In the face of the current financial difficulties people are turning to the certainty of judgment information before making decisions, according to the latest quarterly statistics from Registry Trust.

Between July and September 2011, 23,774 searches were made on the England & Wales registers held by the Trust. This figure is 25.7 percent higher than in the third quarter of the previous year. Judgment information is used as a key indicator of creditworthiness.

Registry Trust is the non-profit organisation which operates the Register of Judgments, Orders and Fines for England and Wales in the public interest on behalf of the Ministry of Justice. The Trust collates similar information from all the other jurisdictions in the British Isles and Ireland. Public access is made easy through its website, www.trustonline.org.uk.

In response to its popularity, in September the Trust more than halved the cost to the public of searching its registers as a result of efficiency savings coming from a £1m investment in the website in 2010.

Registry Trust CEO Jon Hale said: “As a non-profit working in the public interest, we can share our efficiency gains with the public not with private shareholders. We aim to provide public information fast, efficiently and at low cost.

“In times of financial stress it makes sense to check on the judgment status of anyone you plan to transact with. We have made it simple and cheap so people can avoid the hassle and heartbreak which often result from dealing with the untrustworthy. Since the price halved demand has shot up further.”

The latest statistics show that the value of debt judgments faced by consumers in England and Wales during the third quarter of 2011 fell £61.5m (29 percent) when compared to the same period last year.

Last year the total value of all CCJs against consumers totalled £518.5m in Q3. This fell to £457m over Q3 2011 despite a 3.7 percent increase in the number of judgments year on year from 156,558 in Q3 2010 to 162,305 in Q3 2011.

Comparing this quarter with the second quarter of 2011, the statistics show a £32.2m (7.6 percent) increase in the value of CCJs, rising from £424.8 to £457m. There were 35,332 more judgments in Q3 2011 than in Q2 rising from 126,973 to 162,305, a 27.8 percent increase.

Announcing the statistics, Malcolm Hurlston, chairman of Registry Trust said: “Passing on our savings directly to our customers means we can empower consumers to make more informed financial decisions.

“The development of trustonline was intended to allow easy access to a valuable public resource. Now that the search prices have been reduced, judgment information can play an even greater role for more people.”

Please note: Information in this blog post is content property of Business Credit Management UK (www.creditman.co.uk) and the full original article can be found by clicking here.

Calls for a special day to recognise the role played by small employers in the UK’s economy have intensified following new research showing that the smallest micro businesses are leading the way in tackling late payment.

The Forum of Private Business, Wanobe.com and The Business Woman’s Network have joined forces to campaign for a ‘micro business day’ dedicated to recognising the economic importance of UK firms employing fewer than 10 staff.

The campaign has gathered pace following new research from Experian covering the third quarter of 2011 which shows that, while average late payment time for all UK firms went up by almost one day, to 26.13 days, employers with one or two staff were able to limit the rise to just half a day – the smallest increase recorded during the period.

However, other micro businesses taking part in the survey were less successful. Those with between three and five employees saw average payments beyond agreed terms increase by more than a day to 23.01 days – with only medium-sized firms and large businesses in the 51–100, 101–500 and 500-plus employee categories faring worse.

In addition, Firms with 6–10 staff experienced average late payments of slightly less than one day.

“The jobs that will drive economic growth are expected to be created in micro businesses so it is important that we place the political spotlight squarely on them and make sure it stays there – that is why we are calling for a micro business day to highlight the crucial role played by the UK’s smaller businesses,” said Jane Bennett, Head of Campaigns at the Forum, which provides the secretariat to the All-party Parliamentary Micro Business Group.

“It is time for the Government to stop talking micro and thinking macro and instead focus on the real issues of the smallest businesses.

“Late payment is a huge issue, particularly for small businesses. While it is pleasing that the smallest micro businesses seem to be leading the way in minimising the problem, others are less able to do so – perhaps because employment law bureaucracy means they simply have less time to chase outstanding payments.”

David Noble, Managing Director of the online business knowledge market Wanobe.com said: “A major problem facing the UK’s micro businesses is how to chase money owed to them without upsetting a customer relationship – and possibly losing business as a result.

“It is dilemma micro businesses must solve every day and their creativity and perseverance in dealing with such issues, which enables them to survive and retain employees, is what makes them the real heroes in our marketplace.”

