Pension-led funding - Blog

Is it any of our business?

Big bank bonuses are back in the spotlight again, as recently humbled Barclays prepares to slap an extra £1m into the pay packet of chief executive Antony Jenkins. This award is only the tip of the pay iceberg for Jenkins, who, according to the Guardian, could see a final annual pay packet of around £8.5m.I don’t think that any of us in business care about people earning big bucks, after all, it is one of the motivations we have for setting u...

New Thinking For The New Year

Looking back on 2012 we can clearly see that one of the most pressing problems facing the UK economy is the general lack of a coherent policy to boost growth. Politicians and their policy advisers appear bereft of any creative thinking surrounding this area, instead we are being offered an ever more desperate sounding series of initiatives designed to encourage lending to SME businesses.With growth likely to be 1% or less in the coming year it is...

Mr. Cable’s Business Finance Partnership. Really?

“Small businesses struggling to access credit are to be given a welcome boost with £110 million of new funding, Vince Cable announced today.The Business Secretary pledged £55 million of Government funding – through a scheme called the Business Finance Partnership – to peer-to-peer lenders and other finance suppliers.   Match-funding from the private sector is expected to lever in a minimum of £55 million, making at lea...

UK businesses explore finance options

Business owners have had to deal with a lot of changes since the onset of the current financial meltdown in 2007. Not least being the fundamental way that lenders have had to respond to circumstances by changing, often drastically, their attitude to individual businesses.I talk to a lot of business owners who are simply confused as to why good, long standing relationships appear to have been replaced by (as the borrower sees it) by a short-term v...