News

Optimism is generally a good quality when running a business. It fosters positive energy and a can-do approach, without which success is much more difficult. Nonetheless a healthy dose of realism might be useful when considering the recent fall in corporate...

Mortgage costs have increased by twice the level of earnings growth in the last 25 years, pushing rental demand sky high;  buy-to-let landlords, however, are heading for the door. The period of relatively cheap mortgages immediately following the 2008 financial crisis...

The ripple effects of a sector’s global downturn will often continue to hurt small operators for long after the big players have steadied themselves. The TV industry, with a long tail of independent suppliers, is a sad example close to home. Recent weeks have seen a...

Debating the UK’s economic future inevitably leads to questioning the strength of our industrial base: what can generate earnings outside financial and professional services, or early stage tech development? Manufacturing’s share of the UK economy is around 10% today,...

Britain’s pubs will be totting up the long weekend’s takings, hoping that mixed weather over an earlyish Easter wasn’t too much of a dampener. Sadly these things matter in an industry that has at best limped along since Covid and saw nearly 800 boozers enter...

Britain’s fledgling electric vehicle industry seems to have run out of juice - but we shouldn’t be too hasty in writing off our entire tech sector. Lunaz, backed by football legend David Beckham, this month put its commercial transport arm Lunaz Applied Technologies...

It is far too early to tell whether business conditions for struggling UK-registered companies will soon turn the corner: inflation has eased, but not far enough for the Bank of England’s liking; the UK economy officially dipped into recession after two shrinking...

Almost four years after the government’s Bounce Back Loan (BBL) Scheme was rolled out to save small businesses at risk from pandemic lockdowns, closer scrutiny of businesses now unable to repay the loans is leading to action against  an increasing number of...

Plenty of political hopes and fears have been invested in today's Budget, which was probably the final set-piece financial event before this year's UK General Election. From the Conservative perspective, after two relentlessly gloomy years of economic and political...

The financial crisis facing Britain’s councils is deepening. A new poll of local government leaders and managers claims to show, for the first time, the true extent of a structural funding issue that is leaving authorities close to bust. Only 4% of council leaders...

Insolvency Service investigators aren’t only called in after the event. They can also examine complaints about alleged corporate abuse or fraud in live companies. As is so often the case, two issues always put directors’ behaviour under the microscope: not conducting...

Notwithstanding the potential boost to exports of a relatively weak pound (on a 10-year view, anyway) for the UK’s manufacturing and assembling activities, the service sector still accounts for 81% of GDP and 83% of employment. It’s therefore unsurprising that it was...