Many of us believe that a change in investor culture is long overdue. We need to incentivise long-term investment in sustainable growth instead of short-term ‘quick flip’ or ‘get rich quick’ schemes that deceive everyone into thinking that making money is risk free and easy.
It is this short-term thinking that has made it more difficult for Private Equity firms to raise new funds for further investment.
Private Equity firms depend on their reputation for making profits for their investors and their problem since the Credit Crunch of 2008 has been that funds have been tied up in businesses that are effectively zombies because of the amount of debt they have, no matter whether these businesses may have good potential for growth.
Similarly both lenders and investors are very wary of taking a risk with new and small businesses, hence the Government’s failure to persuade funders to support start-up companies and SMEs, even profitable ones and those with potential for growth. The only source of funds really available for such businesses are book debt and asset based lenders but these only improve cash flow they don’t provide equity or loan capital for investment.
To address the funding culture issue we need to justify a switch from investing in property to investing in businesses. This will involve understanding a risk rated return on investment that provides for better returns to investors.
There are a number of ways of achieving this change of investor behaviour, one is to penalize investment in property by taxing them, another is to provide for matched funding from banks alongside new equity, possibly with a Government guarantee, another would be for debt forgiveness by banks to restructure their ‘zombie’ client loans alongside new equity, others could be an expansion of the Enterprise Investment Scheme and Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme, or simply a reduction in the corporation tax rate.
But all this requires a Government to confront those who view property as their source of security.
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