ACCA UK and The Corporate Finance Network’s (The CFN) weekly tracker of SME health reveals that a third of businesses will probably not be able to access the cash they need to last more than two weeks of lockdown (33%).
“Plaiting Fog” and “Watching paint dry” are also phrases that come to mind. On 18th March, the Chancellor said “We will do whatever it takes” to support businesses and employees through this crisis. Yet, 4 weeks later, businesses are still floundering to access most of the support which has allegedly been offered.
The Corporate Finance Network, representing some of the UK’s most proactive and commercially astute larger, regional accountancy firms, has undertaken further research in respect of 10,000 of their SME clients, which now predicts that in the next 2 weeks, as a result of the COVID-19 lockdown, 20% of these businesses will “probably” or “definitely” run out of cash in the next 2 weeks unless the Government brings other solutions to protect businesses and jobs.
Whilst most of the recent changes to the CBILS are on the whole welcome and will make facilities easier to access for many SMEs, I am still concerned that the Government is encouraging, in fact expecting, SME business owners to load their business with debt.
As much as the commitment from the Treasury to cover the first 12 months interest and fees is appreciated,
Kirsty McGregor, founder of The Corporate Finance Network, representing some of the UK’s most proactive and commercially astute regional, independent accountancy firms, has given her reaction to the changes brought in to amend the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme by the British Business Bank, which are:
1. Changes have been announced to take effect from Monday 6th April but need to be applied retrospectively to any offer made since 23rd March 2020
Kirsty McGregor, whose research from her accountants in The Corporate Finance Network hit the headlines yesterday with the news that 18% of their SME clients were likely to go bust within weeks and 32% within months, has once again tried to get her message through to the Treasury that SME’s don’t want loans,
The Corporate Finance Network, representing some of the UK’s most proactive and commercially astute regional, independent accountancy firms, has undertaken research amongst 13,000 SME’s which predicts that in the next 4 weeks, as a result of the COVID-19 lockdown, 18% of all SMEs will not be able to survive, despite the support measures currently announced by the Government.
Kirsty McGregor was interviewed by regional ITV News on Wed 18th March. Unfortunately the programme was busy that only a snippet was able to be used. Similar advice will be given by Kirsty on a webinar on Monday 23rd March at 1.30pm with Capitalise.com Register here and if you can’t watch the live webinar,
FAO: Creditsafe Business Solutions Ltd, Dun & Bradstreet, Equifax, Experian, Graydon, Vistra UK and Company Watch and their trade body, Business Information Providers Association (BIPA)
I’m calling on every company in your sector to take action, this morning, to help the UK’s economy in this dire times. Whatever change in legislation or charter you need,
The Corporate Finance Network has published its forthcoming National Conference programme which has a theme of “The ABCD of Corporate Finance” and focuses on a range of topics around Artificial intelligence, Blockchain, Cloud Computing and Big Data.
Speakers from a range of industries will be presenting about how these technologies are already affecting our work and what we need to prepare for as continued innovation will undoubtedly change to our working practices even further over the next few years.
