When a new owner takes on an iconic brand thoughts quite quickly turn to what will happen next.

Under the control of Bedford based Wells and Young's it would appear McEwan's will be given a bit more attention than it was in the Heineken years.

The independent brewing firm seems a more natural home for the likes of 80 Shilling and Export than the vast machine of a multinational drinks company.

The new owners have promised "significant" investment in marketing and are in the process of setting up a dedicated Scottish office.

It has been interesting watching the reaction over the past few weeks to some fairly hefty payouts across the corporate sector.

Bankers like Bob Diamond, Stephen Hester and Eric Daniels all walked away with millions of pounds worth of benefits and shares.

Alongside them hundreds of other bankers were paid more than £1 million each to a collective outcry of horror.

Compare and contrast this to the joyous outpourings shown in newspapers and broadcast media when John Lewis announced all of its staff - including the executive team - were getting the equivalent of 18 per cent of their salary.

You have to wonder at the logic the Chancellor George Osborne applied to the Supplementary Rate of Corporation Tax for the North Sea oil and gas sector, pushing the rate up from 20 to 32 per cent in an attempt to appease the public on rocketing fuel costs.

For an oil and gas region which has already reached peak production, this could be a massive blow if the big players decide to mothball their UK North Sea operations until we reach the Chancellors hallowed $75 a barrel oil cut off.

Derek Leith, oil and gas partner at Ernst & Young believes the Government has backtracked on a commitment last year to ensuring investment in the North Sea by creating a stable and fair UK oil and gas tax regime.

Leith says, that script has been binned.

He said the rise from 20 to 32 per cent "demonstrates to industry in an unambiguous fashion that there is no real concept of fiscal stability in the UK."

Leith adds: "It is hard to comprehend that mature oil and gas fields, which already pay petroleum revenue tax as well as corporation tax, will now suffer a marginal tax rate of 81 per cent. Many companies will be frantically re-appraising their plans for capital investment in the UKCS in the coming days.

"The prospect that the rate will reduce if the oil price falls before a certain level, and the possibility of some measure of relief for new gas fields will carry little weight with oil companies in the light of such a significant increase in tax."

On Saturday I was lucky enough to be having dinner with my wife in the Rhubarb restaurant at Prestonfield House Hotel in Edinburgh.

A gift voucher we had which had been languishing on a shelf was finally being put to good use.

It was only the second time I had eaten at James Thompson's lavishly decorated and opulent sanctum.

Even though the decoration has the capacity to overwhelm what I noticed most was that when we arrived at 6.30pm the dining rooms and bar areas were extremely busy.

There were signs in the final few months of 2010 the deals market was hotting up again.

The Wood Group deal for PSN and Sir Tom Hunter disposing of Office grabbed a lot of the headlines and rightly so.

While most players in the market felt 2011 would see that pick up continuing there was always a nervousness about whether the recovery was really under way (possibly not if the latest GDP stats are looked at).

But there have already been a string of interesting transactions in January.

Once again this is a blog post sparked off by some of the great discussion over in the Business7 and Insider group on Linkedin.

Mary-Jo Devlin's topic on 'Would you do business with individual who has no photo on their LinkedIn profile?' has sparked more than 30 responses.

And it is something of a mixed bag from outright no and yes to musings on the power of looking attractive.

One reply suggested being on a social network without a photo was like leaving your date of birth out of a cv as the omission immediately makes people suspicious.

I was recently invited along to a lunch held by the Public Relations Consultants Association in Glasgow.

Speaker for the event was Lord Chadlington, the extremely fascinating and wildly entertaining chief executive of PR giant Hunstworth.

By sheer fluke I ended up on the same table as this public relations doyen as well as PRCA chief executive Francis Ingham.

It was an eye opening couple of hours in the basement room of Brian Maule's Chardon d'Or restaurant.

Lord Chadlington regaled the table then the room with his tales of the Mad Men type culture ("the programme underplays the amount of drinking which went on") which pervaded public relations when he started out.

My nails dramatically decreased in size during the month of July. I nervously nibbled as I awaited the first production units arriving from China, desperate for Safetray to play its own part in the largest arts festival in the world - a showcase in front of an international audience within my beloved hometown during Edinburgh's multiple festivals.

Leading up to the arrival I had been fed worrying snippets of information regarding the progress with the mould tool. The initial photographs were kept from me - Fearsomengine quite rightly deciding that a snapshot image of a mangled piece of plastic might be more upsetting than informative - and so it was a relief indeed to finally see (a fortnight ago) a physical embodiment of the Safetray looking actually rather handsome.

The battle of the malls in Aberdeen is definitely being stepped up.

The opening of Hammerson owned Union Square last year was something of a landmark with several new brands such as Apple and Hollister coming to the city.

Footfall has been impressive and informal chats with some of the retailers trading in the centre suggest they are happy with their numbers.

However the Scottish Retail Property Limited Partnership (SRPLP) - a Land Securities and British Land joint venture - is not resting on its laurels.

It spent £2m in the refurbishment of the St Nicholas shopping centre in 2009 and has just announced a £6m upgrade of the neighbouring Bon Accord centre.

Hot on the heels of its link up with YouTube STV is once again going to the US market.

This time it's a format sharing partnership with Kinetic Content.

The deal means STV Productions will licence original Kinetic shows in the UK and vice versa.

Both companies also intend to work together to develop new formats for broadcast in Britain and the US.