WHILE STV chief executive Rob Woodward had a relatively smooth morning at the company’s annual meeting this week, he was pushed by one Saltcoats-based shareholder for instructions on how to tune his Freeview box to receive STV Glasgow. Mr Woodward explained that the channel didn’t broadcast as far away as Saltcoats, but he assured the elderly gentleman that the new STV Ayr channel would be on the top page of the Freeview programme guide. “You could tune in on your smartphone for now,” said Mr Woodward. “A smartphone?” replied the man, holding his pen aloft. “I’ve only got a biro.”

ROYAL Bank of Scotland chief executive Ross McEwan was determined to reveal his family secrets to the bank’s Women in Business conference at Gogarburn last week. “The worst experience I had last year was living in a house with an entrepreneurial daughter,” he said in the sofa discussion. Dad’s support had included a 90-minute role play session to psyche up a “terrified” daughter when she had to terminate an employment for the first time. “It’s much harder setting up a small business than running one with 94,000 staff,” the bank’s chief executive said. “If she wants to set up another one, she can leave.”

IMAGES of some of Scotland’s most famous innovations, including the television, telephone and Dolly the Sheep, are being used to inspire more business visitors to the country this week. VisitScotland’s business events team is deploying the visuals at a major trade show in Leeds expected to attract more than 600 conference and hospitality buyers. Visitors to the Scotland stand at the Conference and Hospitality Show North will also have the chance to take selfies with a traditional piper and take part in the tourism agency’s global marketing campaign. The theme is inspired by Scotland’s Year of Innovation, Architecture and Design 2016, which aims to showcase Scotland as an “innovation nation.” VisitScotland’s press release certainly shows boundless imagination: ‘Scotland most innovative nation ‘baa’ none,’ it proclaims.

WHO says pension companies have no sense of humour? Aviva marked the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death last week by claiming that the bard was a “visionary pensions commentator”. Savings and retirement manager Alistair McQueen cited no fewer than 30 examples of Shakespeare’s surprising foresight of the current debate on pension reform. Among them are “Out of the jaws of death...” – the government dropping plans to scrap tax relief. And “My salad days, when I was green in judgment” – Shakespeare commenting on his decision to opt-out of his auto-enrolment scheme when he was young.

DO your homework before trading abroad, warns trade credit insurer Atradius. In a release to mark the UK government’s Exporting is GREAT Week, it shares the story of a British cheese manufacturer that ‘didn’t get it quite right’ when it assumed China would be an easy new market. “They had done their homework and correctly identified that the cheese market in China offered significant growth opportunity,” Atradius said. “However, the commercial sophistications of the highly developed east coast are yet to reach more central provinces. So when the British company selected a food fayre in Guilin to launch its product, it did not appreciate that in the less developed, more traditional areas, the culture and ‘taste’ is very different. To the traditional Chinese palate, the taste and smell of European style cheese can be distasteful: our British Manufacturer could not persuade Guilin trade delegates to venture anywhere near their cheese stand. The sample produce which was carefully – and expensively – shipped to central China, went to waste.”