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Talk earlier this week that Twitter is looking to charge companies for a premium subscription service has become a reality. The social network is preparing to offer certain customers an expanded range of services.

It said it may offer commercial accounts in which corporations and other types of businesses pay a fee to receive an enhanced version of Twitter - a free service that allows people to send short, 140-character text messages to their netw…

Source: Business Listings

Sorry for the missing installment last week, but normal service is resumed. Here is the fourth part of Gavin Thomson’s stories from factory-land. 

Just to remind you, Gavin was the former head of Woolworths in Shanghai and helped to manage the £275 million of Chinese-made goods that flowed to the UK high street each year.

This week, a problem that I imagine a lot of bosses face: how to deal with people who you owe money to. At this point, Gavin was still running …

Source: Business Listings

Barclays has just released an estimate that female-only starts ups increased by 9pc to more than 90,000 in 2008 compared to 83,000 in 2007. Male-only start-ups showed a slight increase of less than 1pc, to 300,000.

Start-up activity did slow in the final months of the year but still remained in positive territory - more bank accounts were being opened than being closed.

Building on this theme of a rise in female entrepreneurship, tomorrow, a Government commissioned poll of …

Source: Business Listings

The significance of Mervyn King’s intervention on the public finances can hardly be overstated. Indeed, it goes to the very heart of the economic policy dilemma facing the UK economy at the moment, which is this: Britain is facing the worst recession since the Second World War. Unemployment is likely to rise far higher - perhaps even to close in on four million, according to Danny Blanchflower, King’s colleague. The pain will be felt deeply throughout the country.

Much has already …

Source: Business Listings

Deflation. The great evil that will cause the economy to grind to a halt. Which will cause our debts to swell, and our stomachs to shrink.

Oh give me a break. The doomsayers are determined to present every economic phenomenon that befalls us as the sky falling in. Let’s be clear: deflation - or the today’s zero inflation - is a good thing in the short term.

Yes, if it continues for a long period it can cause serious paralysis in the economy and cause our wages to …

Source: Business Listings

February bank lending stats out today from the British Bankers’ Association show that despite the promises there has been no surge in lending to business.

“Within company financing, consumer-facing sectors were the only significant borrowers in February,” said David Dooks, the BBA’s head of stats.

That increase was largely down to demand for trade finance, the BBA said. This will be money u…

Source: Business Listings

So, after all that, we’re not in deflation. To general shock and amazement throughout the City, the Retail Price Index did not creep into negative territory last month, dropping instead from 0.1pc to zero.

Consumer Prince Index inflation, the measure targeted by the Bank of England, actu…

Source: Business Listings

I reckon that the week just gone should have been the toughest of the year so far. For a start March is a long month and by the middle of it most people have run out of cash and plan to spend the run up to pay day eating toast and watching telly. Add in the fact that Christmas bills are still clogging up credit cards whilst deposits  for summer holidays are needing to be paid for those lucky enough to be contemplating getting away. It didn’t bode well for disposable spending on our pi…

Source: Business Listings

In Saturday’s Telegraph, Rupert Neate wrote a necessarily open-ended piece about Twitter’s future. “Analysts are concerned that while the site has attracted a huge fanbase it is unclear how it will ever make any money,” he wrote.

But it seems that, since Saturday, things have moved on. Today, <a href=”http://mashabl…

Source: Business Listings

I’ve just been along to the House of Commons to hear Danny Blanchflower of the Bank of England talk about his proposals for what the Government must do on employment to prevent a major crisis in the coming years. His arguments are very powerful, none more so than the warning that the rising jobless toll will leave a hefty scar both on society and on the economy.

<img src=”http://fast1.onesite.com/blogs.telegraph.co.uk/u…

Source: Business Listings