They don't do things by halves in Russia. Power and presence is everything, and a certain swagger is written all over the presence of Rusia's regions and its capital city, Moscow, at MIPIM.

The Russian regions have their own pavilion, full of bright displays and gleaming models of all sorts of weird and wonderful schemes.

Moscow? Well, Moscow had two things: security on the doors and a model of the city centre which was twice the size of the entire Nottingham and Derby stand.

Directly opposite the regions' pavilion was an old car bearing the Bond movie title 'From Russia With Love'.

As the security on the door demonstrated,that sentiment may not be universally reflected at the moment and certainly not on the Kiev stand inside the main exhibition centre.

And the problem for Russia is that a lot of the considerable sums some of its people have raked in gets invested in the West.

There are some impressive sites in the main exhibition halls too, with quite a few UK cities throwing some serious money at their presence (and not just Birmingham and Manchester).

This is an 'upwards cycle' MIPIM where the professionals and the places they advise know there is some serious investment wodge out there - Colliers estimated this morning that another 60 billion euros of pension and insurance fund money will try to find a home this year.

Sounds big, but it's just under a third more than the total value of UK property investment last year.

UK cities are working hard to get some of this money coming in their direction and as I blogged yesterday they need to move reasonably fast. Competition means investors can be choosy, and the construction industry they need to get spades in the ground is short of capacity to make things happen - one building firm I spoke to here has got more than two-thirds of its 2015 budget in the bag already.

Nottingham has some big, logical oppportunities it is marketing at MIPIM. it needs to get Bob theBuilder  signed up to make them happen.