SMEs may go public at a cost of 50.000 instead of 200.000 Euros 9. May 2006 by Thomas Jannot According to information made available by the EU the current costs of an initial public offering (IPO) amount to between 200.000 and 500.000 Euros. In addition, there is a similarly high annual sum which must be spent in order to stay on the stock exchange. Costs which only few small and medium-sized entities (SMEs) are …
Prospectus requirement may lead to more security for investors in SMEs 9. May 2006 by Thomas Jannot A critical article on FAZ.NET (Frankfurter Allgemeinen Zeitung) deals with the pros and cons facing investors in shares of small and medium-sized companies listed on the Entry Standard market segment of the Frankfurt stock exchange.
Small and medium-sized companies may benefit by change to Vista 9. May 2006 by Thomas Jannot Small and medium-sized entities (SME) are said to particularly benefit from shifting from Windows XP to its successor Vista, if they cannot rely upon a fully-grown server structure and if they have many notebooks in use. According to the expert magazine „Computer im Mittelstand” a new tool, the so-called Windows Collaboration, co-ordinates the virtual teamwork …
Small and medium-sized companies are among the winners on the stock exchange 8. May 2006 by Thomas Jannot On Wednesday and Thursday the second General Standard conference of the German Stock Exchange took place in Frankfurt. About 40 companies listed in the Entry Standard and General Standard met with investors and analysts. For the first time this provided companies quoted in the Entry Standard with the opportunity to present themselves to investors and …
Dutch people brilliant at making patentable inventions 8. May 2006 by Thomas Jannot As is revealed by the latest patent statistics of the EU commission, with a total of 23.789 patent applications for patentable inventions, Germany was the front-runner in the EU in 2005. In the same year in the United States there were 32.738 patent applications and 21.461 in Japan. Second in Europe came France with 8.034 …
Counterfeiting to be more severely punished 8. May 2006 by Thomas Jannot Innovative small and medium-sized companies may breathe a sigh of relief: The EU-commission is set to take severe measures against counterfeiting. The unauthorized copying of proprietary articles within the EU will be fined with amounts ranging from 100.000 to 300.000 Euro or imprisonment of up to 4 years. According to a verdict of the European …
Enlarged EU is benefitting from internal trade flows 8. May 2006 by Thomas Jannot Joaquin Almunia, EU commissioner of Commerce and Finance, presented a report in Brussels suggesting that the extension of the European Union from 15 to 25 member states 2 years ago has proved to be an advantage to everyone. The report also shows that fears of job cuts and relocation were exaggerated. It furthermore states that …
Damaged hard drives may still be saved 5. May 2006 by Thomas Jannot According to the National Archives & Records Administration (NARA) in Washington, USA, 93 percent of companies the server of which has been out of order for more than ten days go bankrupt within the following year. Charred interfaces, crushed read heads and destroyed drive cases represent the daily routine in the laboratory of Kroll Ontrack …
What executives need to know about Basel II 5. May 2006 by Thomas Jannot Crashes of major commercial banks in the 1970s led to the setting up of a committee for the supervision of banking in Basel, Switzerland, at the Bank for International Settlement (BIZ). This committee is made up of representatives from central banks or supervisory institutions of Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Canada, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Sweden, …
Small and medium-sized companies call for specific financial reporting standards 5. May 2006 by Thomas Jannot Small and medium-sized German entities (SME ⇒ Wikipedia) are calling for their own special version of the so-called International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS ⇒ Wikipedia ). This is the unanimous opinion voiced at last Wednesday´s “Internationale Rechnungslegung” conference, according to the organiser of the event, the accountancy and consultancy enterprise PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).