In the midst of the doom and gloom of recession it is refreshing to hear that Barclays Bank are predicting a brighter short term future for SMEs in the UK.
Nic Bayley head of product for Barclays Local Business made the startlingly optimistic claim at the annual conference of the National Federation Of Enterprise Agencies.
“We believe most of the downward adjustment will have occurred by the end of the year, and a lot of the fall has already occurred,” he said. “Business closures are also past their peak and are likely to level off shortly. While we expect some further decline in the stock of firms into 2009, by early 2010 we could be seeing the first real signs of a pickup in SME numbers.”
Bayley claims that experts are wrong to compare the credit crunch to the recession of 1993, saying that the current situation is ‘fundamentally different’ as more small businesses have kept their borrowing in line with their assets rather than borrowed excessively.
He added that despite claims that banks are calling in loans and generally making things more difficult for small businesses, Barclays has never taken this stance and the bank is ‘definitely open for business’ for small company finance.
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