MittelstandsWiki

It is not only major companies which are doing more business abroad, but also with small and medium-sized entities the share of international business in their total turnover is on average more than 20 percent. The EU is still the region preferred by German companies, if the question comes to relocating business segments abroad, but the USA are catching up. According to the Bavarian ministry of economic affairs, with 12 percent the most important customer country for Bavarian goods were the USA in the first six months of 2006 with exports increasing by 10.7 percent to 8.2 billion Euro. +++

According to the conclusion of an article published on the Handelsblatt website leasing is becoming more and more popular with small and medium-sized entities. In smaller companies it is very often seen as an alternative to traditional forms of external financing. This fact is underlined by the “Mind – Mittelstand in Deutschland” study which was scientifically supervised by the IfM Bonn institute. According to the study´s latest findings from 2005 almost 41 percent of SMEs make use of leasing. Other studies by the IfM Bonn arrived at even higher percentages. +++

The Finanzstandort Deutschland (IFD) initiative has published a highly interesting brochure for small and medium-sized entities which is free of charge and provides a summary of rating methodes and their qualitative as well as quantitative parameters currently applied by banks. The purpose of this brochure is to make comparable the evaluation of borrowers and accompanied risks by different banks. Furthermore, the most important expressions in connection with this subject are clearly explained in the brochure. +++

According to a press statement by the ITK Journal the German minister of justice, Mrs. Brigitte Zypries, thinks that at present it would not be a good idea to charge a special fee on personal computers with internet access. In her opinion, right now users already pay quite a lot for public broadcasting services (also see GEZ insists on broadcasting fees for company company PCs and Findings of survey on broadcasting fees).

Actually a new data base storing information on EU grants and set up by the EU Commission is meant as a weapon in the fight against money squandering or bad investments. Furthermore, from a political point of view, it is to increase the faith of EU citizens by promoting more transparency. But the data base does also represent an important source to small and medium-sized entities for market, order and competitor analysis. Therefore, in future a weekly check of the relevant information contained in that data base may become important for SMEs. +++

Quite often small and medium-sized entities distinguish themselves by their innovative power. A new study called “Empirical success factors for increased innovative power” prepared by the Fraunhofer IAO offers a synopsis of all the important benchmark values of the parameters and indicators relevant to business success, in particular for the success of innovative companies operating in the industrial sector.  This synopsis is based upon the results of a research project called „InnoSME – increasing the innovative power of small and medium-sized entities from the goods-producing industry“. +++

According to a current survey by the Financial Times Deutschland (FTD) it is the cooperative WGZ bank which at present prepares small and medium-sized entities (SMEs) in the most detailed manner for rating talks by giving a 20-pages expert opinion. To this end the bank uses a computer programme called „Mind” which helps to draw up a detailed financial status report based on a comparison with other companies from the same industrial sector. +++

In Germany engineers are very much sought-after. The industrial sector talks about a serious lack of qualified engineers and laments about not being able to staff vacancies for months to come. How much money employers have to pay in order to keep or recruit top engineers is shown by a current salary study carried out by the Kienbaum staff and management consulting firm. +++

The argument about “.eu” domains continues. The Eurid domain allocation company which had 74.000 eu-domains blocked has suffered a strong setback in current legal proceedings, as was reported by the pressetext news agency. By means of an interim order under a penalty of a 25.000 Euro fine per domain and per hour a court in Brussels prohibited Eurid from blocking the domains in question. Even though the whole matter seems to be quite confusing, the big number of domains which are now available again offer a good opportunity to many small and medium-sized entities of acquiring an attractive domain name. +++