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The Government is working on developing a new loan guarantee scheme for small firms that have been locked out of credit by the banking crisis. But just hours after Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Innovation, Batt O'Keeffe announced the Government was working on a loan guarantee scheme, one of the key players in the ongoing dispute over the availability of credit to SMEs said he does not favour a loan guarantee scheme. The Irish Independent reported that John Trethowan, who heads up the Credit Review Office, said he was "sceptical" about how effective a loan guarantee scheme would be and warned it was being portrayed as a cure for all small firms' problems when this was not the
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With so much business commentary saturating the media at the moment it can be difficult to maintain a clear sense of perspective. It's a complex issue and there are plenty of examples of media prophecies becoming self-fulfilling. According to NCB Stockbrokers, a series of negative news articles from influential publications across the world together with "idiosyncratic" factors are driving Irish Government bond spreads higher. It noted that Ireland has received a lot of attention in the media over the last couple of weeks with stories about the country's deficit, debt and banking issues being analysed on Bloomberg, CNBC, the New York Times, the Financial Times, the Economist etc. They have built an economic model to control for these "idiosyncratic" factors. But for the rest of us we have the Cent
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The old adage that Christmas seems to come earlier each year was proved true, writes Joe Downes at BusinessWorld.
Today, Friday, September 3, Brown Thomas on Grafton St opens its Christmas store “complete with Santas, reindeer, twinkling lights and un-seasonal music at its Grafton Street store”. Cork and Limerick stores will be heralding the arrival of baubles and fake snow on Saturday.
But why?
Can it really be true there is customer
The pantomime of whether credit is being made available by banks to small firms continues. On the one hand the banks quote various figures of amounts available and being lent. While firms and their representative associations say the banks are “closed for business”. Oh no we're not. Oh yes they are... Vistage would be delighted to hear from both members and non-members of their experiences in obtaining credit. Sharing knowledge is what Vistage is all about. Make sure your comments are general and don't reveal your identity or company. We covered this issue in a previous blog (Credit watch) when AIB denied credit rationing and spuriously backed up its claims by quoting the Credit
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The Finance Act has received a broad welcome from business. Those who are set to benefit, in particular: - foreign executives assigned to work in the country. - firms involved in leasing and fund management - owners of intellectual property assets. - providers of Islamic finance products. - pensions providors - people selling land under compulsory purchase orders However, there are - as one might expect - no shortages of 'stings in the budgetary tail.' Tax exiles with an Irish domicile will have to pay a 'domicile levy' where their worldwide income exceeds €1m and there income tax liability here is less than €200,000 Of greater practical, as opposed to symbolic, significance is the decision to abolish th
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These days, trust, credit and cash flow are all in short supply in the corporate world. Smaller enterprises have been affected in particular by the breakdown in financial connections Firms can do themselves a big favour with their suppliers and financiers where they can prove to everyone's satsifaction that their accounts present a full and fair picture of the state of the Company. Writing recently in Finance Dublin, Brendan Sheridan of Deloittes observes that "disclosures should be more detailed than in times of economic growth." He notes that the UK Financial Reporting Review Panel recently reviewed 326 financial statements. It found that "the current stan
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Many of the elite of international business and politics gather, each year, at the Swiss resort of Davos to feel each others' pulse. The World Economic Forum may attract "the great and the good", but as an event it is less staged than the great organised photocalls of statesmen and women gathered at a G8 or G20 event. This year, an energetic debate took place between some of the West's top bankers and a posse of regulators and economists led by the Chairman of Britain's Financial Services Authority, Lord Adair Turner and the French President Nicolas Sarkozy. It is no surprise that banking was at the top of the agenda. While talk of another Great Depression has disappeared, few anticipate a strong recovery in the countries most hit by the financial crisis.
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![doyle[1]](http://www.vistageireland.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/doyle1.jpg "doyle[1]")
As a Vistage Group Chair operating in Dublin, I am very conscious of the challenges and opportunities facing CEOs today.
The dictionary of disaster words has been exhausted to describe the current economic and financial position of the country in which businesses have to operate.
And yet, every CEO has to get up and lead his or her business every day, and find ways of dealing directly and through his/her staff with a myriad of issues, all of which are more complex and time-consuming today:-
- retaining existing customers and maintaining the relevance of service offerings and products......
- finding new customers and products,
