It was in 1929 that O. T. H. Beier, a young pioneer living in Germany, made a life-changing decision, going against the wishes of his family by leaving his home and travelling to Durban to establish himself as a wool merchant. Little could Beier and his family have realised that with this decision he would be sowing the seeds for what would become a business legacy that continues in 2013.

When a successful formula is discovered in the business world, it’s copied and becomes part of standard operating procedure throughout entire industries.

The newest SOP trend among leading businesses? – Focusing on employee and family well-being, says Gary Kunath, who was honored nationally as Businessman of the Year and recognized with a dinner hosted by the President of the United States.

With the internet age in full swing and very much a part of everyday life in the Western world and developed nations, it is in the fast-developing nations across the world that the expansion of the digital sector is most prevalent today. One such country that is currently experiencing a rapid expansion in internet usage is Thailand, where access to the technology has become an increasing necessity, not only in business, but also in personal life.

At the moment, though Devex has opened a few offices in other countries where clients have adopted its systems, it is firmly a Brazilian company, with 85 percent of its $35 million annual revenue generated domestically. However there is no better seed-bed for new technology than Brazil, and forward thinking global mining groups are now taking notice of Brazil not just as a country with huge resources to extract but as a developer of smart ways of doing that.

Packaging specialist Coresa was established in Chile in 1966. “We started making flexible containers from polypropylene in the 1980s and also some fabrics for specific applications,” says managing director Jose Ignacio Arrate, “so we’ve been making these products now for thirty years, and the company has been in existence for nearly fifty years altogether.”

BHP said that production had jumped by nine percent to 187 million tonnes for the year to 30 June, news that analysts have reacted to by claiming it meant that the commodity giants were betting on continued strong demand from China, despite the country's economy seeing a slowdown in growth.

On March 1 this year ACCL International’s President, Haji Habibullah Pirzada, opened the company’s newly built headquarters in Kabul. ACCL is an Afghanistan-based company that makes use of its unique approach to partnership in a variety of post-conflict or underdeveloped regions worldwide to create wealth. It is a sign of the success of this unusual company that it had grown out of the premises it occupied since it was established in 2003.

The broker-dealers latest quarterly results show that it made $1.9 billion in the three months to the end of June. This compares with the $927 million it recorded in 2012 and comes amid what can be described as tougher trading conditions.

Its earnings were lifted by big returns on its own investments in shares and debts, which generated $1.4 billion in net revenues, up from $200 million a year ago. The profit that Goldman made on its own investments came as it sold off its last remaining shares in Industrial and Commercial Bank of China.

We have a somewhat complex relationship with leadership in the UK. Whilst by nature we tend to be a largely compliant nation, rarely has public opinion of our constitutional leaders been lower - and criticism louder. Furthermore, resentment of the part played by financial leaders in the economic crisis has been exacerbated by media reports of the pay offs and bonuses handed to banking bosses.

Last week, JP Morgan recorded a profit of $6.5 billion for the three months to the end of June, up 31 percent from 2012. Meanwhile, Wells Fargo also reported a 20 percent rise in profits to $5.27 billion.