Comms4Business News

A report, by GMAC Commercial Finance, reveals that 20 per cent of small businesses have overdrafts reaching over £20,000, many paying high interest rates that are damaging their bottom line. Many entrepreneurs can feel forced into opening hefty overdrafts as a means of acquiring start-up capital, with many unaware of other credit options, such as seeking help from venture capitalists, invoice financing or applying for a government grant.

With small to medium sized enterprises representing 99.8 per cent of the UK’s business community, bosses will be urging Chancellor Gordon Brown to address growing financial burdens, such as increasing business rates, if they are to adopt successful debt management strategies.

Clive Naylor, area manager for GMAC invoice finance, said: “"An overdraft can be an expensive way of funding debt. For example, an average business overdraft APR of 10 per cent would mean that SMEs in the UK are paying almost £1.6 billion just in interest on overdrafts each year.

“This works out as about £2,000 per year for a company with an overdraft of £20,000. This clearly has a huge impact on the bottom line.”

Pharmacy spam rings have been sending hundreds of millions of email messages within the past year alone. Viagra is estimated to feature in up to one out of four spam messages, many of these link to illegal websites that sell consumers illegal versions of the drug.

This could be good news in the long term for businesses all over the UK who undoubtedly receive lots of viagra spam mails on a daily basis.

Tiscai put out a statement saying "like other ISPs, Tiscali has a small portion of very heavy users. This group of less than one percent currently hog around 30% of the total bandwidth. It is therefore necessary for us to protect the service the 99% of considerable customers by establishing an acceptable guideline for user and service notice of termination, which we are able to do within the scope of our current Terms & Conditions for those who are affecting the quality of service for others.

Some of today's leading VC companies made their names backing small businesses, at the time, they had the foresight to see the investment opportunities of ambitious small firms with high growth prospects. Now, these VC firms are increasingly chasing larger projects and leaving the SME start-ups to finding funding elsewhere.

A spokesperson for FirstStage Capital who introduce VC companies to start-up companies commented that some investors will still show interest in small businesses that have already proved themselves, but those that are pre-revenue will struggle to raise funds. "During the nineties, there was a very high number of investors interested in small and medium enterprises, but in the last three or four years they have whittled down to a core group who prefer to invest in established businesses with a proven market. There is an equity gap on these small pre-revenue start-up businesses looking for sub-£2 million investments, which the Government has been focussing on."

Featured in the back of their 'Update' pamphlet which is sent out with every bill, read: "For new bills sent from 1st December 2004, BT started charging customers a £5.00 late payment charge if payment is not received in full within five calendar days from the date of dispatch of the red reminder. The charge will normally appear on your next bill."

A BT spokeperson sais the charge "brings us in line with other companies" and "helps recover admin costs".