Challenger banks and alternative lenders handed out a record 55 per cent of the £65 billion lent to small and medium-sized companies last year, a report from the British Business Bank has found. The government’s economic development agency said the high street banks continued to lose ground to new entrants, which first reached parity in 2018 and hit 51 per cent of gross lending in 2021. Louis Taylor, the bank’s chief executive, said the rise of alternative lenders was a welcome change. “It is...

Small businesses had more customers taking longer to pay their bills and a sharp spike in late payers last month, data from the accountancy software firm Xero shows. The average time taken to be paid rose by 0.6 days to 30.5 days and the average late payment time hit 8.4 days, up by 1.8 days. The latter is the highest level since August 2020 during the first lockdown when late payments soared, and the rise reverses a long-term improvement in both metrics recorded in 2017. Xero analyses data...

The founders of Specsavers have placed the company in a family trust that makes it clear they do not want their children to sell the business to private equity. Dame Mary and Doug Perkins, aged 78 and 79, respectively, set up the chain of opticians in the mid-1980s from a ping-pong table pitched in a spare room of their house in Guernsey. Last year the company sold 22 million pairs of glasses, helping it to generate sales of £3.4 billion and profits of £446 million. The Perkins’ fortune was...