Finance for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises - DTI Home Page

Finance for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises: A Report on the 2004 UK Survey of SME Finances
FOREWORD
This report is unique for three reasons. It is the first in-depth study of all the various
forms of finance used by small and medium sized enterprises in the UK and has the
depth and range to be a benchmark against which progress can be measured in the
future.
Second, it is the result of the coming together for the first time of a consortium of 19
organisations, covering business groups, finance providers and government.
Third, the full results will be made widely available to researchers and policy makers
and the full dataset will shortly be deposited at the UK National Data Archive at the
University of Essex.
This report can only cover the headline results. There is a wealth of further data
analysis available and I hope that researchers will make full use of it in order to help
us all to understand how and why SMEs finance themselves, where there are any
problem areas and what might be done to address them. It is clear that, in general,
SMEs in the UK are well served by the sophistication and flexibility of the UK
financial services industry. But there will always be areas for improvement.
I have been honoured to chair the consortium that was responsible for the
commissioning and oversight of this survey. I am extremely grateful to them for their
financial contributions and for the help and guidance they have provided over the past
year. I am particularly pleased that the consortium stuck to one of the key principles
on which we all agreed at the outset – we have given Stuart Fraser complete
independence to write up the results as he sees fit, warts and all.
Mike Young
Chair of the sponsoring consortium
Small Business Investment Taskforce and formerly Bank of England.
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