Sky excessive: Andrew Griffith is charged with a extra business-friendly method
Boris Johnson has poached Sky TV chief working officer Andrew Griffith to be his interlocutor between Downing Avenue and the enterprise neighborhood.
Griffith, COO of the pay-TV big, would be the bridgehead between enterprise and the Authorities with the TV govt main a beefed-up enterprise workforce out of Downing Avenue.
Notoriously, Johnson was overheard to say fuck enterprise when he was Overseas Secretary and being confronted with enterprise leaders alarm over Brexit. However in latest weeks he has been on a attraction offensive in an effort to influence company leaders that he’ll supply a pro-business, tax-cutting agenda.
Andrew Griffith is a former Conservative candidate who lent his £9.5m Westminster townhouse to the Johnson marketing campaign through the race for the occasion management.
Allan Leighton, chairman of Co-operative Group and former Sky board member, instructed the Monetary Occasions that Griffith can be excellent news for the enterprise neighborhood.
Small enterprise response
Reacting to Johnsons appointment as Prime Minister, enterprise associations and small enterprise suppliers gave their want lists for the incoming PM.
The Federation of Small Companies (FSB) met with Johnson and his workforce final week to debate priorities for the brand new administration.
Among the many measures the FSB wish to see is modernising enterprise charges by extending the two-year 33laptop charges low cost benefiting small retailers with rateable values as much as £51,000 to producers.
FSB chairman Mike Cherry stated: Brexit has been absorbing Authorities bandwidth for years now, leaving home challenges unaddressed. Chief amongst these is a damaged enterprise charges system, spiralling employment prices and derisory broadband and telephone connectivity.
Edwin Morgan, interim director basic of the Institute of Administrators, stated: The brand new Prime Minister will take the reins at crunch-time for companies up and down the nation. Its essential that the incoming administration recognises that it is a daunting time for a lot of companies, and is ready to again them.
The IoD has referred to as for the Authorities to offer monetary help for SMEs to arrange for and alter for Brexit by means of a Brexit planning voucher scheme providing grants for smaller companies entry specialist skilled and/or authorized assist. It additionally needs enterprise funding incentivised by enhancing EIS and SEIS reliefs and creating a brand new Enhanced Capital Allowance for productivity-enhancing spending.
Gary Turner, co-founder and managing director of on-line accounting platform Xero, stated: Our new PM must recognise what small companies contribute to our society earlier than he embarks on a come what could Brexit deal. For the UK to prosper, he wants to finish the suffocation of SMEs the livelihoods of small enterprise homeowners are at stake and this isn’t being thought-about within the ongoing distraction of Brexit.
Steven Stewart, director of Valitor, referred to as for enterprise charges to be minimize, carefully adopted by tackling late funds. The Authorities, stated Stewart, must merely hear and take recommendation from the folks on the bottom doing the exhausting graft.
Adam Marshall, director-general on the British Chambers of Commerce, stated the message to Johnson from across the UK was easy: The time for campaigning is over and we’d like you to get all the way down to enterprise. Firms have to know, in concrete phrases, what your authorities will do to keep away from a messy, disorderly Brexit on the 31st of October.
