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One swallow doesn’t make a summer

One swallow doesn’t make a summer

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...

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Landlords lose appetite for meeting tenant demand

Landlords lose appetite for meeting tenant demand

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...

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Stricken TV producers open insolvency toolkit

Stricken TV producers open insolvency toolkit

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...

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Factories firing up for a comeback

Factories firing up for a comeback

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,...

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More trouble ‘down the rub-a-dub’

More trouble ‘down the rub-a-dub’

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...

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EV troubles cast a shadow over early stage tech

EV troubles cast a shadow over early stage tech

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...

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Covid loan fraud bounces back on sole traders

Covid loan fraud bounces back on sole traders

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...

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Letter from London – Budget Review

Letter from London – Budget Review

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...

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Council crisis takes another lurch downwards

Council crisis takes another lurch downwards

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...

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Wonderkid investigation rings alarm bells for directors

Wonderkid investigation rings alarm bells for directors

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...

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Services show their limits as economy shrinks

Services show their limits as economy shrinks

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...

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