400,000 British Businesses Disappear - Overnight

A quite extraordinary story from the Telegraph suggests that the UK economy has been much less entrepreneurial in recent years than originally reported by the Office of National Statistics.

Instead of there being 4.8 million businesses in the UK at the end of 2009, it appears there were actually only 4.4 million.  Statisticians had double counted sole traders and individuals running one man companies (i.e. companies with no employees).  It makes you wonder what they were paid for doing!

Re-stated figures on corporate Britain provide students with some useful insights into the nature of business organisation in the UK.  For example, 99.9% of businesses in the UK are classified as SMEs (small / medium sized enterprises).  There are approximately 2.8 million sole traders, of which around 1 in 8 employ someone else too.  That’s a lot of people working alone, for themselves!

Just 8% of businesses in the UK are partnerships - that’s 370,000 partnerships in total.

Here is the link to the detailed pdf from the ONS - lots more business stats in here for students to discover.

Advising on Legal Structure - Role Play [13 Feb 2012]
Tottenham Hotspur to switch from public to private limited company [16 Nov 2011]
Revision Quiz - Legal Structure Basics [15 Oct 2011]
Revision Quiz - Sole Traders and Partnerships [15 Oct 2011]
Revision Quiz - Limited Companies [15 Oct 2011]
Revision Presentation - What is a Business? [6 Sep 2011]
Q&A - What is a partnership? [1 May 2011]
BUSS1 Revision Quiz - Choosing a Legal Structure [15 Dec 2010]
The pitfalls of setting up a partnership [2 Nov 2010]
Customer Service - What Students Can Learn from John Lewis Partnership [12 Jun 2010]
Revision Presentation - Limited Liability [29 Dec 2009]
Revision Presentation - Startup Business Structures [29 Dec 2009]
Quest-cussion [8 Oct 2009]
Q&A - Compare the advantages of trading as a sole trader versus a private limited company [1 May 2009]
Q&A - What is unlimited liability? [1 May 2009]
Q&A - What is a sole trader? [1 May 2009]
A Great Example of Sources of Finance for a Partnership [9 Jan 2009]
When the partnership structure doesnt work well for a start-up [26 Jul 2008]
John Lewis staff bag a bumper bonus [7 Mar 2008]

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