SMEs or Big Businesses? Which are Dominant in your Area?

by Startacus Admin

In 2014 UK entrepreneurship reached a record high with some 581,173 new businesses being registered, the vast majority of which were freelancers and SMEs.  

Indeed, the explosion in entrepreneurship which has taken place in recent years serves to highlight the substantial contribution that such businesses make to the economy, on both a local and national level.  For example, did you know that freelancers and micro-businesses (those with fewer than 10 employees) account for 19 % of total UK business turnover?

 

But of course this rapid increase in business creation has not been evenly spread throughout the UK, with areas such as Warrington, Brighton, and Manchester seeing the strongest relative growth, and cities such as Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Sheffield lagging quite a way behind.  

 

All of this got us thinking about SMEs and big businesses, and which size of enterprise occupied the most significant portion of the economy both in the UK as a whole, and within individual regions.   

 

SME vs. Big Business- Who has the largest slice of your industry pie?

 

Hiscox has recently undertaken research which goes some way towards answering our questions.  

They have compiled their findings into an interactive infographic / chart, which demonstrates rather well what proportion of turnover in 7 key industries is produced by SME’s (fewer than 250 employees) and big businesses (over 250 employees).

 

We’ve sifted through some of the key points from the infographic / chart for you and summarised them in the table below.

Of course there are many statistics that we would have expected from this interactive infographic, such as the fact that on average in England 81 % of real estate activities turnover is generated by SMEs.  But conversely the data presented by Hiscox also posits some rather surprising figures including that 80% of arts entertainment and recreation activity industry turnover is produced by big businesses.

 

But perhaps the most interesting revelation made in these figures from Hiscox is that, in many regions SMEs represent 100% of turnover created by individual industries, making them much more dominant than we would have expected.  The most common deviation from this extensive dominance can be found in the South East of England, London and East Anglia, where big business industry activities often represent a higher percentage of turnover when compared to the rest of England.

The reasons for such geographical discrepancies?  We’d love to hear your thoughts!  Feel free to comment below with your opinions or drop us a tweet to discuss further!

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Published on: 5th August 2015