UK companies are reportedly hoarding as much as £700 billion in cash. Despite this, business investment grew by just 1.7% in June, according to Bank of England Governor Mark Carney, in his first speech to businesses in Nottingham.
It appears that businesses are still not confident of sustained economic recovery, and this may be understandable following the shock waves after the onset of the global economic crisis in 2008.
When times are hard the general rule is to put an accountant in charge as they will basically hoard a company’s cash. Accountants are generally pretty risk averse and when the emphasis is on controlling cash flow they are a mainstay of business survival.
But at what point in the cycle should companies start to look at investment and growth for future profits? And at what point should accountants take a back seat and hand over to someone else?
In UK we tend to be slow to adapt to changes in the market. Let’s face it no one will criticise managers for not losing money. Only too late will shareholders realise they have been left behind.
We are still pursuing a strategy of hoarding cash when perhaps the time has come to shift from pessimism to optimism and at the very least we should be planning for growth. Now is the time for carrying out market research, modest investments, testing markets and building capacity for growth.
We need managers with courage, managers who value mistakes and will learn from them, managers who know how to grow businesses.
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