TELECOMS equipment maker Calnex has unveiled plans to grow sales by 40 per cent next year by setting up sales offices in India and the United States, pushing turnover through the 5 million barrier.

The Linlithgow-based firm, which was last week heralded as an example of a high-growth business by Scottish Enterprise chief executive Lena Wilson, wants to increase the size of its engineering team by around half to 27 people.

Calnex makes equipment for testing mobile phone networks. All of its devices are made in Scotland for export.

The firm has sales offices in China and the Far East and is now targeting other fast-growing emerging economies, such as the giant Indian market.

Its operations in the US will also be expanded, with the opening of an east coast office and the recruitment of a sales specialist in California for the west coast market.

Tommy Cook, Calnex’s founder and chief executive, said: “We aimed to turn over £3m this year and we’re going to beat that with £4m.

“We’ve applied for a research and development grant from Scottish Enterprise to help speed up the rate at which we can hire engineers. We’re commi

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The worst quality in a boss is arrogance, employees say. Good bosses, on the other hand, are deemed trustworthy.

Thats the finding of a new study that examines the defining characteristics of employees best and worst bosses. The study also found that bad leaders are most often described as arrogant.

Other qualities that lead to a workers dislike of their supervisor are being manipulative, emotionally volatile, micromanaging, passive-aggressive and distrustful of others.

The average employee would be willing to return to work with fewer than half of their former bosses, the study showed.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Mary Power is 92 and worried about surviving another frigid New England winter because deep cuts in federal home heating assistance benefits mean she probably can’t afford enough heating oil to stay warm.

She lives in a drafty trailer in Boston’s West Roxbury neighborhood and gets by on $11,148 a year in pension and Social Security benefits. Her heating aid help this year will drop from $1,035 to $685. With rising heating oil prices, it probably will cost her more than $3,000 for enough oil to keep warm unless she turns her thermostat down to 60 degrees, as she plans.

“I will just have to crawl into bed with the covers over me and stay there,” said Power, a widow who worked as a cashier and waitress until she was 80.

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One of Scotland’s leading law firms has ambitious plans. New chairman Jennifer Young talks to our reporter. JENNIFER YOUNG cheerfully admits she talks a lot – but insists she also puts enormous value on listening. The new chairman at Ledingham Chalmers LLP is that rare creature, a female in a senior position in a Scottish law firm. For a good talker, she iADVERTISEMENTs unusually quiet on the subject of why she is joining a little-spotted species.

“I just don’t know,” she says. “I’ve never experienced anything to suggest a particular reason for it happening. It might be a generational thing (as the women coming into the profession outnumber the men] and take time. The next generation could be the one to show the real difference.”

However, Young recalls, as a trainee with Dundas & Wilson 20 years ago she was one of ten women in an intake of 13. Read all post…

July 18, 2011 –  WASHINGTON – Goldman Sachs has cut its forecast for U.S. second-quarter growth to 1.5 percent from 2 percent, citing weak consumer spending.

The downgrade follows last week’s raft of weak reports on retail sales, manufacturing and consumer sentiment, which have raised concerns that some of the factors impeding growth are no longer of a temporary nature, as previously thought.

A combination of bad weather and high commodity prices slowed economic activity in the first three months of 2011. But growth in the second quarter was also dealt a blow by supply chain disruptions from Japan following the March earthquake.

“Some of this weakness is undoubtedly related to the disruptions to the supply chain — specifically in the auto sector — following the east Japan earthquake,” said Goldman Sachs Chief Economist Jan Hatzius in a weekly note to clients issued late on Friday.

“But the slowdown of recent months goes well beyond what can be explained with these temporary effects.”

The economy grew at a 1.9 percent pace in the first quarter, slowing sharply from a 3.1 percent rate in the final three months of 2010. Th

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