Our business has about 250k to 1M to invest for about 3 to 6 months. At the moment we are getting shite rates of interest – not much more than 1%.

Can anyone tell me where I should look for a better return ?

Cheers

Speak to your bank, they should have a corporate financial adviser who deals with investing large sums.

Ive spoken to the bank – the best they can offer is 1.67%. But they only sell their own products. Id like some more choice.

Premium bonds?

Are you based in Nigeria? I should kindly send you bank details.

There’s always http://www.fool.co.uk/ for such questions as well.

Its a difficult one, the hardest part knowing who to trust because everyone will want a piece of your pie without really caring about you.

for yourself, research. look on money site forums (moneysavingexpert etc), read some newspapers, get a feel for what is possible.

your bank should have 2 levels of finacial advisor, the general branch one and specialist ones for larger accounts. if so this is the chap you need to talk to, the former will be on a remit to sell you their products whereas the latter is there to talk about wider possibilities. if they can’t offer that, go to another bank. natwest offer this service, and indeed the chap i spoke to gave me the best advice of anyone.

personally (bring on the wrath of the stw massive for stating this) i would look to forming a property portfolio – depending of course what sort of access you need to the cash – although my gut feeling is that it is not yet the prime time to buy. for that extra consideration, talk to your acountant because as my chap says ‘there are lots of ways to write off tax liability in property’.

good luck though, its a minefield out there!

Do you have any internal investment opportunities? Opportunities to spend the money now to reduce costs in the future.

Most companies have an internal rate of return used to determine the cost effectiveness of projects and payback periods. Just a thought given such poor external rates.

I can offer you a superb rate of return – oh, at least 13.56%.

Just mail me the cash, I *will* return it in 6 months….

Well, if it was my own business thats what I would be looking to do. But its not my money, they want secure, hassel free return. It does seem surprising hard to actually speak to banks that know what they can offer a business. Ive just gone through three idiots at Abbey who didnt know what they offered.

Don’t invest in property as mentioned above. You’re not going to make any money on that with a 3-6 months investment window.

We had a specialist advisor come in from our bank, He offered a couple of suggestions for short term investments with 100% deposit protection, but short term is usually 3 years, I’m not sure you’ll find anything for 3-6 months other than a slightly better rate on a corporate saver account.

You should also speek to the coroporate FA about overnight deposits. These are what the banks use to cover their positions with each other (well they did before the CC!).

They give slightly better rates than standard and you have ready access to the funds should the position change. I used it in my last job and we did quite well.

You get the interest paid back when the funds are returned so benefit from compounding. You can also agree to tie up some somes for longer & poss get a better rate. However, this was when base & libor were at astronomical rates c 4 or 5%!!

Yes Gary_M your right.

Just spoke to some other idiot in Mubai whose accent was so bad i couldnt understand him – he kept telling me he was in the UK. ****

It might be worth talking to your company lawyer as they are used to investing large sums of money for relatively short periods?

“investing between 250k and 1M
yep, i reckon STW is the place to go for advice on this!”

……wtf?

Olly, you never know who knows what on STW. If anyone wants detailed information on something there is always someone here willing to help.

I bet even you know something of worth others may benefit from 🙂

You’re not going to make any money on that with a 3-6 months

aha, missed that bit as i lazily scan read. yep, def ignore what i said!

Buy some shares*

* Please note molgrips inc is not liable for any losses incurred following this advice. Shares can go up as well as down.

Was looking at where to stick my company’s money (much smaller amount – but still more than I’ve ever had to invest before) for a similar amount of time, prior to paying tax.

I couldn’t find anywhere offering a decent rate – with a good security rating at the same time – so I’ve just left it in the HSBC.

Just went through the same thing with a similar amount of money. Went with Lloyds and got 1.88% for 3 months; this was a bit higher than their advertised rate due to them being “our” bank, which also reduced hassle factor that worked in their favour; most other high street banks had similar or lower rates. I think we can trust Lloyds for that long given implicit UK gov backing. Beyond that, we’re thinking about stockpiling mattresses…

If you want to look “off the highstreet”, have a look at Cater Allen or Close Brothers (both suggested by our lawyers) who were offering >2% last time I looked.

I suggest reading this article, it’s about auctioning off savings to banks:

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/saving-and-banking/article.html?in_article_id=473949&in_page_id=7&position=moretopstories