Well if you're looking for someone to invest in you, you're much better off going on Dragons' Den where there's 4 people to invest in you instead of 1, you don't have to do endure the whole 14 weeks and you don't have to give up your job.

I'm not saying it's exactly like Dragons' Den, but with the prize becoming strikingly like the one on Dragons' Den the whole process loses a lot of credibility in comparison and the title "The Apprentice" becomes somewhat redundant, don't you think? It's gonna be more like "The Business Partner" now.

Can't beleive people are saying this is a poor prize. It's an unbelievable opportunity for the winner.

The prize isn't a 250k investment in someones current business it's 250k to start up a new business. 250k plus sugars contact book and probably the use of his infrastructure is a huge opportunity.

I started my business with 5k, no contacts and a bedroom office!

If you kept 51% then I might agree, but giving away half means you effectively don't have control any more.

Not if yo got a fledgling or a startup business. The chances of the dragons investing £250k in any business is very low, and if its a fledgling business then its virtually nil. I am not sure how many times the dragons have invested £250K in a business, but I would bet its very very low.

I'm not saying it's exactly like Dragons' Den, but with the prize becoming strikingly like the one on Dragons' Den the whole process loses a lot of credibility in comparison and the title "The Apprentice" becomes somewhat redundant, don't you think? It's gonna be more like "The Business Partner" now.[/quote]

Its nothing like Dragons den, the only similarity is the prize. The prize is not discussed on the show (the apprentice). All you hear its a job with a 100K salary - thats it. I do agree the title is all wrong. Maybe the prize should be, you work with Sugar for a year, learn something from him, and then you get the £250K to start/continue your business.

not necessarily, you can be 50/50 partners, and one partner can have the final say when it comes to business decisions.

I still don't see how they can offer someone £250k to start a business unless you've got a business plan or at least a rough idea of what you want to do?

Thats what I dont understand@ slapmatt

There is bound to be an enormous quantity of small print that will restrict what business can be started and I would imagine Sugar has a veto.

Maybe the candidates were asked to submit a business proposal as part of the selection process - or at least for the very final rounds.

I agree, there is bound to be a hefty contracts the candidates will have to sign, before they are selected to participate.

Sugar is no idiot, he will have covered his back - the money will only go to someone who Sugar thinks will make him some money.

Given that so many Dragon's Den deals fall through - and these are with established businesses - I can't see how this will work.

The most obvious business to set up is a consultancy, which is what so many failed Apprentice contestants do, but given Alan Sugar's famously vocal hatred of them I can't see that happening either.

and the competition would be between the 12 business proposals with the tasks irrelevant............

Or you would have someone like Michelle - with their own business up and running - competing against someone unemployed, someone working in something else like banking or medicine, someone already working in sales or marketing and someone just out of education. Michelle wins on day one as she's proven what they need to prove already.......

Haven't watched this programme for years but this change does change the point of the show completely.

So Lord Sugar will now be looking for a business partner instead of an apprentice? hmmm...

The reason for the change is that Alan Sugar doesn't really have much left in terms of businesses that he controls that it would actually make sense having an Apprentice winner working in. Winning the Apprentice and then being given a job at Viglen or Amsprop isn't exactly an exciting prospect, and Sugar will probably gradually be selling those off over the next few years to fund his retirement.

If I won I would set up a very small business which paid me a salary of £249,999 on the first day, and then I would wind it up.

Somehow, I doubt that. Simon Sugar is CEO of AMScreen; Daniel Sugar is a director at AMSProp - which leads me to believe he'll want to pass on some of his businesses to his children (he also has a daughter).

As for the last paragraph, I've no doubt LS will have put safeguards in place against crooks like you.

What kind of safeguards? As a director I can choose to do whatever I like with the money in the company.

Not if you have agreed to do or not to do certain things as a condition of getting finance.

Do you honestly believe that finance is given unconditionally?

Ummm... no, you can't. Directors are ultimately answerable to the shareholders, who own the company. Apart from that, a company, under English law, is a person. A director who draws money from a company without permission from its owners is stealing - which I believe is a criminal offence - even if the director is also a shareholder. A director who, through his actions - like drawing an overly large salary - causes the company to become insolvent is deemed to have defrauded the company - and that's also a criminal offence.

You don't know much about company law, do you?

I don't think that's true in general. It's often the case that companies that have become insolvent have been paying their directors large salaries up until the very last minute.


However, even if a director (or group of directors) has 75% of the shares there are certain things that he/they cannot do - things that would be legally termed 'a fraud on the minority'.

Yes. It's up to the insolvency practitioner to notify the authorities if he or she suspects fraud. Many times, in cases of voluntary insolvency, the directors appoint a "friendly and flexible" insolvency practitioner. However, I doubt that paying oneself the whole of the company's cash reserve (which is actually the amount invested by the other shareholder), in one lump sum, would pass muster even with one of them - or that many directors did such things.

No, that would definitely ring every alarm bell.

I would never enter a program like this.

These candidates will presumably be submitting business plans as part of the process of the series, I very much doubt that Sugar is the type of person that would sign an NDA. No big businessman I have ever come across does NDA's hence why I would never deal with them.

With his wealth he could easily see some businesses he likes from the business plans and start them himself without the candidate.

With my business anyone who is going to be privy to information has to sign a watertight NDA.

I doubt very much he would steal an ideal from a candidate. He would have far much to lose.

Without a patent or an NDA little he could do

"The Brand" talked openly in a show about a tracking device for dogs, now unless Baggs has a patent on that idea the fact it is now in the public domain what is legally stopping Sugar from hiring a designer to develop one and maybe make a few million from it ? nothing

The fact that the idea was dementedly stupid.

The bagginator may have fooled people here into thinking he's technically savvy (and he may well be in one very specialised area) but anyone with the vaguest understanding of RF communication knows that there is no way in the world you can get enough power to the chip in a micro-chipped dog to track it. (At least with today's technology.)