Business and Financial News

By Rieva Lesonsky

Did you miss out on any of my columns this week? Here’s the rundown:

Learn how social media can boost your bottom line and more in my post on AOL Small Business.

What do women business owners need? Find out in my blog on AllBusiness.com.

What do women consumers want–and what makes them buy? Get the scoop in my blog on AT&T’s SmallBusinessInSite.

Who isn’t in transition these days? Meet two entrepreneurs who started a business helping people in transition in my post on the SCORE Women’s Success Blog.

We’re all getting older–and that spells opportunity for the franchise industry. Learn more in

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The boss of United Utilities today raised the spectre of more job cuts as the north west water giant faces up to cost pressures as it embarks on a £3.6bn investment spree at the same time as cutting household bills.

Chief executive Philip Green warned it was ‘inevitable’ that the FTSE 100 company would have to look at reducing overheads over the next five years as it upgrades the region’s water and wastewater infrastructure.

The mammoth programme will support 15,000 construction jobs across the region, he said.

Around £1bn will be spent on improvements in Greater Manchester, including £100m at the Davyhulme wastewater treatment works.

Mr Green said there would be ‘literally thousands’ of smaller projects across the north west to improve the quality of the region’s beaches and rivers, and to replace pipes.

UU ann

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This week, I wanted to address a question that I get asked by many small businesses. How much information is appropriate to give away for free?  

Most of us get asked to give away a fair amount of information – from information that we choose to provide (like this article) to people contacting us and asking us to answer questions for them to people blatantly meeting us and picking our brains. 

So, what’s ok to give away for free and what’s not? 

Well, the answer is that it’s very much up to you and your business. What’s ok to give away in my business isn’t necessarily right for your business and vice versa. 

I have tried both extremes – giving away lots of free information and then not giving anything away at all. What I can tell y

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Returning from a recent trip to Vietnam, an article from the International Herald Tribune caught my eye, and for obvious reasons.  It reiterates the explicit growth and frenzied pace on display in bustling cities such as Hanoi and Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City), and also underscores the favorable demographic thesis (nearly half of the population of 87m is in the labor force, and the broad, median age is 28.5) underpinning myriad, ongoing projections of an increasing derivitive in the country’s future, consumer-driven growth trends.  The population is currently growing at a rate of 1.2 percent/annum.

The piece also mentions Vietnam Dairy Products, or Vinamilk, already the country’s third most valuable company by market cap and which as of last week was up 16.6 percent from the end of 2008, compared with a 3.5 percent loss in the Ho Chi Minh index during the same period.  90 percent of the population lacks the enzyme necessary to process dairy; however, consumers are turning in droves to soya milk, and their consumption patterns correlate neatly with changes in income.  The firm expects a 30% increase in sales during 2010, and also to tack on at least ten points to its current market share of 35 percent.  That said, the company is also insulated to some degree from regional economic contraction as it continues to spread its influence internationally, servicing such large markets as the U.S., India, the Middle East, Africa, Poland, Germany and Cambodia with a diverse product line that includes milk powder, yogurt, and fresh milk, as well as fruit juice, herbal tea and the aforementioned soya milk.

Are you a military veteran starting or running a business? Do you know a veteran who’s considering entrepreneurship? B

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