GOOD MONEY AFTER BAD?

Are you even getting a salary from your business? Is the answer No, I wish. 
 
Alright then, here's another for you- are you in fact propping your business up by doing any of the following?:- 
 
* borrowing against your house 
* depleting your personal savings 
* using your spouses income or income from elsewhere 
* loading up personal credit cards 
* taking out personal loans. 
 
As a one off considered decision as part of a plan of action, then fine, 
 
but is it happening monthly? weekly? 
 
Then you need to ask this question- When will it stop? 
 
If this is what you are doing, it is probably because your business is losing money, and three things will inevitably happen. 
 
1. You will turn around the business so it starts paying you. 
2. The business will fail, taking down all the money you put into it and possibly you. 
3. You run out of personal funds, taking both you and your business down. 
 
But it doesn't have to be that way. 
 
You can break the cycle, and there is more help than you can ever imagine to help you solve the problem. 
 
Go talk to someone (me if you like)- there is plenty of support around (some good, some bad, but you got to start somewhere)- find people who have been through what you have been through and come out the other side- you'll be surprised how many people will tell you their story. 
 
But don't go and drain more of your depleted personal resources unless you know how you are going to get it back- it is the road to ruin.

For more information visit personal-guarantee.co.uk

Is it really so bad? Why me?

How about is it out there? Well, pretty bad actually. Banks are reducing facilities and increasing margins at the expense to their clients. Businesses are falling like flies. Orders are getting cancelled. 
 
Bad isn't it? 
All the banks fault, isn't it? 
Why us? 
 
Well, 
yes, 
probably, and 
why us? 
 
For many of us, we do have essentially profitable businesses. 
 
But do all of us? 
Have we made any real money? 
Or even during the good times, when markets were good, were we just getting by? 
Were we (and are we still) always moaning about how bad it is? 
How many of us talk ourselves into a hopeless state? 
 
My experience, and this is experience forged out of 2 recessions, is that if you have essentially a good business (do you?), you can and will get through this, providing you do enough of the right things. 
 
What are enough of the right things? 
 
There are many, but let's take 5 to stir your emotions. 
 
1. Is your and your business cloth cut accordingly? Really? 
2. Do your clients know you are still here? Are you sure? 
3. When your competitors go down, where are their clients going? To you? 
4. How do you value and make the most of the one real commodity you have- time? 
5. Are you confusing motion with action? 
 
Answer those questions, honestly, really honestly, and you might be on the way to getting through this and, just as many businesses I work with, actually buck the trend and make some good money.

For more information visit www.personal-guarantee.co.uk

You couldn't make it up -- unless you are a bank

Lenders routinely mislay the card and loan agreements their customers originally sign; however more astonishingly, if there has been a dispute later on, the lenders have used computer software to "recreate" the original documents, sometimes with less than accurate results. Being able to recreate agreements in this way helps banks pursue borrowers over debts, but there is growing evidence that when lenders "recreate" contracts they often do not stick to the original terms. The result is that borrowers who are often already in financial trouble are left in worse difficulties. Document "recreation" is in the spotlight after a court case last month involving a number of borrowers with credit cards issued by HBOS, Barclaycard, MBNA and HSBC. Part of the case, was to assess the circumstances in which banks could "reconstitute" lost agreements. Judge David Waksman concluded that in future, lenders would have to explain why they did not have the original agreements. He said they would have to prove that the recreated document was a true copy of the original contract.

At the end of this month the Office of Fair Trading will circulate this guidance among banks and other lenders, driving home the message that "any reconstituted copy must be a true copy, containing any terms and conditions contained in the original, and giving the terms and conditions applicable at the time the contract was signed."

The result of this is that the banks have yet more hoops to jump through, making it more likely that they will make mistakes, only benefiting the case of the personal guarantee holder.

 

 

For more information visit www.personal-guarantees.co.uk

 

Source: Investing.businessweek.com

Validity of electronic documents

For most companies, it is among the worst things that could happen: a lawyer's letter lands on the managing director's desk informing them that a personal guarantee case is now being taken to court. The pressure is now on to assemble evidence - and quickly. But in many cases, that evidence is not held in paper files, but in a myriad of electronic formats: emails, human resources or customer management systems, scanned-in faxes and application forms.

Many banks are confused as to what extent electronic documents will be accepted by a court of law as irrefutable evidence that the company was in the right all along. Rejection of a company's electronic documents by a court can be disastrous for a company's legal case.

The court will give most credence to the best evidence available, such as original documents or oral testimony. Evidence that is not original - for example, a printout of an electronic document or a scanned-in version of a paper original - is considered more remote and needs to have demonstrations of authenticity and reliability because electronic evidence can be easily manipulated.

For an electronic document to be valid the document should include: the author's name; the date the document/record was stored; the names of anyone who has accessed or made changes to the document; details of the changes made to the document and version control; details of movement of the document from medium to medium and from format to format... and the list goes on.

This is a complex task for the banks to manage, and helps personal guarantee claims to no end as the likelihood of the banks complying with these rules is very small indeed, thus weakening their case substantially.

 

 

For more information see personal-guarantee.co.uk

Source: information-age.com/articles