The most relentless lending squeeze on record is stifling companies’ ability to invest and derailing Britain’s fading recovery hopes, businesses warned in the wake of dire Bank of England figures.
Lending to companies plunged by £4 billion in February — the sharpest drop for almost two years, according to the Bank’s Trends in Lending report. Lending has been falling since the middle of 2009, in the longest contraction since official data began in the 1960s.
Lord Oakeshott of Seagrove Bay, the former Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman, called the figures “horrific”, arguing that coalition attempts to use moral persuasion to lift lending by the country’s nationalised banks had failed.
“This persistent failure to lend to small businesses is putting the whole economic recovery at risk,” he said. “SMEs are strangled. They cannot take on more workers or fill the jobs being lost in the public sector.”
via ‘Horrific’ collapse in lending strangles hopes for recovery | The Times.
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