At this morning’s launch of Small Business Week at the BT Tower, Peter Jones stole the show with his insistence that things will start to look rosy again following today’s £37bn bank bail-out.

He praised the actions of the government as “first class” and said that as the credit lines start to open up again, any recession in the UK will be, at worst, a shallow one.

Brave words, but then entrepreneurs are used to making bold statements and generally accentuating the positive.

You might have read one of my diatribes against the hoary ‘bullish’ cliché, but I suppose anyone who's familiar with those awful 'swot analysis' things knows that wherever there are threats, there are also opportunities. (And strengths. And weaknesses. Does anyone else have trouble delineating the four?)

Anyway, if entrepreneurs are relentlessly optimistic by nature, in the current climate this principle is one of the few things they have left to cling to, so it was good to see two enterprise giants pointing the way forward last week.

The average punter might not think of a struggling and outmoded UK retailer and an Icelandic retail investor as sound investment opportunities right now. But then the average punter lacks the nous of Sir Alan Sugar and Sir Philip Green.

On Friday, it emerged that Sugar had bought 3.9% of Woolworths, the high street chain whose shares have fallen 83% over the past year and posted a record six month loss. So what's he up to?

When you consider that the news came on the same day that Woolworths agreed to sell some stores to Tesco, it starts to look like a shrewd bit of 'bottom fishing', and is heartening evidence that it's a ripe environment for entrepreneurs keen to sniff out a bargain.

Further evidence came from Sir Philip Green, who looks poised to consolidate his position as king of the high street with a dramatic intervention to stave of the collapse of crisis hit Icelandic retail investor Baugar.

After the recent collapse and subsequent nationalisation of Iceland’s banks, much of the debt used by Baugur to acquire UK retailers which include Oasis, Warehouse, Principles and Karen Millen is now controlled by the Icelandic government.

Sir Philip is keen to buy the debt, providing Iceland with much needed funds and Baugur certainty about its funding. The billionaire is also expected to inject working capital into the business. If the deal comes off – and it’s still a big if – it might just be an even better example of entrepreneurial bargain hunting than Sugar’s.