Risk Capital

Abstract

The adequacy of the supply of equity capital to small businesses has long been the subject of debate. The Bolton Report was the first formally to draw attention to this problem (though the special difficulties of these small businesses needing to bridge the gap between private and public sources of equity finance was looked at by the Macmillan Commission just after the war). Almost 10 years after Bolton the Wilson Committee addressed itself to this among other problems in the financing of small firms. The Wilson Committee expressed concern about the lack of suitable data in this area, a difficulty which is not confined solely to the funding of small firms. In its report it gives the results of a survey of some 300 companies for the accounting year 1975. Unincorporated businesses were not covered in this analysis