Economic commentators have been warning businesses for some time to batten down the hatches, cut costs, and be prudent in order to ride out the credit crunch storm. The heartening thing seems to be that many UK companies appear to be heeding the call , and hopefully, this will keep liquidations statistics below those seen in the last recession in the early nineties.According to the Office for National Statistics today, redundancies rose to 138000 in the 3 months to July, up 28000 from the previous quarter. Whilst this was not good news for the people concerned, it may indicate that companies are taking steps earlier to "downsize" where necessary to avert bigger financial problems later.
Also, a leading debt collection agency has just told me that they have witnessed an intake of bigger commercial debts lately, and they're being passed over to third party collection at a much earlier stage (i.e. when they are only a few weeks rather than a few months overdue.) This change in buyer habit suggests companies are thinking more about cash flow protection and less about the commission they have to pay to the collection agency.
Let's keep our fingers crossed that this indicates that Corporate UK is showing a bit of savvy in these most turbulent of times.