A collection of our thoughts, opinions, (and sometimes general musings) on everything to do with all aspects of business finance, commercial finance, small businesses, and general news about ASC Finance for Business.
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Sale of Lloyds and RBS branches - has anyone asked the clients?
You may know that both Lloyds Bank and RBS have been forced to sell several hundred branches. That was decided by the Government and the European Commission. I am not getting involved in the political discussion but I have a question. Has anybody asked the clients whether they want to be transferred? The reason why...
I am sure all of you read in the press about the “downgrading of the Credit Rating from AAA” for the UK by some of the rating agencies. I still haven’t figured out what this really means because the last time I investigated I found out that when the United States was downgraded their interest...
Another set of “de-motivating” statistics have been released. Apparently Britain’s high streets are losing 14 stores a day as retailers struggle. Of course this is bad news but like everything in business there is positive news on the other side of the coin. Now is a brilliant time to start a retail business because landlords...
So we all know now that the United Kingdom has a national debt of ?1 trillion – whatever that means because I am sure you will agree with me that this really is “talking telephone numbers”. OK. I can live with the debt and I can try to understand the figure. What I cannot figure...
The other day I spent an evening with about 250 business people, real business people – a pet shop owner, an insurance broker, a telecoms broker, a property developer and so on. During the evening we listened to a speech by the Chancellor. After the obligatory talk about the various tax changes, budget constraints and...
Are Bridging Loans a Good Tool for Business Finance?
The number of bridging loan providers has increased sharply and published statistics suggest that there has been an increase of 27% in the number of bridging loans taken out in the past twelve months. My question: is – is this necessarily good news? By their very nature bridging loans are more expensive and provide lower...
The Bank of England looks after small business… or so we are allowed to believe. However, let’s have a look at the bank’s financial policy committee and who sits on it. If you look at the CVs of the members you will be impressed. They are all successful, intelligent and decent people. However, they have...
Risk - Regulation - Common Sense - who is winning?
Clearly common sense has lost. I think a lot is due to the increasing demand of regulation. Let’s look at mortgages or business loans. Obviously there is a risk for the borrower and for the lender. But it seems that regulation treats everything the same. A first time buyer who is looking for a £100,000...
Another initiative that never took off – No surprise there then! A little while ago I wrote about the tsunami of initiatives by the Government and suggested that rather than creating more “flagship” ideas the Government should focus on creating conditions to increase confidence. The other day I received an update on the “Homeowners Mortgage...
