The purchase of digital social network LinkedIn, familiar to most professionals as a job-networking pioneer, by Microsoft (MS), the unavoidable computer giant with its operating system and “Office” software package, for $26.2 billion last June, was its biggest acquisition to date.

Europages has been acquired by German investment fund Paragon Partners, which also owns the “Wer liefert was” (WLW) German B2B online marketplace. The alliance between these two leaders will lead to a range of B2B digital solutions on Europe’s growth markets. This means that Europages’ customers will benefit from even greater visibility and a level of traffic beyond compare. Read on.

Based in Merxheim, Alsace, the French subsidiary of American group Alcoa, Arconic Architectural Products, exports its Reynobond® aluminium composite panels and its Reynolux® pre-lacquered aluminium sheets throughout the world in the construction materials sector. Insights into the strategy adopted by this company, which received a regional export award in 2015 from the Alsace CCI, with its Marketing Director Perrine Prével.

The Transatlantic trade and investment partnership, in its 14th round of negotiations in New York this week, has suffered from highly critical statements by the French and German trade ministers, and the two US presidential candidates. Major events this week were to decide its fate, including a convention of the German SPD party, a statement by US President Barack Obama and the resumption of TTIP negotiation meetings in New York. What does it mean for European and American SMEs, do we need a trade agreement to improve business?

While jobseekers have struggled in many sectors since the global financial crisis, the industry for providing jobs has remained steady. Recruitment has been a growth area for some years now, with the primary effect of economic instability being that it put many agencies off expanding abroad. Now that the climate around Europe is more stable and local businesses are operating with healthy margins, expansion looks to be an extremely compelling prospect.

With its one billion inhabitants, its mega-cities, its English-speaking population, its expanding middle class and the explosion in its consumption, India has become an all-important market for European SMEs. Here are 12 particularly promising sectors.

The United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union (or Brexit) will have negative consequences for European businesses, where certain countries and sectors will be more affected than others. However, some EU countries could also turn the Brexit to their advantage. Here is a status report based on research by trade credit insurance company Euler Hermes.

Based in Alsace and part of the Outils Wolf group, Etesia is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of ride-on lawn mowers, providing green space maintenance services to some of Europe’s leading capital cities and a number of other major cities. The group’s Marketing and Communication Manager Jean-François Hoerlé explains how the Internet has become unavoidable for developing the company’s export activity.

Yes, small and medium-sized enterprises export! But to do so, they face a lot more difficulties than large corporations. Manon Enjolras of the ERPI laboratory (Équipe de Recherche sur les Processus Innovatifs – Research Team on Innovative Processes), at the University of Lorraine, presents her PhD thesis to us: a tool for evaluating the ability of SMEs to innovate and export based on a twofold innovation/export skills assessment. Available in cartoon and video format!

All too often, French SMEs are not sufficiently present in the EU’s economic area, whether in terms of business opportunities for their products, or the search for suppliers and subcontractors. Such are the findings of a white paper produced by the SVP group on the internationalisation of French SMEs, along with other advice on how to achieve international success. Read on…