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Tax Relief
5th Feb 2012
The well-known Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) provides 30% tax relief on investments in unquoted companies. This is to be supplemented from 6 April 2012 by a new Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (seis) which will give up to 50% tax relief. As you can imagine there are a host of anti-avoidance rules, which I can’t cover…
Continue reading…Shares
24th Jan 2012
Following on from my last blog – have you had a real hard look at your investments? This week I want to look at shares, particularly shares in early stage unquoted companies. Over the last decade quoted shares have failed to generate significant capital gains but investors have been rewarded with dividends and hence returns…
Investment Strategy
5th Jan 2012
Had a real hard look at your investments recently? 2012 has arrived, and I want to look back some 12 years to 31 December 1999: FTSE 100 was at an all-time high of 6,930 nearly 25% higher than today’s level of 5,626. Government bonds with a 10 year maturity were yielding 5.5% compared to 2%…
A First Sighting of Recovery?
18th Dec 2011
Have we reached the bottom of the cycle yet or could we really go into a prolonged 1930’s style depression? I’d like to think that we have hit bottom and that next year will see the start of the return of some confidence and the beginnings of a sustainable recovery. According to the theory the…
Honesty and Leadership
3rd Dec 2011
The television coverage of the public sector strike contained one profoundly troubling interview with a head teacher and the owner of a small business. The small business owner had committed himself to the business in full and had no “safe pension” at all. He was working every day of the week to keep his business…
A little help from Germany?
12th Nov 2011
The excitement continues in the Eurozone and it seems that Europe has stalled until the issues are fixed or until they destroy the euro. But what exactly are the issues? Many economists say it is a result of the fixed exchange rates inherent in a monetary union, that does not also have a fiscal union…
The Art of Negotiation
1st Nov 2011
An old friend of mine who has done business extensively in both Greece and Italy used to say that the real negotiations in these cultures only started after the contract had been signed. The move by George Papandreou the Greek prime minister looks quite shrewd to me, and is an interesting lesson in different negotiation…
SME Financing
20th Oct 2011
The issue of financing SME and particularly early stage SME, which are potentially high growth, has been around for centuries. It is still a hot media topic today and one that the politicians are starting to get excited about. Despite various government schemes there is little to suggest that any new financing innovation has yet…
The Bank Appeals Process
13th Oct 2011
In April of this year the UK banks introduced a system that allows small businesses to appeal against decisions to turn down their loan applications. This new process followed political pressure and figures from the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB). The FSB’s research showed that 16% of small businesses were looking to borrow money and…
Creative Destruction
7th Oct 2011
Capitalism in one form or another now dominates the economic order of the world. A few countries like North Korea still persist with forms of communism but even the mighty China is essentially capitalist. One of the key features of capitalism is its ability to bring in change. Old ways of working, old organisational structures…