IT business failures continue to increase
More than 9,500 firms went out of business in the first six months of 2006
The equivalent of 80 companies per day have gone bust in the UK since the start of the year, according to market watcher Experian.
Experian’s latest Business Failures report revealed that a total of 9,589 firms went out of business in the first six months of 2006, compared with 8,805 during the first half of 2005.
The IT industry has experienced 347 business failures so far this year, which is an increase of 16.8 per cent on the first half of 2005.
Richard Lloyd, managing director of Experian’s Business Information division, said: “There is no getting away from the fact that in 2006, failures are already up by 8.9 per cent on the previous year, and look set to continue to rise.
“Businesses need to be extra vigilant to the threat of failure. They should always carry out regular checks on prospects, new and existing customers, and potential suppliers to check their creditworthiness and potential for business failure. If a business is aware that a prospect is likely to go to the wall in less than six months, it is a very unwise business that would waste precious time, effort and money by targeting them in the first place.”
Simon Steggles, director at Disklabs Data Recovery, said he is not surprised at the number of UK business failures.
“We are getting more enquiries about intellectual property theft, which is something that can genuinely hurt a company and even take it under,” he said. “The soaring temperatures also mean that more hard drives and servers are over heating, so a lot of companies are losing valuable information, which again could cause them to go under.”
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