\n\tAccording to a recent CBI report UK companies rely too heavily on debt finance. It said that 50% of small and medium sized businesses used bank loans and more than one-third used overdrafts. Of the remainder only 3% use equity finance: the European average is 7%.<\/p>\n
\n\t Smaller UK businesses seem to associate equity funding with loss of control. Kaja Hall, CBI chief policy director is quoted as saying:<\/p>\n
\n\t “We need to shatter the equity finance glass ceiling and encourage growing firms across the UK to use this largely untapped resource. It’s a myth that using it results in loss of control and decision-making. Equity finance is one of the most effective ways for small and medium-sized firms to access investment capital and there are plenty of investors who take a minority stake.”<\/p>\n
\n\t It does appear that UK business owners are drawn to shorter term solutions offered by their banks: overdrafts and loans. The main problem with this sort of short-term approach to investment funding is that in today’s slow moving economic conditions businesses may need to borrow for longer periods in order to achieve their investment and growth goals.<\/p>\n
\n\t There is talk that building societies should be given rights to lend to the business community. Perhaps Government could step in to make the present, temporary, Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme a permanent feature of the UK tax system? Time for a rethink. UK businesses need to be able to invest for long term development and the present trend towards short term fixes does not really hit the spot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
According to a recent CBI report UK companies rely too heavily on debt finance. It said that 50% of small and medium sized businesses used bank loans and more than one-third used overdrafts. Of the remainder only 3% use equity finance: the European average is 7%. Smaller UK businesses seem to associate equity funding with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/slacc.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/slacc.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/slacc.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slacc.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/slacc.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/slacc.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slacc.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slacc.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}