SME Business News

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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In addition to a healthy cash flow, credit control and managing debtors is essential to any business.  The Institute of Credit Management (ICM) has created an online portal designed to help businesses get paid on time.
Peter Mandelson Secretary of State for Business, comments: “Cashflow is critical to business survival but all too often the day [...]

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The British Chambers of Commerce has released its 2009 Burdens Barometer - the first time it has been published during a recession.
The Barometer shows that the cumulative cost to business of new regulation since 1998 has risen to £76.81 billion. This is a jump of over £10 billion from last year.
There is a positive note [...]

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Mark Dixon, founder and CEO of office space provider Regus, explains why the downturn has acted like a cleansing fire for the business world.
He comments: “Companies that come out of this recession will come out of it transformed as much more efficient businesses. This recession will shake away the cobwebs of the last 40 to [...]

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