Last week at the Conservative’s annual party conference, Chancellor George Osborne confirmed the government’s support for developing UK exports. The self-imposed target – as a part of the UK turnaround strategy – is to have 100,000 more companies exporting, and a doubling of our exports to £1 trillion, by 2010. As always with these type […]
The UK economy – is the turnaround a done deal?
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) confirmed that the UK economy is on the road to recovery when it released figures on 26th September confirming that it grew by 0.7% in the second quarter of 2013. In addition, the ONS was able to confirm that the construction and industrial sectors had expanded at their fastest […]
Forward Guidance – a chance to get our business finance in order?
Those of you with their fingers on the pulse of the UK economy, will be well aware of the recent “big introduction” from Mark Carney – new Governor of the Bank of England. I refer, of course, to his ‘Forward Guidance‘ on interest rates, which – as we mentioned in our last post – is […]
How not capping house prices is good for UK turnaround strategy
It’s been widely publicised in the media over the past three months that house prices are on the increase again. Just after the Halifax and the Nationwide started confirming the reality of all of this, various commentators were suggesting that we might be on the verge of another housing bubble. In fact, I wrote about […]
SEIS – Tax relief for SME investments – Business finance solutions
The feel good factor is back – is it built on sand? What a great week for UK business. Fantastic weather, three great sporting achievements, house prices are going up (allegedly), low interest rates are going on forever (?) and we all feel pretty good about the future – me included. Even the IMF has […]
Business Finance freely available says government and banks – REALLY?
Great news from Government and the big 4 Banks – ‘We want to solve funding problems and provide more business finance solutions now’. On the surface this is fantastic news. However if we dig below the surface there is more to this than meets the eye. I would ask two questions: Do they really mean […]
Business finance solutions – BoE improves Access to Finance
The Bank of England has changed the rules to encourage business lending. There was a key change in monetary policy last week announced by the Bank of England in their Bi-annual Financial Stability report. The main body of the report warned of on-going problems in the access of finance to the SME in the UK […]
New financial crisis NOW. Costs up – availability of funding down?
WARNING: There is a fresh financial crisis brewing! For once it is an increase that is the problem: bond yields. Why is it potentially bad for investors when the yield of a bond goes up? Because bonds act in reverse, with prices going down as yields go up. Government bonds are experiencing a big sell […]
Enterprise Capital Fund – Access to finance for growth potential SMEs
Following on from our recent article on the new Business Bank, this is the sixth in a series explaining the various government funding schemes seeking to provide business finance solutions for businesses in the UK. Enterprise Capital Funds (ECFs) The Government has a number of interventions which are aimed at bridging the gap in the supply of […]
Business strategy 101: Is this as good as it gets for the UK?
Should someone be calling the top of the UK economy before we all get our fingers burnt again? Is the current stock market rally and increase in consumer confidence a false dawn? Why have we gone from sack cloth and ashes just a few months ago to what is being described in parts of the media […]