Founder and president Paolo Trocca talks about an engineering company that has made a name for itself in the Middle Eastern oil business by playing it straight.

There is an oil and gas industry in Italy – but not much of one. In 2008, the BP Statistical Energy Survey estimated oil production there at an average of 121,000 barrels of crude oil per day or 0.15 percent of the world’s total.

East Asia Minerals (EAS) is proving it is possible to overcome obstacles to mine gold from challenging locations using sound management, local knowledge and a lot of determination.

Having established a reputation for solving tough industrial drying problems, particularly in the minerals industry, South African engineering company Drytech is now taking that expertise globally.

Chief executive officer Daniel Szasz talks about how the company is contributing to the development of Macedonia’s telecommunications industry.

In the years since gaining independence from the former Yugoslavia, Macedonia has undergone considerable economic reform. In fact, its development of an open economy saw the country ranked as the fourth ‘best reformatory state’ out of 178 countries rated by the World Bank in 2009.

Jimmy Johnston, project director for the St Helena airport project, discusses the work being undertaken to deliver the island its own international airport and the benefits this will create.

Through this agreement, Marathon, a refining, marketing and transportation company headquartered in Florida, will pay $600 million in cash, $1.2 billion for the plant’s inventories and a further $700 million depending upon future output and margins.

Businesses generate an average growth of 30 percent after exporting for just two years, according to new research from Barclays.

Carried out among 1,500 small businesses in the UK, the research reveals that 29 per cent experienced a positive impact on their bottom line within just six months of expanding into international markets. Eight in ten (82 per cent) of businesses experienced a positive impact on their bottom line after two years of exporting and 54 percent said their growth had been better than they had expected.

The subprime and European debt crisis is the greatest threat/opportunity for mankind in a century.

Written by Martin Marmolejo

With virtually no exceptions, every debt crisis is a prime example of major errors and omissions in fiscal policy management. That was the case in the European subprime crisis, as well as in Japan. Although the monetary side has room for improvement, the major potential in most economies lies in the fiscal side of public management.

Companies need to rethink return on investment to evaluate the benefits of social business.

Written by: Ofer Guetta

How do you quantify return on investment (ROI) of a social business? By its very nature, social technologies are more free-forming, making their potential exponential, yet unpredictable.