Swinging back into action

I haven't been on holiday this whole time...honestly. Firstly, it was an unexpected trip to Cyprus for an interesting little project. Then I was admittedly, on holiday (sailing in Croatia a real highlight). But, the blog has, I'm afraid, taken a long summer break. Sorry to our regulars about that.

World economic downturn notwithstanding, this has been a very busy month or so for us. I'm now back on the road again, this time in Germany. T-mobile has equipped the country's nifty ICE trains with wireless broadband. So, I'm writing this at something like 150 km/h between Frankfurt and Cologne.

It's hard to know what to write about first; CMP's little spot of bother with feisty jewellers, Alibaba's Jack Ma telling his staff to prepare for economic winter or a little flurry of acquisition activity by Guangzhou-based Global Markets (including acquiring Tradeeasy for $1.5 mn).

The events businesses including the not-for-sale Reed Exhibitions are all reporting decent growth despite fears of a bad year.

We'll try to get back to regular posting even as this trip takes us through Germany, the UK and the US, where we'll end up at the FIPP/ABM B2B conference in New York City.