Business failures in London rose by more than 50% in the first quarter of the year compared to the previous year. This is to be taken in the context of the most favourable business figures for Britain as a whole since 1998. Dun and Bradstreet, the business information company, said 1,483 businesses collapsed in London compared with 983 in the fourth quarter of 2000.
Philip Mellor, of Dun and Bradstreet, said: “Many of the firms going to the wall are capital intensive service providers such as printers, hit by cutbacks by big City institutions over the last few months.”
Across the country only 9,360 businesses failed in the first quarter of 2001, down from 9,922 in the final quarter of 2000, representing a fall of 6%. Even in the south-west and north-east, the areas most strongly affected by the outbreaks of foot and mouth disease, the number of company failures has dropped sharply.
