Growing optimism thanks to economic upswing 14. February 2007 by Thomas Jannot According to the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) the belief in a growing German economy is becoming stronger in February 2007. After –3.6 point in January the corresponding economic indicator rose by 6.5 points to currently +2.9 points which signals that the German economy will continue recovering in the second half of this year. …
GDP higher than expected 13. February 2007 by Thomas Jannot Today the Federal Statistical Office published a cheerful message: Adjusted for price and season the German gross domestic product increased by another 0.9% in the fourth quarter of 2006 as compared to the previous quarter. GDP measures the value of goods and services generated by a national economy. Another surprise came in the form of …
Workers´s councils inflate labour costs 13. February 2007 by Thomas Jannot According to a new study by the Mannheim-based Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) companies with a workers´council pay substantially higher wages than companies without it. A comparison between companies being similar as regards line of business, company size etc. shows that the wage difference is about 10%. Furthermore, in companies with workers´ council the …
IT security in SMEs criticised 13. February 2007 by Thomas Jannot In the context of the current discussion about industrial espionage the German Association of Information Management, Telecommunication and New Media (BITKOM) laments a lack of a thought-out IT security strategy in most small and medium-sized entities (SMEs). Even though many entrepreneurs consider their business secrets to be safe, current reports on foreign hackers attacking German …
Search for best start-up 13. February 2007 by Thomas Jannot Start-ups from the fields of Mobile Content and Digital Life wishing to present themselves to a wider audience on the occasion of this year´s CeBIT exhibition in Hannover and look for contacts to investors should register for the “Innovators’Pitch” competition as soon as possible. This competition is organized by the German Association of Information Management, …
Get to know Germany´s most successful brands 13. February 2007 by Thomas Jannot For the fourth time Germany´s most successful brands were awarded the „best brands 2007» prize at the Bayerische Hof in Munich. Special about this award: the winners are not elected by a jury, but on the basis of a representative GfK study which determines the market success of brands and their popularity with consumers. This …
Focus marketing ressources on A clients 13. February 2007 by Thomas Jannot An analysis of target groups for products and services saves marketing resources and money. This is basic knowledge of any businessman. The difficult part begins with the classification of clients. Only by such a classification can resources be focused on really remunerative clients. The way in which target group segmentation works is described by Dr. …
Labour costs above-average in Germany 9. February 2007 by Thomas Jannot According to the Federal Statistical Office, in 2004 labour costs in Germany (gross pay plus non-wage labour costs) were about one third higher than the average EU labour costs. One average German employers paid 28.17 Euros per working hour. Contrary to expectations this was not caused by non-wage labour costs which amounted to 33 Euros …
Wholesale prices rising in January 9. February 2007 by Thomas Jannot Wholesale prices increased by 3.1% in January 2007 as compared to January 2006. This increase is smaller than those registered for November and December as compared to the same months in 2005 (+3.7% in both cases). Compared to December 2006 the wholesale price index remained unchanged in January 2007. These figures were published today by …
The profits of major enterprises bypass tax authorities 9. February 2007 by Thomas Jannot In Germany there is a contradiction between relatively low public revenue and high tax rates. If, on the basis of macroeconomic accounting, one compares inland revenue with business profits, one will discover an account balance of about 100 billion Euros for the year 2001 which corresponds to 5% of GDP, as was stated by the …