Walking into a crowded networking event where you recognise no one can daunt even the most sociable business professionals.

Understanding why you’re networking and how to maximise any potential contacts you make is vital to help a business grow.

Here CEO of OfficeBroker.com Chris Meredith gives his top tips on overcoming networking event fears, and getting the most out of them for your business.

Fire is a friend to mankind - until it gets out of hand: then it can become a formidable enemy, one that can only be subdued by an army versed in both conventional and guerrilla warfare and co-ordinated ground and air operations. As Johan Heine, co-Managing Director of Kishugu (formerly the FFA Group) speaks - always passionately - about the business he founded 28 years ago in 1986, he relies heavily on military imagery.

Steve Todoruk, a mining veteran who joined Rick Rule in 2003 at Sprott Global Resource Investments Ltd. says he’s seeing some key similarities between today and the last big bear market for resource stocks, which lasted from around 1998 to 2001. Many of today’s mining legends made their reputation and their fortune during that time.

The last time we saw this happen was in the late 1990s.

Gold was around $300 per ounce; silver was near $6; and copper was $0.60 a pound.

It’s not random chance that puts mining at the head of the list of industries – and it’s a long list – that HAWK serves. HAWK is an Australian company, founded in 1988 with a focus on serving that country’s resources sector with locally designed and produced products. Over the years the company has expanded into different geographic areas, mainly into countries with a mining presence, working through a network of specialised distributors.

Canada’s enhanced Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Strategy, “Doing Business the Canadian Way: Advancing Corporate Social Responsibility in Canada’s Extractive Sector Abroad” was announced by the Canadian government on November 14. It builds on experience and best practices gained since the 2009 launch of Canada’s first CSR strategy, “Building the Canadian Advantage: A Corporate Social Responsibility Strategy for the Canadian Extractive Sector Abroad.” The idea is that Canadian companies operate abroad with the highest ethical standards.

Have you always liked aeroplanes?
Fraid so! I don’t know where it came from, but for as long as I remember flying has always been a passion of mine.

What’s so special about Aerosud?
I had the privilege of starting Aerosud as a one man company in 1990, albeit in the context of an agreement with my five other partners who would be following me later.

On March 7 this year King Mswati III of Swaziland officially opened the new international airport, also known as King Mswati III. A key component of the Millennium Development goals (MDG) programme, the $280 million project is not unattended by controversy, but is seen as essential if Swaziland is to make the most of its geographical advantages and become a mini hub within southern Africa, providing a complementary role to OR Tambo Airport only a couple of hundred miles to the west.

Tesco this year has seen its share price fall by 25% and eight directors have been suspended following the over reporting of profits by £250m. The Financial Conduct Authority is looking into the matter and now even the Serious Fraud office has expressed an interest in the situation. All this is on top of the premature exit of the previous CEO. How can a business the scale of Tesco and operating under close financial and investor scrutiny get itself into such a mess? How did PwC, its auditors not spot and act upon the risk of flaws in accounting?

As UK local authorities and community groups pack up from another successful bonfire night (November 5), pallet pool provider LPR is counting the cost to the environment of more than 140,000 serviceable wooden pallets going up in smoke.

Based on calculations by Europe’s second largest pallet pool operator, around £1.4 million could be wasted in the UK each year by bonfire organisers who use pallets to fuel the flames. Beyond the financial cost, LPR has also highlighted the environmental impact of burning the 28,000 trees required to make these pallets.