Business crashes and insolvencies are set to break all records in 2009, but as usual some fat cats are sitting behind the scenes getting richer and creaming off fees.

Accountants KPMG are predicting personal insolvencies may crash through the 150,000 barrier for the first time in 2009.

The people who make money out of insolvency are the administrators and financiers.

The current trend of pre-pack administrations has got to stop. It’s unethical and unfair. They allow the rich to get richer while pushing the poor further in to poverty.

A pre-pack administration is where a rich financier does a deal with the administrator before a company goes broke. Typically, the buyer asset strips the company by cherry picking the profitable parts and leaves the rest to wither and die.

The administrators are happy – they receive a fee for overseeing the break-up.

The buyer is happy – a cut-price deal leads to future profits.

The people who suffer are the workers who struggle to keep their homes and feed their families and the creditors – mainly the big pension funds that are landlords missing out on defaulted rents.

For a government that pledged to redistribute wealth, Prime Minister Gordon Brown seems to have the Nelson touch when it comes to regulating the City – either he’s turning a blind eye or he can’t see what’s going on.

Perhaps for a New Year resolution he ought to set his personal Rottweiler Business Secretary Peter Mandelson on solving the problem.

Markets

The FTSE 100 closed up 73.3 points at 4392.7 from 4319.4. The DOW ended at 8668.93 – up 181.42 on the day from 8457.51.

The pound closed at a new low against the Euro – down from 1.038 to 1.033 while trading against the US dollar remained steady – shifting from$1.457 to $1.456 during the day.