Member Articles

It is now more than four months since the seismic shock of the Brexit vote. The honeymoon period of the summer months has passed. The debate has turned to what flavour of Brexit we might be left with and the timing of Article 50 and the level of oversight MPs should have. There remain far more imponderables than facts and this seems set to be case for some time. For those of us who negotiate for a living, this is a reality that is inevitable ...

The $26bn acquisition of LinkedIn by Microsoft certainly caught the eye this week.A business that is little more than 14 years old and wasn’t generating operating profits (under GAAP) selling for almost ten times revenue – that’s some deal.Yet it doesn’t take a great deal of investigation into some of the non-financial statistics to see why such an eye watering price might be justifiable:LinkedIn has 430 million members and is growing fast ...

The turn of the year is often a time for reflection and review.For business founders and owners this might be the one time of the year when the phone rings (less) and the inbox is more sparse ...

So, I confess to being old enough to remember the ‘Do You Yahoo!’ television adverts of the 1990s… A certain comb over look that was replaced by a not insubstantial afro wig, a talking dolphin – ring any bells?Regardless, for many of us Yahoo! was the place where we started our online adventures ...

In the past, if you wanted to borrow money you would go to your bank manager, or if your bank couldn’t help you, you approached business angels or institutional investors. Business owners now face a confusing and daunting range of funding options. In the digital age, the options include an ever increasing number of online platforms which flourished following the banking crisis and which seem to offer above market returns in our low interest rate economy ...

If you look at the recent changes to income tax, in particular the introduction of a 7.5% rise in the taxation of dividends (announced by George Osborne in the last budget), it is hard not to conclude that entrepreneurs are being targeted by the government ...