Access to finance. The British Business Bank (BBB) comes under fire for its lack lustre performance in providing effective routes to finance for SMEs.  Barry James, writing an open letter to chancellor, Philip Hammond in Real Business points out that 99% of companies are SMEs and they employ half of employed people outside government. He criticises the hype over BBB’s recent press announcement.  After a wait of three years to do something about the big-banks absenteeism from the SME financing market, James writes that the press announcement blessing three loan aggregation sites as supporting the need to modernise access to finance  for SME’s is “frankly pathetic”.

 

Productivity. Fred Krieger CEO at Scoro software writes in Real Business that the UK’s average productivity per hour is 18 per cent lower than the rest of the G7 member countries, 30 per cent lower than the US and France and a considerable 36 per cent lower than Germany. He gives some practical tips to help SMEs:

 

  • If a task takes less than two minutes to do – do it immediately
  • Employees should only check their email three times a day
  • We are at our most productive in the mornings between 9am and 1pm, so do demanding tasks in the morning
  • Minimise meaningless meetings
  • Find technology that helps

 

HOT 100. Real Business reveals the UK’s fastest growing private companies. Using information from Companies House, in partnership with Jordans, the Hot 100 is based on turnover and profit growth (in particular, the compound growth rates over a four-year period). The top 5 are:

 

  1. Domus Group of Companies
  2. Grey Technology
  3. LSE Retail Group
  4. Sewells Reservoir Construction
  5. Collins Earthworks

 

Schrodinger’s cat. Finally, Andrew Sheets, chief cross-asset strategist at the US investment bank Morgan Stanley resorts to quantum physics to explain the Trump phenomenon. “Nobody has a clue what Trump will do like Schrodinger’s cat, Trump’s policies existed in a state of being both pragmatic and radical, all at the same time – until they’re observed that is…

The Register explains the quantum theory and brings it up to date by referring to an experiment, led by Martin Ringbauer of the University of Queensland, which showed that photons at least seem to genuinely exist in multiple states until they’re measured. If the old saying is true that you get what you measure, let’s hope it’s not a dead cat bounce…