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Economic Growth set for September 2010

Date Added: Mon November 2 2009
A major survey of 11,000 companies across 15 countries concludes that a strong return to economic growth is not expected to start until Summer 2010.

The UK firms included in the study are less optimistic than the average. The global survey, undertaken by Regus, polled more than 11,000 respondents about their companies’ financial performance as well as their expectations for personal and nationwide economic recovery.

The survey found that British firms do not expect to see signs of recovery until September 2010Both high- and low-performing British businesses agree that they can look to September for marked economic advancement. When it comes to corporate size, 58% of British companies of all sizes indicated that they expect revenues to increase next year, while small UK firms (with fewer than 50 employees) are more optimistic about next year’s figures than their larger counterparts. Over 60% of SMEs expect to see their revenues to increase in 2010, compared with only 55% of larger companies.
Equally, the survey revealed several significant differences between the concerns of SMEs and larger firms. Big businesses are worried about cost management, infrastructure management, and staff retention, all of which registered as above-average concerns. SMEs, on the other hand, are overwhelmingly concerned with marketing and customer retention, indicating that they are more worried about maintaining and nurturing profitable business than with cutting costs.

Mark Dixon, CEO, Regus, comments: “Although signs of global economic recovery are starting to emerge, businesses across the services industry are remaining cautious. The bleak prediction from UK firms stands as a warning for British businesses to remain tightly controlled in the beginning of next year.”

“Looking forward to the UK’s recovery period, the bullishness of small businesses may indicate that government needs to look at the levels of support being offered to SMEs. In our economy, SMEs represent about 50% of business turnover, and ignoring this community could have a significant delaying impact on national recovery.”

“As we move along the road to recovery, there is an urgent need for businesses experiencing growth not to return to their old ways of doing business, but to take the opportunity to learn from the past and make changes to their future strategies and operations. This may mean shifting the way firms organise their workforce, or indeed whether they retain the same proportion of on-site, full time employees as they did before the global recession. New workforce and workplace strategies are two of the main areas where companies can look to substantially re-engineer their cost-base and move towards wider infrastructural change.”