The Good News Blog

Government agencies tend to keep their bad news for the end of the week — which is to say, the point in the news cycle when media are less likely to pick up the item — but obviously this wasn’t the case with the latest economic stats.

Late last week, Statistics New Zealand reported that the economy accelerated in the fourth quarter, growing at the fastest clip in two years as manufacturing revived and companies built up inventories that had run down through the recent five-quarter downturn.

The latest downturn was the most protracted since the one following first oil shock of the mid 1970., and, as Bloomberg, this recovery may take longer than most, too.

Even so, gross domestic product expanded 0.8 percent in the final three months of 2009, matching the median in a Reuters survey. And growth in the third quarter was revised up to 0.3 per cent from 0.2 per cent.

All of which will no doubt be good news for Bill English in the lead-up to the coming Budget — and good news for our businesses in general.

Here's a good success story for us all to acknowledge,

Check out the below article recently in the Dom Post about our client Eyemagnet Limited landing a big deal in America.

Keep up the good work Eyemanget team!

Eyemagnet%20in%20the%20Dom%20Post.pdf

It’s the end of another financial year and as our opportunity to say thank you for being a valued client we would like to invite you to enjoy some refreshments with us.

We have organized with Roger de Salis from OPTO Network to give us a brief overview of optic fibre and the advantages it has for businesses, plus a few of his interesting experiences on the journey so far.

OPTO Network specialises in provisioning high performance, fault tolerant and scalable fibre networks. From project concept through to construction they can provide layer 1, 2 or 3 fibre networks of varying capacity depending on the specific business needs. Through business partners, even hard to reach rural locations can be provisioned with ultra fast, secure, network connections.

So, bring along a friend or a business colleague who you believe needs a decent accountant and business adviser - Look forward to seeing you there!

Where: Openside, Level 14, 49 Boulcott St, Wellington
When: Monday 29th of March 2010
Time: 5:30 Start

Please select the link below to register.

The inside story on getting optic fibre around NZ

As previous blogged about Openside has been awarded Xero 2009 partner of the year for the 3rd year running.

Check out these photo's of Stephen receiving the partner of the year awards from Xero CEO Rod Drury and NZ Country Sales Manager  Leanne Graham in Napier at the annual Xero partners conference.

For those who may have missed it, here’s a TVNZ clip of Openside CEO Stephen Nicholas on NZI Business earlier this week discussing the interesting issue of succession management. At issue is the firm's surprise over how few accounting businesses appear to have such plans in place, but, as Stephen suggests, the issue clearly has a much wider business relevance as well.

Check out this article written by Nicki Crauford of the Dominion Post on how SME's could benefit from adopting formal governance, it makes for a good read!!

Adopting Formal Governance - Dominion Post

The business year is heating up, and so is the debate on climate change. After a period of media coverage giving basically one view on global warming, we have suddenly gone from purported unanimity among scientists and commentators to a breakdown in any consensus whatsoever, with scores of articles appearing every day debunking what only a few months ago was accepted truth.

Here’s one such piece from today’s edition of the European edition of the Wall Street Journal.
So, what does any of this have to do with The Good News Blog? Only that the blog began during a time when there was a virtually media consensus that all was doom and gloom, that the world was about to experience another Great Depression. Anyone who begged to differ was considered a bit odd. 

But here we are in early 2010 — and the sky hasn’t fallen in. In fact, by most measures, the worst of the downturn is over. Business opportunities abound.

Could it be that the economic coverage from early last year was itself a little odd?

As the Journal notes in respect of the U-turn on climate change consensus, those who want to persuade others of the truth as they see it need to make their case as transparently as possible. “This is inconvenient for those who want to claim unequivocal truth without having the evidence. But that's the way it is.”