GROWTH, PROFITABILITY: and the small firm

Abstract

In 1967, the Industrial and Commercial Finance Corporation published the results of a survey into the financial development, growth and profitability of 300 ICFC backed companies. The 300 firms were those on which ICFC had the necessary data for a number of years—for 10 years in the case of 113 firms and for 5 years in the case of a further 187. This paper is a more up to date survey of a similar kind. This time the nine years 1959–60 to 1967–68 and the 4 years 1964–65 to 1967–68 were selected. The selection of these years, and the size of the sample, was largely brought about by the desire to submit this paper as part of the evidence ICFC was putting before the Bolton Committee of Inquiry on Small Firms. In view of the urgent need for this evidence, it was not possible to take the sample beyond 1967–68 and even then a number of companies have had to be excluded because their results for 1967–68 were not yet available. For the purposes of this paper 1967–68 refers to any financial year ended by 31st March, 1968. Since its inception 24 years ago ICFC has financed well over 2,000 small and medium sized companies in the UK. Almost all of these firms have been owner‐managed, private companies, and it is on companies such as these that national statistics are particularly deficient at present. This survey examines 304 of these firms, of which 69 had their results analysed for the period 1959–60 to 1967–68 and a further 235 for the period 1964–65 to 1967–68.

Citation

Allen, C. (1970), "GROWTH, PROFITABILITY: and the small firm", Management Decision, Vol. 4 No. 4, pp. 19-23. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb000944