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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The latest to step out onto the landscape is Media140 Scotland which kicks off in Glasgow on Thursday.

Keynote speaker Trey Pennington has drafted up a guest blog piece for us ahead of his arrival in Scotland.

The American, who has 85,000 followers on Twitter, is recognised as a big hitter when it comes to social media uses for business.

So here's what he had to say.

The full details can be read here with the FSA statement here but basically the former head of Royal Bank of Scotland's investment banking operation has agreed not to work full-time in a bank or insurer ever again.

As a result the FSA is not going to pursue any further action against him. So basically he has been cleared of any wrong doing, did not admit any guilt and was not fined.

Oh and the independently wealthy 55-year-old can still work in lucrative part-time consultancy roles.

Like many men (and women) I am a sucker for a shiny new piece of technology.

Sleek cutting edge looks, functions I will never use (much less understand) and a fancy name all tick my consumer box.

So when the computer generated design for Aquamarine Power's updated Oyster wave device, pictured above, dropped in to my inbox I really had to share it.

Putting aside the name - Oyster 2 doesn't quite have the punch of Oyster 2.0, Oyster Plus or Oyster Evolution does it? - it is a lovely looking piece of industrial science fiction style kit.

The topic, proposed by Adam Gordon, is whether you or your employer should own the connections you make in Linkedin.

It has already provoked a good level of debate from the members of the group.

Hopefully most of you will have seen the revamped paper (if not check out the e-zine version and compare it to the older issues in the archive).

We think it is a much brighter and bold design which makes it a nicer product to read.

Now we have updated the websites for Business7 and Insider to make things a bit better.

Staff on the floor of the branch were happy to melt into the background when shot were being taken there.

Photographer Lesley Martin was also taken by the unusual lighting in the lift which gives a nice backdrop to some of these pictures.

The interview which goes with the piece is here.

Stuart McLean smiled and joked his way through the set of pictures.

The shots were taken in the the hi-tech training room (complete with fancy electrical blinds) at the Edinburgh headquarters of the till system design firm.

Below are a selection of the pictures which weren't printed in Business7.

Thanks go to photographer Lesley Martin from the Daily Record.