A top business leader had high praise for Bolton's Reebok Stadium complex when he came to town to attend an important international conference.

Digby Jones, Director General of the Confederation of British Industry, was one of the speakers at a lunch during an ICT session organised by the Commonwealth Games Business Club.

The CBI boss congratulated the Mayor of Bolton, Cllr John Walsh, on a "tremendous initiative" close to the motorway which combined a home for Bolton Wanderers with other facilities including shops.

Speaking in the Lion of Vienna suite, he said it was all "modern and absolutely fantastic."

And he added: "I think it is an example to the world."

Mr Jones was speaking at an Indian luncheon organised by the Government's Trade Partners UK organisation.

He talked about the growing opportunities for trade between the UK and India -- particularly in the growing information technology sector.

The Commonwealth Games, he said, was a tremendous example of what could be achieved when politics and business got together.

The ICT event attracted about 150 UK and Indian representatives who were encouraged to build business relationships for the future.

It was one of 40 or so Business Club sessions -- most of them held in the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester -- designed to boost the economy of the North-west alongside the sporting drama of the Games.

One of the architects is Bolton businessman Rod Sellers, chairman of the Manchester-based Commonwealth Economic Benefits Initiative, who has worked on the project for five years.

The Bolton seminar was opened by Cllr Walsh who told delegates that 4,000 people were now employed at Middlebrook on what was a low grade agricultural site 10 years previously. He said the town had once had more than 140 mills employing tens of thousands of people but we were in a very different age now.

"Our duty and role is to make sure that we do what we can to make sure that wealth and opportunity comes home to the North-west," he said.

Sikander Badat, head of Bolton Council's award-winning Ethnic Minorities Business Service, said EMBS had successfully brokered networks between ethnic minority small businesses in the UK and similar firms in the Commonwealth.

He called on mainstream companies to form strategic alliances with small and medium-sized ethnic minority firms to make use of the knowledge and experience they have of markets in Africa and Asia.