Category: News

The government must back rigorous ring-fencing of retail banking from investment banking in order to encourage banks to lend to high-growth, high-risk SMEs. Doing so is crucial to the UK’s economic recovery, according to a report by Will Hutton published today from the Big Innovation Centre.

A lack of jobs and higher university tuition fees have led to a growing number of teenagers and young people aspiring to be their own boss with a massive 80 per cent of 16 year olds saying that they have had a business idea for two years and they are now ready to set up their firms and become the next Richard Branson or Lord Sugar.

Skills Minister John Hayes has announced a package of new measures to make it easier for employers to take on large numbers of apprentices.

New figures released by the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) show that female executives are earning as much as their male counterparts for the first time since its records began, albeit only at junior executive level.

Barclays has launched a £100 million fund for UK farmers investing in renewable energy, tracking the massive groundswell of interest from farmers seeking to cut energy bills and generate new income.

New research has found that almost two thirds of employers do not expect female employees to return to work after their maternity leave; of which the majority say they believe this because of ‘previous experience.’

The government has announced additional locations for new enterprise zones as it tries to boost economic growth across the country by providing cheaper business rates, superfast broadband and lower levels of planning control.

StartUp Britain, the major enterprise initiative launched in May this year, will begin a bus tour of some of the UK’s entrepreneurial hot spots in a bid to celebrate, inspire and accelerate Britain’s start-up talent.

The UK economy will continue to grow, but at a sluggish rate in 2011 and pick up modestly in 2012, according to the CBI’s latest economic forecast.

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) has received more than 490 bids competing for a share of £950 million from the Regional Growth Fund.

According to the survey more than three-quarters of 11 to 18-year-olds say they would like to start their own business in the future and just under half of the 2,000 youngsters questioned say that they have always wanted to be their own boss.

The conciliation service Acas has seen a 15 per cent rise in demand for its help dealing with industrial disputes during the past year.

Plans to scrap or simplify more than 160 regulations, freeing the public and retailers from rules that are unnecessarily burdensome, overly bureaucratic or completely redundant have been announced by Business Secretary Vince Cable.