Welcome to The Journal’s latest Business Barometer looking at business sentiment and confidence across the North-East. We have linked up with Newcastle Business School, part of Northumbria University, to survey key executives at the region’s biggest companies, as listed in our Top 200 publication. We hope this will prove a useful tool for our readers to understand how the business community is thinking about the key issues affecting them – and how they see the economy developing over the coming months.

WHILE much lip-service has been paid lately to the doom and gloom surrounding financial market turmoil and the recent string of interest rate rises, The Journal’s business barometer reveals a largely positive outlook for the region.

Over a third of companies are expecting a major boost in sales in the next year, a significant amount of firms are hoping to increase their workforce and more and more businesses are looking to expand overseas.

However the report does uncover a number of issues which could threaten the competitiveness of the region in the future.

The skills shortage, a poor transport network and environmental pressures are all cited as concerns among business leaders.

We spoke to three very different companies to find out their hopes and fears for the next 12 months.

See page two for more.