Planning for prosperity: Assessing family business future-readiness in Asia Pacific

Family-owned companies in Asia have new hurdles to overcome given the rapid pace of change in technology and markets. With the significance of family connections and customer loyalty diminishing, executives must acknowledge the pressing need to change their ways of doing business.

SMEs and Global Growth: The High-Tech Advantage

To a greater extent every day, information technology is levelling the playing field for small and mid-sized enterprises (SMEs). Export markets, in particular, are no longer the exclusive domain of large players with the resources to field global sales and production staffs. Today, even startups can use the Internet to sell abroad, and to commission foreign firms to produce their designs cheaply.

SMEs and Global Growth

This EIU article series, sponsored by Mazars, explores the challenges facing mid-market firms when expanding internationally for the first time. They look at companies in a range of industries and home markets and show how these have responded to the challenges. 

Read and download all five articles below.

 

SMEs and Global Growth: Meeting Logistics Challenges

A small or mid-sized enterprise (SME) establishing a presence in a new foreign market faces steep learning curves on several fronts. It must familiarise itself with the needs and preferences of a new market, ensure compliance with a new set of laws, find and train local staff, arrange financing, and sometimes learn a new language at the same time.

SMEs and Global Growth: Sustaining Growth and Development

When a small or mid-sized enterprise (SME) ventures abroad for the first time, its first aim is typically to kick-start sales and build a local market. That, however, only establishes a foothold. To continue growth and development in a new market, SMEs require a broader strategy aimed at developing and maintaining a strong local presence.

SMEs and Global Growth: Navigating the Legal and Tax Maze

American statesman and inventor Benjamin Franklin once famously said that nothing is certain in life except death and taxes. Nowadays, no one is more painfully aware of that—at least the part about taxes—than small and midsized enterprises (SMEs) entering foreign markets for the first time.

SMEs and Global Growth: Finding Local Partners

Hoping to profit from a wave of investment in China by large multinationals, small and mid-sizedenterprises (SMEs) based in Germany flocked to that country in the 1990s. China’s government welcomed them: like many other countries, China was intrigued by Germany’s Mittelstand firms— usually stable, technologically sophisticated, family owned firm —and wanted to learn from them. But despite the welcome—or perhaps because of that desire to learn from the newcomers— China often required the newcomers to establish formal joint ventures with Chinese partners.

The New Risk Horizon for UK SMEs

A short video summarising the research into the growing resilience of UK SMEs

Enabling a more productive Nigeria: Powering SMEs Infographic

 

 

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