Once again the LexisNexis Taxation Awards proved a fabulous occasion to recognise individual and team achievements in tax. Held on Thursday 21st May 2009 at the Park Lane Hilton, for the ninth successive year, BLT have been a major sponsor, and despite the sore heads the following day, a thoroughly entertaining evening was had by all.

Many congratulations to all the winners and those shortlisted, and an especial congratulations to those who won the two awards we sponsor:

Best Tax Team in a large firm: Grant Thornton Employer Solutions, London

Best VAT team: Deloitte Indirect Tax Dispute Resolution Group

Special commendation: Lancashire County Council

See you all again next year!

On Tuesday we hosted an exclusive economics briefing - 'What will the economic climate for business be in 2010?' - for business decision makers, held by the Managing Director of CEBR, Mark Pragnell.

He examined the lessons learnt from the financial CRISES and projected the outlook for the next few years. We thank Mark for the insight and all our partners for joining the discussion.

If you'd like to hear some of Mark's thoughts, sit back and enjoy this short video of the event.

On Monday the FT published an article about the choices available for interns on MBA programmes. Hardly surprisingly, options are few and far between these days in the once popular field of investment banking. Instead governmental, not-for-profit and entrepreneurial companies are proving attractive.

Our own Don Leslie has been busy recently trying to persuade smaller consultancies that this is a golden opportunity to try out an MBA from London Business School. Mr. Leslie hoped to persuade more than a dozen to recruit one of the 55 or 60 MBAs at LBS that have shown an interest in the project, but only two have so far confirmed.

This is a far cry from last year when eighteen consulting firms and 58 students participated in the Summer Consulting project programme that resulted in 34 permanent job offers being made.

"I'm a bit disappointed we haven't been able to meet expectations," Don is quoted in the article as saying. "They [MBAs] are just an unknown quantity for the small consultancies."

How can we raise the profile of MBAs to make them attractive to the smaller consultancies? Even if they are unable to guarantee permanent employment in the future, I’m sure many students would relish the chance of an internship to gain a valuable real time insight into the world of consultancy. And who knows, by bringing fresh ideas into a company, their ideas may be able to help facilitate improvements.

We’d love to hear the experiences of any of the smaller consultancies who have benefited in the past from hiring an MBA intern, or from MBAs who have completed a successful internship in a small firm.

What will the economic climate for business be in 2010? I’m sure you’ll agree that this is a crucial question for us all as we make decisions heading into the second half of 2009. We don’t have a crystal ball so we asked an expert; Mark Pragnell, the Managing Director of the CEBR.

We’re delighted to announce that on Tuesday May 19th, at 8am in the BLT offices, Mark will be answering that very question. Mark has over thirteen years experience of economics research and forecasting. He has advised numerous companies, and their boards of directors, on economic and consumer trends, as well as providing keynote speeches to industry conferences and dinners. He is a sought-after voice whenever economic developments hit the headlines and has been interviewed on national radio and television, including the Today Programme and Channel 4 News.

Mark will speak for 20-25 minutes and will then be happy to answer any questions you may have. There will also be time to meet the other guests and network with them. We hope that you’ll be able to join us for the event and that you’ll find Mark’s insights very valuable. Please RSVP to mc@blt.co.uk to let us know you’re coming.

The Online Recruitment Conference & Exhibition 2009 will take place on Tuesday 2nd June and Don Leslie will be there to give a detailed account of how BLT has embraced web 2.0 to find new ways of engaging candidates and clients. From professional networking to Twitter, from blogging to YouTube, Don will describe how BLT recruiters use social media technologies to connect with clients and candidates. Other speakers at the conference include Kevin Eyres, the European MD of LinkedIn and Luke McKend from Goggle.

Now in its fourth year, this event is set to be the biggest and best yet. The key focus for this year’s conference is how to make your recruitment budget return more, for less. It will combine a 1 day conference packed with information, insights and innovation with fantastic networking opportunities and an expo hall of suppliers with solutions to your recruitment dilemmas.

If you work in recruitment and are under pressure to deliver more, for less, the conference should prove invaluable.

Not only will you benefit from the educational content of the conference, but you will also have the opportunity to network with your peers and colleagues, mingle with our speakers and gurus during the breaks and meet our suppliers who can discuss new solutions for your recruitment dilemmas.
Don will be supported by Digital Media partner Paul Harrison from Carve Consulting.

Visit www.onrec.com/june2009 to book or contact david@onrec.com on 01702 290475 to book or for more info.

There were more positive signs that we’re coming out of the recession last week but do they really paint a true picture?

The sharpest improvement in conditions in the services industries in any single month for a decade combined with signs of revival on the high street boosted hopes that the worst is over.

The biggest fillip to confidence came from a surprisingly buoyant snapshot of services businesses, from restaurants, cinemas and leisure centres to lawyers and accountants. The pace of decline in the sector slowed drastically last month, with its activity shrinking at the slowest pace since last August, the CIPS/Markit purchasing managers’ survey of its fortunes said.

Anticipation of impending recovery was also boosted as a survey by the Nationwide Building Society detected the steepest rise in consumer sentiment for two years during last month.

The retail traffic index from Synovate recorded the steepest year-on-year rise in shopper numbers for more than five years last month. Synovate said that its figures were flattered by warm weather, the timing of Easter and hard-up consumers choosing to stay at home during spring breaks, but its data added to a generally more reassuring picture.

The Bank of England was also cautiously optimistic acknowledging that although "the world economy remains in deep recession, surveys at home and abroad show promising signs that the pace of decline has begun to moderate".

However, not everyone shares the current optimism. Sushil Wadhwani, a former member of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), has warned against excessive optimism over economic recovery since Britain may suffer another setback next year.

