BIG four accountancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, acknowledging market perception that it focuses only on large companies, has launched a new service for small and medium-sized firms.
Its "My Financepartner" service is aimed at providing support to SMEs, from start-ups to fast-growth businesses. Firms will be able to meet regularly with a "qualified and commercially-focused accountant" for advice and mentoring.
PwC has also forged alliances with Funding Circle, which enables investors to lend directly to small businesses, and with MarketInvoice, to help firms access so-called alternative funding sources. Businesses use MarketInvoice to sell their long-dated invoices direct to investors, releasing money which would otherwise be tied up from 30 to 120 days.
PwC said: "Despite market perception that it only focuses on big companies, PwC has helped over 12,000 SMEs achieve the next level of business growth in the last two years alone."
Martin Cowie, PwC's head of private business in Scotland, said: "With over 340,000 SMEs, employing over one million people and accounting for almost 40 per cent of private sector turnover, Scotland has a fantastic SME base.
"We believe this sector can not only grow but flourish in a global marketplace, given the right support."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article