Mandie Holgate, of The Business Woman’ Network and a leading business coach, said: “Micro business owners aim to respect their suppliers and customers, appreciating the critical impact cash flow has on small businesses.

“They also aim to work in unison and aim to source locally, thereby supporting local economies and communities – a practice that could benefit from being copied on a larger scale, again showcasing the ways in which the micro businesses of the UK need to be turned to more and more as a resource for practical business solutions that work and will see us through these tough times.”

According to the Experian data, the North West of England is the worst region for late payment by far, with firms waiting an average of 36.72 days beyond their agreed terms.

Next is London (28.69 days), followed by Scotland (27.19 days), Yorkshire (26.65 days), the East of England (26.12 days), the East Midlands (25.72 days) and the West Midlands (25.50 days).

North East firms wait on average 24.42 days for payment beyond their agreed terms, followed by Wales (24.28 days), the South East (20.83 days), Northern Ireland (20.05) and the South West (18.18 days).

Sectors with the worst average payments made outside agreed terms are postal and telecommunications (46.62 days), leisure and hotels (35.91 days), food retailing (34.33 days).property (34.12 days) and textiles and clothing (30.50 days).

Industries with relatively better average late payment times include agriculture, forestry and fishing (12.27 days), oil (15.64 days), spirits, wine and tobacco (16.84 days), servicing and repairs (17.77 days) and insurance (19.78 days).

According to the payment body Bacs, small firms in the UK are owed approximately £24 billion in outstanding invoice payments.

The Forum is campaigning for better payment practices as part of its Get Britain Trading campaign. For more information call 0845 612 6266 or visit www.getbritaintrading.co.uk

Please note: Information in this blog post is content property of Business Credit Management UK (www.creditman.co.uk) and the full original article can be found by clicking here.

Medium-sized businesses are the UK’s “forgotten army”, too long overlooked by government but with the potential to inject between £20bn and £50bn into the economy by 2020, according to the CBI.

Firms with a turnover of between £10 million and £100 million represent less than 1% of businesses but generate 22% of economic revenue and 16% of all jobs.

The UK’s leading business group is today (Monday) publishing a major new report, called Future Champions: unlocking growth in the UK’s medium-sized businesses, using new analysis conducted with the help of McKinsey & Company.

The CBI is calling for a broader range of finance to be made available to medium-sized businesses (MSBs). With banks’ lending constrained, these firms can no longer rely solely on bank lending for long-term growth capital to invest in their companies.

Business owners and managers will be crucial to unlocking MSBs’ true potential, and the CBI makes a series of recommendations for building their capabilities and inspiring them to strive for even greater growth.

John Cridland, CBI Director-General, said:

“Medium-sized businesses are truly a forgotten army, and now is the time to unlock their potential.

“We should be championing, nurturing and encouraging our medium-sized firms so that more of them grow and create jobs. For too long these companies, which could inject tens of billions of pounds into our economy, have fallen under the radar of policymakers.

“I want the UK to have its own version of the German “Mittelstand” – a backbone of medium-sized firms which export, innovate and generate growth. These future champions would help the UK weather unexpected economic shocks, and act as a new engine for growth.

“To achieve extra growth, medium-sized firms must have access to new kinds of finance. This means opening UK bond markets to medium-sized businesses, encouraging use of venture capital, and making it easier for large companies to invest in medium ones, possibly in their supply chains.”

The contribution MSBs make to the UK economy is much smaller than in France and Germany, where they contribute a greater share of total revenue and generate a significantly higher proportion of jobs. The main reason for this is that, while some MSBs perform extremely well – the “gazelles” – others are lagging behind.

However, many MSBs operate in sectors with high productivity growth. And if MSBs had been able to raise their productivity between 2002 and 2007 as much as large firms operating in the same sectors, their annual rate of productivity growth would have been one per cent higher than the largefirms.

Figures provided to the CBI by NESTA reveal that just 6% of MSBs create 60% of all the new jobs created by the sector. If more firms could reach their potential to grow, this could help achieve an extra £20bn to £50bn by 2020, a major boost to the UK’s GDP.

