GrowthBusiness.co.uk: Your gateway to entrepreneurial success

The risks of $40 oil

Ole Hansen, futures and fixed income manager at Saxo Bank, explains why today's low oil prices may not be the godsend for growth companies they seem to be.

Weighing up the Pre-Budget Report

Is the PBR an early Christmas present for businesses, or will it bring on a Boxing Day-style hangover? We ask entrepreneurs and experts for their verdict.

The falling pound and your business

In the past six months the pound has fallen by more than eight per cent against the dollar and the euro.

Keep out: accountants at work

In many SMEs, the finance function simply doesn’t deliver the information the business needs.

How to improve your year-end numbers

Research from consultancy firm REL suggests that public companies improve their year-end results through a number of well-established ‘games’.

Pre-Budget backlash

Following Chancellor Alistair Darling's first pre-Budget report to Parliament, we asked private equity players and entrepreneurs for their reaction to the abolition of taper relief and a new capital gains tax rate of 18 per cent.

Beyond bean counting

If you’re looking for a finance director (FD), or aspiring to become one yourself, you should be aware that this position now carries with it a range of responsibilities and opportunities extending far beyond its traditional finance functions.

Turnaround tricks

As every entrepreneur knows, growing a company is fraught with perils. Your business model, for instance, might have worked well up to a certain stage of development, but may prove woefully unsuitable at the next one. Key customers or suppliers may let you down.

Blood from a stone

It would be unfeasible to run any enterprise of scale without extending and accepting credit. Trade credit is actually a crucial source of funding for companies and is on average ‘twice the size’ of bank credit, according to the Credit Management Research Centre (CMRC).

SME grant for giving to charity

It costs businesses nothing, can raise millions of pounds for charities and there’s even the possibility of a grant to help set it up, but the Give As You Earn scheme is being under-used as it seems too good to be true.

Business comebacks

Bringing a business back from the brink is a black art that requires ingenuity, guile, commercial courage and nerves of steel. GrowthBusiness highlights four of the best British business fightbacks of the past year.

Chasing debts

Late payments and outstanding debts are the curse of growing businesses. Bad payers can really mess with your cash flow and, in some extreme cases, businesses have gone bust purely because the revenue due wasn’t received.

Bartering back

Bartercard is an innovative service that allows growing business to trade with each other without using hard cash. UK managing director Ian Jones talks to GrowthBusiness.

Late payment laws pay off

More than a quarter of businesses have successfully charged interest under the late payment legislation – and this figure looks set to grow.

"There's no such thing as failure, only feedback"

The challenges David Ferry faced when starting and growing his business, Ferry Financial.

"The Business is out there"

Neil O'Connell's advice for budding entrepreneurs is "don't panic".

"There's no such thing as failure, only feedback"

David Ferry set up his business, Ferry Financial, because he believed there was a better way to do financial management