Separately, Richard Lambert, director-general of the CBI, said that "green shoots are starting to appear across the economy. But they have shallow roots, and there are plenty of dark clouds on the horizon.

"Policy makers still have a lot of work to do if those shoots are going to turn into a rich harvest. Will Government attempts to muddle along on a wing and a prayer, hoping to contain the deficit as best it can and counting on a global economic recovery get us out of trouble?"

He called for a review of every aspect of public spending, the size and role of the state, and the tax system, followed by bold action and a period of fiscal restraint.

The public sector has so far escaped reasonably unscathed from the current financial difficulties. But what does the immediate future hold? Are we likely to see a wave of cuts hitting the public sector this year? And if so, how would the public services that we currently enjoy be affected?

Non-executive directors will need to adopt a different mindset in future, according to Hector Sants the Chief Executive of the Financial Services Authority (FSA).

Speaking at the Securities & Investment Institute Conference 2009 last Thursday he said

“Evidence from the current crisis indicates that some NEDs have struggled to fulfil their role of providing strong independent oversight of the executive management. The FSA, through our supervisory process will be working to ensure the NEDs of the future have relevant and diverse expertise, have a willingness to challenge, independence of thought and the ability to avoid the ‘herd mentality’. This will mean a different calibre of NED, with a different mindset.

NEDs will therefore need to commit to raise their technical skills in order to exercise rigorous oversight. Ultimately, they will need to demonstrate competence with regard to risk management, regulation, and - importantly - the business model of the firm. We do, however, recognise that there will need to be an appropriate mechanism to allow this competence to be acquired which may result in a ‘provisional’ NED. We will certainly, as a minimum, expect the chairman and senior independent director to demonstrate the full set of competencies.

Clearly, this will require NEDs to work on a more full-time basis and be compensated appropriately. NEDs also need to be supported properly to strengthen their technical expertise. We would like to see greater use, by them, of advisers employed in an independent advisory fashion. Similarly, the Risk Committee should have the ability to co-opt risk experts from outside the firm.”

Mr. Sants brought up some very good points and there’s no doubt that change is imperative to stop the current financial crisis happening again. But how easy will it be to get NEDs working on a more full time basis when some already serve on more than one board, and probably of more concern to SMEs, will they be able to afford the increased compensation?

Currently the average Non Executive Director’s time commitment is only 21 days but there is already a wide disparity in earnings figures. The annual Directors Rewards survey, carried out by Croner Reward, stated that 31% of Non Executive Directors are working unpaid whilst the average fee paid to a non-executive director in a medium-sized company is £18,500. Between 13% and 29% of non-executives had no pay increase last year and those who did receive a pay increase had an average of 3.5%.

Contrast that with NEDs at the top flight of British companies who got an average 6.3% pay rise last year lifting the average pay for a non-executive role in the FTSE 100 to £57,056, up from £53,499 the year before. The highest paid non-executives last year were at Kazakhmys, the mining group, awarding £120,000, followed by Vodafone, which paid £110,000.

As with all change proposals, new questions are bound to be raised. Should NEDs be devoting more time to the board and would it help if they were restricted to serving on just one board? How about the question of compensation? What do you think constitutes a fair remuneration?

The rapid rise to superstardom of Susan Boyle shows how social media can supercharge growth.

In the space of a fortnight, Britain’s Got Talent's Scottish warbler Susan Boyle appears to have become one of the most famous people in the Western world (if only for fifteen figurative minutes, probably). And it’s all happened via social media: the clip of her appearing on the show has now been viewed on YouTube about 100m times around the world, thanks partly to the likes of Demi Moore banging on about her performance on Twitter. It just goes to show how quickly a tiny local story can go global these days.

There’s no doubt that social networking sites are extremely popular, at least with the younger generation. In March, students at Bournemouth University complained that they couldn’t work on the university’s computers because other people were spending too much time on Facebook.

So how do these sites affect the recruitment industry? Are social networking sites going to replace traditional recruitment methods completely? Not here in the UK for the foreseeable future it would seem.

Surprisingly the 'Aquent Orange Book 2008-2009' survey found that only between 2% and 7% of UK candidates and employers use social networking websites for recruitment purposes.

However, 39% of German candidates, 34% of French candidates, 30% of Polish candidates and 23% of candidates from the Netherlands rated social networking sites as a preferred method of job seeking, as did 13% to 18% of employers in these regions.

From a candidate’s point of view definitely, the ability to get instant job notifications via Twitter must give them a head start, especially in times of crisis when jobs are hard to come by.

BLT does embrace Social Media. We recently launched a YouTube channel, we’re on Facebook and LinkedIn and these complement our traditional methods of recruitment and help us to reach a wider candidate base than we did previously.

Have you used social networking sites in your search for work or to find prospective employees? As always, we’d love to hear your thoughts…

Maybe it's just the weather, but according to the Times there were distinct signs of economic spring around on Wednesday. There does seem to be a fairly sustained improvement in consumer confidence, admittedly from bombed-out levels, and some retailers are convinced that we are coming off the bottom.

This promising piece of news was followed up by another item that told us that Britons are more optimistic about the prospects for the economy than at any time since the credit crunch began, fuelling hopes that the country may be emerging from the worst of the recession.

Consumer confidence rose for the third month in a row in April, despite dismal figures last week showing that the economy contracted at the fastest pace for 30 years between January and March.

Spring is in the air and, as Sir Stuart Rose told the Institute of Directors’ annual convention on Wednesday “The fact of the matter is that people are fed up with being fed up.”

There’s no doubting that warmer weather lifts our spirits and the long range forecast tells us that temperatures across the UK are likely to be warmer than average and rainfall near or below average for the three months of summer. I’m sure we’re all fed up with doom and gloom but can a warmer, drier summer really play a part in lifting us out of the current financial crisis?