SME Business News

For small businesses the priority, as always, will be to carry on creating wealth and jobs – and the FSB is calling on government to create the right conditions for growth by providing an economic stimulus for small business.
One key concern over the past 18 months is that of affordable finance for small business. The [...]

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Public sector clients are still late to pay small businesses, a survey has found.
A survey by the Federation of Small Business (FSB) found that 22% of payments from local authorities were late, while 35% of payments from central government were still outstanding after the agreed payment period.
The FSB believes the government, nationally and locally, must [...]

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New research published by CreditPal, a free online service for SMEs, reveals that over the last two years almost half (43%) of UK SMEs have been left with monies owed to them as a result of their trading partners or customers going bust. The total amount owed to SMEs is estimated to be around 5.3 [...]

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Small businesses have collectively saved almost £3 billion a year in a drive by the government to cut back on red tape.
The British government’s target is to cut administrative work for small businesses to 25% by May 2010 in an attempt to save at least £3.3 billion. In addition to this they have recently announced [...]

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The FPB has welcomed some of the small business-friendly measures outlined by the Chancellor, including the extension to the Enterprise Finance Guarantee (EFG) scheme, the freeze on corporation tax for small firms and the extension of the Time to Pay scheme. However, the FPB is arguing that the support package announced by Mr Darling will [...]

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Almost a quarter (23%) of respondents to the survey selected late payment and subsequently poor cash flow as their ‘key issue’ – more than those who voted for a lack of sales (20%), and complying with health and safety regulations (11%).
Even declining bank lending was deemed to be less of a concern than poor payments. [...]

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The Chancellor, Alistair Darling is looking at ways of enabling small and medium-size firms to borrow money from sources other than the major high street banks.
There have been consistent complaints that SMEs are struggling to raise capital from the banks.
Under the mooted plans, SMEs would be able to apply to borrow money from City pension [...]

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The new research based on Freedom of Information Act requests has been designed to discover how many local authorities and health trusts are paying their suppliers – which are often small businesses – in a reasonable amount of time.
It comes almost a year after the Government urged councils and the NHS to commit to paying [...]

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The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) is challenging what it calls “a potential monopoly of power being built up by high street banks over small firms seeking finance”, two years after the credit crunch started.
The FSB is warning that bank mergers, recapitalisation and schemes targeted at the big banks to stimulate lending as a result [...]

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Probably the best payers in the world - possibly not!
Carlsberg, the world’s fourth largest beer-maker, recently introduced standard payment terms of 95 days from the end of the month in which an invoice is sent out.
This means that businesses supplying the multi-national company can expect to wait well over 120 days before Carlsberg settles a [...]

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