Wednesday 23 November 2011

Neither a borrower or a lender be

I had a run in with the business's bank the other day.

I run separate sterling, dollar and euro accounts so that I don't get tied up in too much foreign exchange nonsense. As it happened, due to VAT crap with HMRC I needed more pounds for a short period. I didn't want to convert dollars as I would need to change them back to dollars in the not too distant future with all the exchange rate costs and losses.

Easy I thought. A job for an overdraft. So I asked the bank for a £20k overdraft. No problem as I had way more dollars than is guaranteed by the Government. But no the bank insisted they needed my personal guarantee for a business overdraft. No problem I said but I wanted a personal guarantee from the bank directors for my dollars not covered by the Government.

Oddly enough the bank directors seem rather less confident in their business than I do in mine. So I ended up converting to dollars to pay a VAT bill that was refunded to me a few weeks later.