EuroWeek View: Forcing banks to lend will not solve SME funding crisis

UK business secretary Vince Cable has laid out his plans to increase bank lending to UK companies, especially those SMEs that have been starved of financing for much of the last two years. But the banks, which recently have been sensibly sticking to lending to high quality corporate names, have neither the appetite nor the capacity to fund every small business in the UK and should not be forced to do so.