Venture capital represents financial investment in a highly risky proposition in the hope of earning a high rate of return. While the concept of venture capital is perhaps as old as the human race, the practice of venture capitalism has remained somewhat fragmented and individualized through its long history. Only in the last four decades or so has the field of venture capital acquired a certain coalescence, maturity and sophistication, particularly in the US.

The origin of venture capital in its modern form may be traced to General Doriot, who established the American Research and Development Fund at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1946, to finance the commercial exploitation of new technologies developed in US universities. The small business act of the US permitted the Small Business Administration to license and even support financially small business investment companies engaged in venture capital finance, provided fuel to the growth of venture capital finance.

Larger companies in the US like Xerox, 3M and General Electric entered the field with their venture capital divisions. These examples from the US stimulated the development of venture capital throughout the world. Though the initial efforts made in the early seventies to introduce venture capital were rather unsuccessful, the changed environment of the eighties witnessed a phenomenal growth of hi-tech industries and provided a fertile ground for the blossoming of venture capital.

Venture capital plays a helping hand in the financing of startup and early stage businesses, as well as businesses in “”turn around”" situations. Firms raise funds from different sources. Some funds like share capital are kept permanently in the business. Some funds like debentures are kept for long periods; while some funds are kept for short periods. The entire composition of these funds in an organization is generally termed a financial structure. Generally, the short-term funds are excluded since they are shifting often and the composition of long-term funds is known as capital structure.

The UK locksmiths industry could best be described as being in a state of crisis. In most countries a locksmith requires a license, if you carry the tools and equipment to gain entry to or open almost any lock or property then some sort of regulation is undeniably necessary. Sadly this is not the case in the United Kingdom. Any one in the UK can set themselves up and advertise there services as a locksmith, they don’t need a license and they don’t need to be answerable to any governing body beyond the broad guidelines set down by British trading standards. The UK locksmiths industry is gradually becoming saturated with poorly skilled, poorly trained and poorly equipped so called locksmiths.

As locksmiths working in Surrey, Kingston and London every year we see new companies starting up in our area of coverage. Many of these companies fail to see out a year in the trade, some do however do better. So why is this happening? There is no legislation to regulate the training of locksmiths in the United Kingdom. there are now countless locksmiths training schools scattered across London and Surrey offering two day training courses and claiming in that in those two days they will be able to learn everything they need to start up and trade as a locksmith. So you can learn everything you need to know? It used to take an apprentice locksmith five years or more before they were considered well versed in the locksmiths trade.

This influx of badly trained two day wonders is gradually strangling the industry, taking work from well established and highly skilled locksmiths and at the same time ruining the reputation of the trade with bad workman ship and excessive prices. So is there anything that can be done to counteract this trend? there are currently only two recognized official bodies for locksmiths in the UK, The Institute of Certified Locksmiths and the Master Locksmiths Association. Both of these bodies actively persue tighter regulation within the UK locksmiths industry with a hope to achieving licensing for locksmiths in the future.