MSBs could play a crucial role in rebalancing the economy, and create new jobs in areas most affected by public spending cuts. In the North East, where unemployment reached 11.3% in the three months to August 2011, MSBs already account for about 20% of all jobs. Mid-sized firms also represent 30% of the UK’s manufacturing base.

A map is attached showing how MSBs account for a higher proportion of economic activity in regions with higher unemployment.

Financing future champions
The CBI wants the Government to make bond markets more accessible to MSBs in the UK. It is calling for it to work with the financial services industry to enable more MSBs to issue bonds and use new products based on MSB bonds to attract new investors.

The Government could then kick-start demand through credit easing, using public money to back these bonds.

The report calls for MSBs to be able to access a broader range of capital release equity. There are already new initiatives such as the Business Growth Fund, but the CBI suggests re-instating a Corporate Venturing Incentive to encourage large firms to invest in medium ones, and making equity investments tax deductible so that they are on a par with debt investments.

Entrepreneurs’ Relief should also be restructured to incentivise longer-term investments, according to the report, withthe threshold for qualifying for the relief brought to below the current 5%.The scope of the R&D tax credit should be widened to include all aspects of design to help encourage even more innovation amongst MSBs.

Growing future champions
To build up the capabilities of MSBs which have very low or declining growth rates, the CBI proposes that:

• The CBI and the Department for Business encourage large firms to work with MSBs in their supply chain to share best practice and increase levels of leadership, innovation, exports, recruitment and financing.
• The CBI brings firms together to share experiences of management challenges, financing options and exporting to help them plan for growth by learning from other MSBs and industry experts.
• The Department for Business and trade bodies identify sectors which would benefit from surveys of management skills, working with specialists such as the British Quality Foundation to establish a cost effective method of helping MSBs identify ways to improve capability.

To encourage more MSBs to export their products and services, UK Trade & Investment (UKTI) should proactively target medium-sized firms, suggesting sources of advice and providing insights into international competition. The CBI would also like to see more MSBs included on international trade delegations.

Engaging future champions
MSBs have traditionally lacked channels of dialogue with government. Just one member of the Prime Minister’s Business Advisory Council is currently an MSB, and Government policy usually focuses on the very large firms or the very smallest.

The CBI is urging the Government to recruit more MSBs to the Prime Minister’s Business Advisory Council, and to ensure its policy initiatives cater for MSBs.

Please note: Information in this blog post is content property of Business Credit Management UK (www.creditman.co.uk) and the full original article can be found by clicking here.

As protests against financial power sweep the world this week, science may have confirmed the protesters’ worst fears. An analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy.

The study’s assumptions have attracted some criticism, but complex systems analysts contacted by New Scientist say it is a unique effort to untangle control in the global economy. Pushing the analysis further, they say, could help to identify ways of making global capitalism more stable.

The idea that a few bankers control a large chunk of the global economy might not seem like news to New York’s Occupy Wall Street movement and protesters elsewhere. But the study, by a trio of complex systems theorists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, is the first to go beyond ideology to empirically identify such a network of power. It combines the mathematics long used to model natural systems with comprehensive corporate data to map ownership among the world’s transnational corporations (TNCs).

“Reality is so complex, we must move away from dogma, whether it’s conspiracy theories or free-market,” says James Glattfelder. “Our analysis is reality-based.”

Previous studies have found that a few TNCs own large chunks of the world’s economy, but they included only a limited number of companies and omitted indirect ownerships, so could not say how this affected the global economy – whether it made it more or less stable, for instance.

The Zurich team can. From Orbis 2007, a database listing 37 million companies and investors worldwide, they pulled out all 43,060 TNCs and the share ownerships linking them. Then they constructed a model of which companies controlled others through shareholding networks, coupled with each company’s operating revenues, to map the structure of economic power.

The work, to be published in PLoS One, revealed a core of 1318 companies with interlocking ownerships (see image). Each of the 1318 had ties to two or more other companies, and on average they were connected to 20. What’s more, although they represented 20 per cent of global operating revenues, the 1318 appeared to collectively own through their shares the majority of the world’s large blue chip and manufacturing firms – the “real” economy – representing a further 60 per cent of global revenues.

