THE rate of businesses going under has started to drop, City analysts report today. The rate of failures has slowed down from the very high year-on-year rises we saw at the end of 2008

By Mike Brooke

THE rate of businesses going under has started to drop, City analysts report today.

The 'slow down' has been better in London over the past three months than the rest of the country, according to a survey.

The number going bust is down by 17 per cent compared with 13-and-a-half per cent across the UK.

"The rate of failures has slowed down from the very high year-on-year rises we saw at the end of 2008," said Equifax business information director Neil Munroe.

"This must give some confidence to businesses in general and the economy as a whole.

"But this is just one quarter. We need to see consistent improvements before we can be fully confident that we are out of the recession."

Yet this is "a definite sign" of the economy picking up from the sharp downturn which kicked in last year, he believes.

The three months from July to September is the first financial quarter for over a year when every business sector reports a drop in failures.

But analysts warn organisations not to 'take their eye off the ball' in risk management and find themselves in trouble and end up again with bad debts on their books.