The missing middle Supporting mid-market, scale-up family businesses
corporates. Government policy must better recognise and support this critical, and often forgotten, mid- market sector and address a clear set of challenges: • Barriers to accessing domestic and international markets; • Difficulties securing the skills needed to grow; and • Financial products that are often designed around ownership dilution or exit rather than the long-term growth ambitions of family-owned firms. While SME and scale-up policies provide support in some areas, neither fully address the breadth of challenges facing this group.
The new Government, led by Andy Burnham, has made a clear case for creating growth – devolving more power to the regions and empowering local mayors to administer strategies to deliver it. That will only be achieved by working with, not against, the family businesses that make up those
Business and Trade, hosted by Blair McDougall MP, to impose on Government the critical nature of the sector and highlight the policy recommendations we make.
You can read the views of FBUK Members, Matthew Ayres, from
regional economies and are the embodiment of good growth.
Bennie Group, and Sarah Naghshineh, from RCP Parking, who both attended the roundtable referenced in this magazine. You can also read the view of Andy Gray, of FBUK Partner, Natwest, which has led the charge on the mid-market agenda. The reality is that mid-market, fast- growing family businesses are being failed by a policy landscape that is heavily designed for two ends of the spectrum: small start-ups and large
This means the Government pursuing policies that: encourage job creation; remove barriers to markets; expand access to appropriate sources of finance; maintain a competitive tax environment that rewards long-term investment – including the full reversal of the changes to Inheritance Tax; and recognise that who owns the business really matters.
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