Qualified by Experience

Yet another bitchy article in The Telegraph, this time criticising the Parliament's Business and Enterprise Committee for selecting James Caan, Doug Richard and myself to give evidence this week on how Britain can create a 'higher added value economy', on the basis that James and I have experienced the failure of a business and the fact that Doug has stated he admired Eos, the business class only airline which subsequently failed.

Not sure if the author Jonathan Russell has been living under a leaf for the past few months, but given the number of businesses which have already failed so far this year, and the number likely to crash and burn over the next year or so I would have thought ways to assist and support business survival would be pretty high up the agenda for any enterprise review.

Something like two thirds of all UK business start-ups fail within their first two years (with huge numbers of associated personal bankruptcies), and less than 10% of businesses will survive more than a decade. It's not only market conditions which are to blame; the current insolvency laws - which allows ailing companies to essentially phoenix themselves through an administration process, emerging next day with pretty much identical directors & shareholders, but wiped of their debt - are a huge contributor to the statistics.

How could one of the elite few entrepreneurs who has never experienced tough times in business (and believe me, there are very very few) possibly be able to give meaningful comment?