Thursday January 14, 2010 at 5:26pm
The surprise banks’ overdraft charges victory could leave landlords’ exposed to a new challenge by estate agents. The High Court originally ruled that millions of pounds of residential tenancy “renewal” fees charged by Foxtons to landlords were unfair resulting in expected refunds running to millions of pounds. The new interpretation of the law means that buy-to-let investors may now face delays in their claims for a rebate whilst any appeal is heard.
Please get in touc....
(read more...)Monday October 12, 2009 at 9:00am
Unfortunately business owners are often so keen to secure a sale or start working on a big project that they fail to get all the paperwork in place.
Disputes in business can happen for many reasons, but so often they blow up because those involved have a different opinion on what was agreed. You know the situation – you’ve had some work done or purchased a piece of equipment and you’re not happy with what you’ve received. You scrabble around for the paperwork but there i....
(read more...)Wednesday August 26, 2009 at 3:47pm
I am sure that all buyers (and most sellers) will want to make sure that goods sold are of satisfactory quality and do the job intended. But what is the remedy when things go wrong, for example the steel supplied is not up to the job, the cattle food makes the cattle ill, the computer does not live up to its billing, or the machinery keeps breaking down?
Sale of goods law provides remedies for buyers where the goods are not of "satisfactory quality". A recent High Court case conf....
(read more...)Tuesday August 18, 2009 at 4:28pm
As businesses continue to struggle at the moment, there’s been a recent increase in the number of SMEs who are making Directors redundant. It can often make sense: if a company’s activities have shrunk, with fewer sales and a reduced workforce, it can now appear too top heavy and under performing directors might be at risk. Handling a
Director redundancy can be much more complicated however than making a staff member redundant as we explain in the more detailed article on Director Re....
(read more...)Thursday August 6, 2009 at 2:58pm
The Credit Crunch is inevitably contributing to a delay in payment to businesses, particularly vulnerable SMEs. Money owed to small businesses shot up by 40% from £18.6 billion in 2007, to £25.9 billion in 2008, according to Bacs. And who knows where the figure is at this time, no doubt substantailly higher.
This attack on cash flow is probably the biggest single cause of company failure. For example Barclays state that more than 750 companies failed in the South East in 2008 due t....
(read more...)Thursday July 9, 2009 at 4:45pm
In the past 2 weeks I have been the victim of large scale internet fraud on 2 credit cards, and so I have taken a keen interest in liability and in ways to protect against future fraud.
I have been very careful to use only on line stores who encrypt customer details, but fraudsters have still managed to obtain my credit card details including security number, as well as my address, telephone number, date of birth. This can only be a result of sophisticated hacking, or criminal activity by an e....
(read more...)Friday May 1, 2009 at 6:06pm
The
Insolvency Service today published their statistics for the number of company insolvencies for the 1st quarter of 2009. These show that there were a total of 4,941 liquidations in England and Wales (an increase of 56% compared to a year ago). Of these, 1,579 companies were wound up by a court (an increase of 43.6% over the year) and 3,362 companies put themselves into liquidation (an increase of 62.5% over the year). From our experience, the main cause of liquidations is cash-flow problems o....
(read more...)Wednesday March 4, 2009 at 7:17pm
As cash flow is becoming an increasing issue for SMEs, we are finding that more and more creditors are issuing Winding-Up Petitions. These can be a very effective way of getting a company to pay its debts. A Winding-Up Petition will be delivered personally to the company’s office but, unlike most court proceedings, the documents do not state exactly what should be done when one is received. What must be done is to take immediate action and legal advice. If the matter is not resolved within....
(read more...)Wednesday February 11, 2009 at 2:00pm
This blog is a plea to all business owners.
Please, please, please - if you see a business dispute on the horizon, NEVER ignore it and leave it to fester. I can tell you from nearly 20 years of dealing with business disputes that the sooner you tackle problems the better.
We covered the topic in our January Ezine (Spotting a Business Dispute on the Horizon), when I suggested three obvious signs that a dispute might be looming: payment delays, communication drying up and guilt.
In....
(read more...)Thursday December 18, 2008 at 6:53pm
Mr Justice Arnold has called for the courts to take a more pro-active approach in curbing the fees that large commercial law firms charge for litigation. Allen & Overy represented Research in Motion, the makers of the popular BlackBerry mobile device, in intellectual property litigation against Visto, a US technology company. This was not the first time these parties had met in court and, on the last occasion, Allen & Overy racked up charges of nearly £5.2 million in preparing for ....
(read more...)Friday December 5, 2008 at 12:40pm
SMEs are turning to litigation in ever increasing numbers to collect in debts. According to research undertaken by the Credit Management Research Centre, 2,000 such cases were brought in September 2008, compared with just 1,500 in January 2008. This is a clear indicator of generalised cash-flow issues within SMEs. The research also shows that the property and retail sectors have been particularly badly affected, with the amount of cases brought in these sectors rising an incredible fivefold in t....
(read more...)Monday November 24, 2008 at 5:33pm
Here is the relevant extract from today's Pre-Budget Report:
The Government is temporarily increasing the threshold at which an empty property becomes liable for business rates. For financial year 2009-10, empty properties with a rateable value of less than £15,000 will be exempt from business rates, exempting an estimated 70 per cent of empty properties. This one year relief for lower-value properties is best targeted at helping small businesses manage short-term pressures due to di....
(read more...)Friday September 12, 2008 at 6:26pm
The Government is considering reducing the time limit for debt collection from 6 years to 3 years.
At the moment, firms have 6 years in which to issue court proceedings to collect debts. This is set to change and an announcement is expected to be made in the Queen's speech to Parliament in December.
Whilst it is true that the older a debt is, the harder it is to collect, there are often good reasons that a firm would delay issuing proceedings, including:
trying other means of collection f....
(read more...)