When the team further untangled the web of ownership, it found much of it tracked back to a “super-entity” of 147 even more tightly knit companies – all of their ownership was held by other members of the super-entity – that controlled 40 per cent of the total wealth in the network. “In effect, less than 1 per cent of the companies were able to control 40 per cent of the entire network,” says Glattfelder. Most were financial institutions. The top 20 included Barclays Bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and The Goldman Sachs Group.

John Driffill of the University of London, a macroeconomics expert, says the value of the analysis is not just to see if a small number of people controls the global economy, but rather its insights into economic stability.

Concentration of power is not good or bad in itself, says the Zurich team, but the core’s tight interconnections could be. As the world learned in 2008, such networks are unstable. “If one [company] suffers distress,” says Glattfelder, “this propagates.”

“It’s disconcerting to see how connected things really are,” agrees George Sugihara of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, a complex systems expert who has advised Deutsche Bank.

Yaneer Bar-Yam, head of the New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI), warns that the analysis assumes ownership equates to control, which is not always true. Most company shares are held by fund managers who may or may not control what the companies they part-own actually do. The impact of this on the system’s behaviour, he says, requires more analysis.

Crucially, by identifying the architecture of global economic power, the analysis could help make it more stable. By finding the vulnerable aspects of the system, economists can suggest measures to prevent future collapses spreading through the entire economy. Glattfelder says we may need global anti-trust rules, which now exist only at national level, to limit over-connection among TNCs. Sugihara says the analysis suggests one possible solution: firms should be taxed for excess interconnectivity to discourage this risk.

One thing won’t chime with some of the protesters’ claims: the super-entity is unlikely to be the intentional result of a conspiracy to rule the world. “Such structures are common in nature,” says Sugihara.

Newcomers to any network connect preferentially to highly connected members. TNCs buy shares in each other for business reasons, not for world domination. If connectedness clusters, so does wealth, says Dan Braha of NECSI: in similar models, money flows towards the most highly connected members. The Zurich study, says Sugihara, “is strong evidence that simple rules governing TNCs give rise spontaneously to highly connected groups”. Or as Braha puts it: “The Occupy Wall Street claim that 1 per cent of people have most of the wealth reflects a logical phase of the self-organising economy.”

So, the super-entity may not result from conspiracy. The real question, says the Zurich team, is whether it can exert concerted political power. Driffill feels 147 is too many to sustain collusion. Braha suspects they will compete in the market but act together on common interests. Resisting changes to the network structure may be one such common interest.

When this article was first posted, the comment in the final sentence of the paragraph beginning “Crucially, by identifying the architecture of global economic power…” was misattributed.

The top 50 of the 147 superconnected companies

1. Barclays plc
2. Capital Group Companies Inc
3. FMR Corporation
4. AXA
5. State Street Corporation
6. JP Morgan Chase & Co
7. Legal & General Group plc
8. Vanguard Group Inc
9. UBS AG
10. Merrill Lynch & Co Inc
11. Wellington Management Co LLP
12. Deutsche Bank AG
13. Franklin Resources Inc
14. Credit Suisse Group
15. Walton Enterprises LLC
16. Bank of New York Mellon Corp
17. Natixis
18. Goldman Sachs Group Inc
19. T Rowe Price Group Inc
20. Legg Mason Inc
21. Morgan Stanley
22. Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc
23. Northern Trust Corporation
24. Société Générale
25. Bank of America Corporation
26. Lloyds TSB Group plc
27. Invesco plc
28. Allianz SE 29. TIAA
30. Old Mutual Public Limited Company
31. Aviva plc
32. Schroders plc
33. Dodge & Cox
34. Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc*
35. Sun Life Financial Inc
36. Standard Life plc
37. CNCE
38. Nomura Holdings Inc
39. The Depository Trust Company
40. Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance
41. ING Groep NV
42. Brandes Investment Partners LP
43. Unicredito Italiano SPA
44. Deposit Insurance Corporation of Japan
45. Vereniging Aegon
46. BNP Paribas
47. Affiliated Managers Group Inc
48. Resona Holdings Inc
49. Capital Group International Inc
50. China Petrochemical Group Company

* Lehman still existed in the 2007 dataset used

Please note: Information in this blog post is content property of New Scientist (http://www.newscientist.com/) and the full original article can be found by clicking here.

Former Celtic striker John Hartson has revealed that he is being hounded by creditors over more than £300,000 of gambling debts.

