Category: Sustainability, ESG
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Transforming Lending in the UK Part 3
This is the third in a series of posts centred around the article ‘How should we fund the UK’s growth agenda?’ posted earlier this month. In the article, the head of the Business Finance Task Force asked for ideas on ways to transform lending and fund UK growth. I extracted key questions (in quotations) from…
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Transforming Lending in the UK – Part 1
In an article ‘How should we fund the UK’s growth agenda?’ earlier this month, the head of the Business Finance Task Force asked for ideas on ways to transform lending and fund UK growth. As someone who spent much of the past two decades raising commercial and equity finance for banks, public sector entities and…
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Emperor has no cash!
I was chatting with the head of a London-based accounting & advisory firm about the contraction in bank lending to businesses, and the scary signals that are emanating from the Fed, IMF and ECB. I told him about how we are trying to combine simple technology with business relationships to get cash flowing faster to…
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Stick, Carrot or Mouse?
Banks in the UK made the news again this week for not meeting small business lending targets. A £2 billion shortfall was estimated for Project Merlin, the deal struck between the UK Government and five big UK banks. The deal, which is yet to demonstrate the outcomes desired, was not without critics and various calls…
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Paper or Plastic?
I saw an article in the Wall Street Journal today talking about measures being taken by some banks in the USA to reach out to small business customers. There was a nice anecdote about an enterprising branch manager walking with a customer around the supermarket to discuss his borrowing needs. The same article mentions a…
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What’s the Magic Number? Part 2
This month an online survey of small business financing was conducted by a well known auction site. The results were unflattering to UK banks, however, as pointed out in the article, it may not be as simple as getting banks to lend more. Lending margins (especially for small businesses) seem to have widened (as apparently…
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What’s the Magic Number? Part 1
Small business financing remains a hot topic. The Obama administration passed a small business bill recently, while policymakers in the UK, concerned by lending, held wide consultations on lending to small business. The banks, who have already seen heavy scrutiny on bonuses and expenditure, have also been criticised for the drop in lending. The depth…
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Planting the seeds for African Agribusiness: policy, infrastructure & the supply chain
In 1997 I was in a Southern African country when what would turn out to be the first of a series of colossal blunders against a national economy was launched. At the time, no one could have foreseen how bad things would get. From our perspective, we saw the opportunity to expand production and thus…