This quarter, Baidu excelled on cost management and gained traction in ad sales to larger enterprises, expanding on its customer base of small- and medium-sized firms, said New York-based analyst Colin W. Gillis, who tracks Baidu for Canaccord Adams.
Instead of just focusing on big name British companies to sign big ticket deals, Mr Cameron has brought with him 30-odd small- and medium-sized firms in the hope that they can inculcate a new generation of trade and entrepreneurial links with India.
Yet there is much to suggest that Germany will fare worse than most in the slump and that its pain will be felt most acutely by its famed Mittelstand, the thousands of family-owned small and medium-sized firms that are the backbone of its economy.
ECONOMIST: The fabled Mittelstand is feeling the pinch more than most
The government plans to eliminate the 10% corporate-tax surcharge and reduce the company-tax rate to 33% for big firms and only 15% for small and medium-sized firms.
"The No. 1 reason why businesses fail is because they run out of cash, " says Mary Goodman, president of Bottom Line Up Enterprises, an Arizona-based business consulting firm for small and mid-sized firms.
The government has also promised to continue with its supply-side reforms, such as cutting red tape for small and medium-sized firms.
The end result was that foreign firms felt more pressure from the law than their domestic counterparts, while many Chinese companies, especially small-to-medium-sized firms, ignored the law completely.
Small and medium-sized firms in all sorts of industries are griping about banks' unwillingness to lend.
The region is dominated by small and medium-sized firms, many of them exporters in manufacturing industries.
The survey polls financial officers and small and mid-sized firms from the U.S. and around the world.
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With much of their distribution aimed at small and medium-sized firms, the machine will take the fight to Microsoft.
Meanwhile, they do not lend enough money to small and medium-sized firms.
The first reason for worry, oddly, is that Germany's legion of small and medium-sized firms entered this downturn with balance-sheets stuffed with cash.
Beneath them is a mass of small and medium-sized firms that collectively employ around half of American workers and are heavily reliant on banks.
For small and medium-sized firms such services are hard to find.
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The country's Mittelstand of small and medium-sized firms enjoys less flexibility.
The group also wants to see incentives for small and medium-sized firms to employ apprentices to boost their skills as well as support for export firms.
Mr Seike thinks that small and medium-sized firms, which tend not to have mandatory retirement ages, may be good places for older people to continue working.
These include a series of small and mid-sized firms--in fields as diverse as garments and agricultural machinery, steel and energy equipment--that have managed to thrive in recent years.
The burden falls most heavily on small to medium-sized firms.
The famous Mittelstand (small and medium-sized firms, often family-owned) went through its operations, step by step, judging what to do in Germany, what to send abroad and what to outsource.
There are some small to medium-sized firms based here but although the main industry, tourism, has been in decline over the last twenty years, Eastbourne has benefited from growth in the economy.
BBC: NEWS | VOTE 2001 | RESULTS & CONSTITUENCIES | Eastbourne
As entrepreneurial as they are, Mr Zhao observes, many small and mid-sized firms in China lack much of what is common in the West, in particular good management, proper accounting and savvy marketing.
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In the meantime, however, most of the pain of restructuring is falling on small and medium-sized firms, tens of thousands of which have gone bust, often because they are unable to get bank loans.
Mr Ramsay said that with the removal of bureaucracy, small and medium-sized firms which make up 95% of the economy of Wales, could also play their part in taking on apprentices, and the whole image of apprentices would change.
It does not help that Germany's small and medium-sized manufacturing firms are finding themselves chronically short of capital.
ECONOMIST: The fabled Mittelstand is feeling the pinch more than most
He believes that small and medium-sized independent firms need to grow, but have no room for error while they try to do so.
The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) has objected to the IRS plan, complaining of undue burdens on small and medium-sized accounting firms.
Critics say this will penalise small and medium-sized manufacturing firms.
Overall, according to the European Commission, the lack of a unified patent system is one reason why Europe's small and medium-sized technology firms fail to grow as quickly as those in America, Asia and elsewhere.
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