Despite having signed up to an Individual Voluntary Agreement, the ex-football star has claimed that people are still “hassling” him for cash.

The 36-year-old father of four told a National Newspaper: “Some people just can’t let it go and they are still hassling me. They are still offering me the opportunity to bet, trying to make a way into my friendship. I don’t want to go down that road again.”

The former Wales International, who has survived a battle with testicular cancer, said bookmakers are still hounding him in an attempt to get him to start gambling again, despite being signed up to an IVA.

He confessed that he previously owed up to £400,000 as a result of his betting addiction.

The IVA agreement John Hartson has entered into will see him repaying 12p of every pound of the remaining debts owed. He now lives off a self-imposed £250-a-week budget.

Having previously played for Arsenal and West Ham as well as Celtic, the former footballer has now had his pension taken away to pay off creditors.

He continued, “I’ve paid back as much as I can of my debt. I cannot physically afford to repay any more. At one point I owed between three and four hundred grand. “I have done my best to pay back what I can because I have never knocked anyone in my life. I’m a good guy. I was struggling with an illness: gambling.”

Please note: Information in this blog post is content property of Business Credit Management UK (www.creditman.co.uk) and the full original article can be found by clicking here.

The Institute of Credit Management (ICM) and the Minister of State for Business and Enterprise Mark Prisk have published their monthly ‘tip’ for small businesses to better manage their cashflow.

“Have a system for resolving disputed invoices promptly, especially if a customer is using a small query to withhold a large payment.”

The cashflow ‘tips’ are derived from the series of Managing Cashflow Guides published by the ICM for BIS that have to date been downloaded more than 245,000 times.

For further information, log on to http://www.creditmanagement.org.uk/bisguides.htm

A targeted VAT cut and a National Insurance Contributions (NICs) holiday must be introduced for small firms as small business confidence fell to -9.3 due to the pressure of weak demand and rising costs, according to the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) ‘Voice of Small Business’ Index.

The Index – which has been a good predictor of the path GDP will take – fell by 9.6 points from +0.3 to -9.3 in the third quarter as more businesses lost confidence in the economy. This news comes just weeks after GDP was revised downwards to 0.1 per cent in the second quarter and ahead of third quarter figures due next week.

And, in more gloomy news, figures last week showed unemployment reached 2.57 million and youth unemployment almost reach the one million barrier. A balance of six per cent more businesses surveyed by the FSB think that they will lay people off in the coming three months, pointing to a further increase in unemployment by the end of the year.

The FSB has long called for the current NICs holiday to be extended to existing businesses across the UK that have fewer than four employees and that employ up to the three more staff.

One in 10 businesses (11%) said that extending the NICs holiday would be an incentive to take on staff, according to recent FSB research. The current NICs holiday is only open to new start ups and has not had the take-up that the Government expected it to, with only 7,000 businesses using it. By extending it, the Government has the opportunity to put more people in a job which in turn would boost the tax base and money to the treasury.

Consumer demand is also a large barrier to economic growth and so the FSB has called for a targeted and time specific VAT cut to encourage people to spend in these areas. The FSB is urging the Government to follow the lead of other EU countries and cut VAT in the construction and tourism sectors to five per cent for a year to help give the economy a real boost.

In addition, a NICs holiday would also offset increasing cost pressures on firms. More than three quarters of the firms surveyed said that their costs had increased in the quarter, mainly due to rising commodity prices as more than half of respondents (57%) cite rising energy costs, and 49 per cent increase in the cost of raw materials as the reason.

John Walker, National Chairman, Federation of Small Businesses, said:

“As businesses come to terms with the double whammy of falling revenues and rising costs, it is no wonder that they’re losing confidence, and unfortunately, as their overheads increase one way to control it is to lay off staff.

“It is the first time since we started the Index that we have seen more people believe that they’re going to lay off staff than take them on. This has to show the Government that a more robust plan for growth is needed.

“Moreover, this is the first time that we have seen confidence in all regions of the UK in negative territory. We urge the Chancellor to look closely at our NICs holiday proposals and bring this forward in his Autumn Statement. We fear that without it, the recovery will falter once more.”

Please note: Information in this blog post is content property of Business Credit Management UK (www.creditman.co.uk) and the full original article can be found by clicking here.