Business News Online

EAST WHITELAND — American Executive Centers moved its Chester County location from the Exton area to Malvern, getting bigger and more high-tech in the process.

The executive suites provider is now located in Brandywine Realty Trust’s Valleybrooke Corporate Center at 101 Lindenwood Drive, spending $1.5 million to make the move.

“It was a big investment,” said G. Michael Howard, president of American Executive. The reason for the investment: “there is a lot of demand in the marketplace, a positive pulse.”

Its previous location was 102 Pickering Way.

American Executive has a 10-year lease at its new location, home to 56 private offices for on-site clients and a number of virtual clients.

In addition to the real estate, each of the seven American Executive Centers offers information technology support and administrative services that assist established businesses with day-to-day operations. I

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When I’m looking for product information on the Web, I love comparison charts. They make it so much easier to see how the features of one product match up with another – and ultimately how they fit exactly what I’m looking for.

Michael Koploy has put together a comparison chart of 5 Affordable Point of Sale (POS) Systems for Small Business which I think you’ll find quite helpful if you’re in the market for a POS system.

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National home prices hit a new low in March, giving credence to long-simmering worries about a double dip in the housing market.

The widely watched S&P/Case-Shiller home price index showed that home prices fell below their previous lows nationally and in the Chicago area, prompting the report’s authors to declare an official double dip in home prices. In the U.S., home prices plummeted to their mid-2002 levels. In the Chicago area, prices in March were at levels not seen since April 2001.

The Chicago area has been one of the country’s weak spots for months, with local home prices  falling since November 2010. In March, according to the index, home prices slipped 2.4 percent from February and were down 7.6 percent on an annualized basis.

Condominium values plummeted even more in the Chicago area. In March, they fell to levels not seen since March 2000. Read more…

Almost as soon as Steve Ballmer took over as chief executive of Microsoft in January 2000, the stock crashed. It wasn’t his fault; the dotcom crash pulled every tech stock down with it, including the Seattle software empire that, the previous year, had been the world’s most valuable at $612-billion.

This is the sort of mistiming that has dogged Ballmer’s tenure: always arriving a bit too late and overseeing a collapse of a promising lead. It happened with internet search, with tablets, with cellphones, with music players.

Ballmer last week faced calls for his removal from David Einhorn, a powerful Wall Street hedge fund manager famous for his early warnings about the weakness of doomed bank Lehman Brothers. Though sources on the company’s board backed him, investors know that Ballmer does not have a free pass just because he joined in 1980 as employee number 30.

“Bill Gates is ruthless,” said a fund manager at one of Microsoft’s largest shareholders. Read more…

If you operate some sort of business yourself, then you have to recognise that you are liable for so much if you are not properly insured whilst you are carrying out your wok. Although it seems terrible to say it, if someone ever dies because of your negligence whilst you are working, not only could you be in a lot of trouble you could end up being liable for millions of pounds in damages. This is why of course, almost all companies take out public liability insurance.

Having this sort of policy protects you against anyone coming to any sort of harm because of your work, at least in terms of financial repercussions anyway. It is something that you just have to have if you have your own business.

If you are thinking of finding your own insurance for this sort of thing, you really have to look online. You should search for cheap public liability insurance in an attempt to find the best deal.

Of course, you are going to end up with a lot to look through, but it is always worth taking your time to make sure you find the best deal. Read more…

Attention all car buyers: The era of cut-rate financing, generous cash-back offers and big discounts is coming to an end.

With the effects of the earthquake in Japan rippling through the industry and causing shortages, prices are rising for both new and used cars, and fewer models and options will be available come summer, especially for the hybrids and fuel-efficient vehicles that Japan produces.

That’s prompted many experts to voice something rarely said in the sales-happy auto industry: With consumers facing the toughest market in recent memory, if you can, put off purchases until things sort out, probably early next year.

“If you don’t have an immediate need, you are probably better to wait and figure out where the market is headed,” said Jesse Toprak, an analyst with auto information company TrueCar.com.

Toprak concedes his reluctance to give such advice. TrueCar collects referral fees for new-car sales to visitors to its website.

Yet he’s not a lone voice.

“If people were paying attention they would have bought in March and April. Read more…