How can I diversify my business is a common question asked by directors, shareholders and business owners for a range of different reasons. It may be the next step on the growth strategy or it may be about balancing risk and in the same way as there are a lot of drivers to diversification, there […]
People working from home are being warned about the risk of invalidating their home insurance. With the stay-at-home order issued in March 2020, two subsequent national lockdowns and government guidance still recommending people work from home wherever possible, the number of people making adaptations to residential properties to create a long-term workspace is on the […]
I was recently asked whether we had witnessed any corporate ‘casualties’ as a result of the Covid pandemic, the answer to which was, I am pleased to report, no. However, I fully accept that being early June, we are far from clear of the woods and still remain in a somewhat cosseted environment, with the […]
Making Tax Digital, the initiative introduced by HMRC in April requiring businesses to keep digital records for the calculation and submission of VAT returns, has met with early reluctance to register. Whilst many businesses may have ignored the passing deadline, in the belief that they were already compliant as a result of using approved accounting […]
The Taylor review, set up by the Government to investigate working practices and the ‘gig economy’, has now reported back to business secretary Greg Clark, with the promise that many of the recommendations will be taken forward and some expanded upon. The review was set up following significant employment cases involving major employers in the […]
With the news full of questions about how Carillion continued to be awarded huge contracts despite multiple warning signs of financial failure, we look at what it takes to win the tendering game. In times of uncertainty in the wider economy the public sector can look like an attractive source of stable income and successive […]
And finally… A look back at the main news from December 1967 as we come to the end of our 50th anniversary year. We have enjoyed looking back to 1967, as we celebrate our 50 years in business. We may have said it before but it is genuinely fascinating how many similarities we have discovered […]
In case you missed it, interest rates doubled earlier this month to their second lowest ever level… what a sentence. Expected for some time, this is the first of several ‘baby steps’ Governor Carney has been preparing us for, as The Bank of England seeks to balance spending, inflation and GDP growth. Commentators do not […]
Last month we wrote about the lost decade – the ten years since the financial crash of 2008 – and having discussed this theory in meetings with a range of SMEs it feels like the side effect of the lost decade is a numbness to economic uncertainty. That is not to say that businesses are […]
Since the ‘Millennium Bug’ it has felt like there is always an event or new piece of legislation coming down the pipeline which is set to cause a major impact to all businesses or shake up a particular sector. Having only just caught our breath after Auto Enrolment, we are now presented with GDPR (General […]
The Lost Decade? It’s hard to believe that the credit crunch that led to the downfall of Lehman Brothers and the ensuing melee in the economy was almost a decade ago. You would be forgiven for thinking that the time has passed quite quickly, perhaps because we have become used to switching on the news […]
As part of our 50th anniversary, we are looking back at the events of 1967 to see what the founders of our business would have been reading about and facing in their first year of trading. This month we look at the events of September 1967. As if to echo our own news this month, […]