Last week, I played tennis at my club in London. In the court next to me was a man whose business collapsed not long ago, after it had borrowed billions of pounds. He was laughing and seemed relaxed. Somehow I doubt he had given any personal guarantees to the banks.
Following his example, whenever I give advice to would- be entrepreneurs I tell them the single most important thing to remember is never, ever to give any lender a personal guarantee. Do not put your house on the line: there is always another way to find the money. But it seems quite a few borrowers forgot the vital rule.
A friend who works in property tells me the Irish banks were unable to extract such undertakings from British developers; it seems their property clients were scarred so badly after the bust in the early 1990s that they learnt not to risk all their assets by signing a bit of paper. But in Ireland many of the super-bullish, newly rich housebuilders and wheeler- dealers were happy to provide