WBS professor reports in the FT on research on UK's mid-market businesses

Professor Steve Roper is Associate Dean and Director of the Centre for SMEs at WBS. He guest edited the Entrepreneur page of the Financial Times Money supplement, published on Saturday 28 July. He is also author of an opinion piece on the challenges of ensuring that the UK's mid-market businesses do not continue to miss out on growth opportunities.

He comments, "In the research we examined the mid-market in four major EU economies - France, Germany, Italy and the UK. Detailed company accounts data on over five-million firms from the Amadeus database were used to enable us to profile the size and structure of the EU-4 mid-markets; interviews with 1600 CEOs and company directors were also conducted to enable us to identify the aspirations and concerns of mid-market companies.

"UK mid-market firms compared well to their Italian and French counterparts but lag German mid-market firms in terms of operational efficiency and productivity. UK firms were also more likely to emphasise survival rather than growth as a business objective than their continental competitors. Building a global market footprint also seemed more difficult for UK mid-market firms despite some progress in recent years.

"The data collected for this study provides a valuable research resource and will hopefully generate future academic research at Warwick in partnership with GE Capital and with our international research partners."

The authored article can be viewed through the link below (registration / subscription required).