Through ‘Stirling Partners’ we have been selected to run a pilot to help make it easier for businesses to access finance via ‘Funding Circle’. This is the on-line market place that enables small businesses to borrow between £5,000 and £50,000 directly from investors. The process appears simple – but as always the skill is in Read more about Business borrowing – side-stepping the banks[…]

I’m being asked to look at more cases of companies ‘locked into’ ‘swap deals that threaten the business. These can be past deals where they now wish to exit them, or cases where banks are restructuring existing lending on the condition that a swap deal is taken out. They can be good – effectively a Read more about Interest Rate ‘Swaps’ – beware![…]

I am a believer in invoice discounting – but only as a form of funding in the right situation.There seems to be a slight shift back to it being the ‘funding of last resort’ as banks will often prefer their overdraft users to switch to ID. It’s a good form of finance for a growing Read more about Invoice discounting – the big misunderstanding[…]

Just close to concluding a very interesting case where a client has needed to redeem a finance lease taken out in the mid 90?s with British Linen. This used to be a ‘merchant bank’ (back in the old days when they existed) but has since been taken over by BoS, HBoS, etc. The structure of Read more about The mysteries of British Linen….[…]