A crack team of business brains has been pulled together to mastermind an innovative push to create wealth.

Calling themselves The Alchemists, interim chief executive George Heydon told Business Editor Mike Parker how he and his colleagues plan to make certain North-East companies richer.

Centuries ago, some of the sharpest minds were convinced they had the knowledge and the expertise to turn base metal into gold.

Alchemists wove webs of mysticism around their supposed money-spinning abilities and their pursuit of spiritual enlightenment.

But many lost their lives, or turned their attentions to other matters, when they failed to perform for their masters - the leaders of ancient Egypt, India, China and Greece, to name but a few countries where alchemy was practised.

To hear that a team of some of the North-East's most impressive and successful businessmen had adopted the ancient art as their title, therefore, was slightly surprising.

George Heydon, who owns eight businesses, heads the hands-on consultancy group until April, and alongside him is a star-studded cast from the region.

"This is about indigenous businesses supported by indigenous entrepreneurs," he says.

The aim of The Alchemists is clear - wealth-creation and, to that end, their chosen name rings true.

As an entity, it exists to turn North-East companies with latent potential into high-flying, high-growth money spinners.

This is entrepreneur-to-entrepreneur business support with decades of experience given virtually overnight from some of the highest achievers this region can muster.

"This is not for everyone," he adds.

That much is true, it is by invitation only.

This is no get-rich-quick scheme for any fly-by-night looking to milk the region and then leave.

It is about creating wealth for the region and keeping it in the region.

About ten firms have already been approached and are said to be very keen on the concept, hardly surprising when some of the North-East's top entrepreneurs want to significantly transform their business fortunes.

Who the ten are is being kept a closely-guarded secret for the time being until the first wave of companies is chosen for the programme.

The expectation will be to see their names in lights after getting The Alchemists' makeover.

As a concept, The Alchemists is not necessarily new. Agencies have spent millions of pounds and hundreds of manhours trying to improve local wealth but the foundations and component parts are the key.

Heydon goes to some lengths to gloss over how The Alchemists is bankrolled and who it is accountable to.

Exactly what the criteria is for wealth creation is another area not cast in stone.

In essence, the group is a public-private partnership, but with a difference.

One NorthEast, the regional development agency, has backed the project with £1.5m over the next two-and-a-half years.

"The concept and the funding was certainly in the regional economic strategy," he says: "The public sector came up with the need and have obviously come up with the finance.

"The private sector, the entrepreneurs, in partnership with the public sector, is creating the solution. That is the way forward for many of the issues we face in the region."

Mr Heydon is keen to stress the strengths of the business minds involved in the project and less willing to discuss the fact that this is taxpayers' money funding a scheme which will cherry-pick firms and launch them into financial hyperdrive.

Unlike many publicly funded projects, this one comes with a relatively blank sheet. There are no wild demands for how the funding is to be spent and what criteria must be followed.

Make money, create success and few demands will be made.

"Autonomy with accountability," Mr Heydon calls it: "Thinking out of the box at speed.

"As long as we deliver the cookie and take taxpayers money and improve on current economic models, then all sides will be happy."

Those involved will receive a "small honorarium", Mr Heydon says, but in the main they are doing it for the hedonistic kudos of wealth-creation on their own back doorstep.

"We want to make millionaires," he adds: "We are in the business of picking winners."

Suffice to say, Heydon is confident The Alchemists will show its mettle, if not in gold, then in a real and radical upsurge in the ability of businesses to make money for themselves, for their staff and the wider community.

Whether or not they can succeed where their latter-day counterparts failed, only time can tell.

Names check

The Alchemists are: Tom Maxfield, former Sage director, who now runs a chain of successful restaurants and hotels; Mark I'Anson founded Integrated Micro Products; Bill Teasdale was a former senior partner of Pricewaterhouse Cooper North East; Rob Shotton was managing director and chairman of Orchid Drinks before it was sold to Britvic; Peter Allan is a partner at law firm Ward Hadaway; Alan Fielder, former regional corporate director for Barclays Bank, runs a corporate financial consultancy; Keith Stephenson is managing director of packaging maker Audus Noble and Chris Thompson is group managing director of Express Engineering.