The winners of The Queen’s Awards for Enterprise have just been announced for this year. Regarded as the highest official UK awards for British businesses, they are bestowed upon organisations which excel at international trade, innovation or sustainable development.
The UK’s general election campaign officially kicked off last week and it is no surprise that markets woke up to the ensuing political discourse: the UK equity market underperformed the major markets, losing 0.7 per cent. The decline came in spite of relatively sanguine economic reports, including a modest upward revision to fourth quarter GDP, consumer confidence reaching its highest level for almost 13 years and solid manufacturing data.
By Jason Hesse
Business in London are significantly less confident about the economy compared with the rest of the UK.
Issued on 22 January, the latest Bank of England ‘Trends in Lending’ report clearly showed the divide that still exists between large and small companies when it comes to borrowing money. But according to FundingKnight CEO Graeme Marshall, years of being turned down for finance has resulted in the hesitancy of smaller companies to borrow money. This seems to holding back the UK economy.
The latest edition of Cebr Global’s World Economic League Table (WELT) for 2015, which is set to track different economies over the next ten years in order to forecast future change in 2030, has seen Britain rise to become Europe’s top economy.
Analysing data from Companies House, O2 Business established that last year more businesses in the UK were started on this day than any other, with a total of 1,679 businesses being created.
