Monday, March 15th, 2010 at 9:15 am
You have probably heard the term Worker’s Comp more than once around your place of work. However, there are several people that do not actually understand what this law or even what it portrays. Basically it is a name that is given to a system of various laws that has been created to protect you if you ever have personal work-related injuries.
The main goal of these laws is to make sure that you receive the needed medical care, any lost wages that may occur, and in some cases, retraining and rehabilitation so that you will be able to return to the workforce. If by some unforeseen extreme circumstances you happened to be killed on the job then your family will be eligible for the benefits. The law is the same in Canada as it is in the US.
Within the Canadian region you will benefit greatly from seeking the consultation of a lawyer when you are applying for these benefits. This lawyer will be able to advise you of your rights and will also prevent from losing your benefits prematurely.
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Monday, March 15th, 2010 at 8:53 am
Workers in Canada are like workers in any other part of the world. They are trying to make a living and provide for themselves and their families. But, what happens if the worker is injured on the job? Sustaining personal work-related injuries in Canada could happen to you. Suddenly, a day at work could change your life and your family’s future.
Should this occur, your income and income potential suddenly changes. If injuries are severe, returning to work may not be possible. In either case, an injured worker may have to involve themselves in a worker’s compensation program.
Immediate action is advisable because, delaying could jeopardize the injured workers compensation. When dealing with worker compensation issues, some key factors will come into play. Was the injury a result of the workers negligence, if not; did the worker do all that could be done to avoid injury? Was the injury the result of employer’s negligence, or some other employee actions or inactions cause the injury? In most cases, answers to these questions will limit compensation to the injured worker. Depending on the answers, no compensation or partial compensation could be the result. To be sure, file a claim, and find a worker’s comp. Lawyer.
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Monday, March 15th, 2010 at 8:17 am
So you’ve created a widget that’s going to change your industry or you have an idea that could make millions, no you need the money. The truth is, creating a ground shattering concept with multiple avenues of capitalization potential is only 1% of the equation.
Before you start trying to raise capital you have to look at your company as a whole. Are your corporate executives in place and who are they? Are they friends and family or are they the who’s who of your particular industry? Unless your brother is the premier and most sought after CFO in the widget manufacturing industry, he needs to be replaced with a professional CFO; the same goes for other executive positions.
When a VC reads the bio section of your business plan their eyes need to tear up as they see that you’ve strategically collected the best of the best in the industry for your company’s launch and you’ve just succeeded in passing the initial test of the VC. You must have an elite and specialized executive staff with a tried and tested career yielding success in previous business relationships with companies at the same stage as your company.
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Monday, March 15th, 2010 at 8:04 am
Structure your company should spearhead your capital raising initiative. Make sure that your corporate layout is conducive to creating and retaining investor and venture capitalist attention. You should have a solid and elite executive team composed of the best of the best that your industry has to offer and if you can’t attract those in the upper echelon of your business genre, you need to take an active approach to branding them as experts using on and offline PR campaigns labeling yourselves as industry experts who are innovating industry changing solutions. Create a stir, be controversial (but not offensive) and be ready to back up your stir with empirical evidence of your knowledge and success. You should have an advisory board and board of directors composed of industry specialists. Each individual should represent a forte that makes investors start to salivate when they are reading the bio section of your business plan. They should be able to contribute with contract negotiation, strong alliance introduction capabilities and more. When choosing professionals to fill the void of adviser and director positions you should think in terms of corporate ‘growth’ and ‘stabilization’.
Next you want to make sure that your entity is prepared to receive debt and/or equity capital. You’ll need a solid business plan, don’t write it yourself, you’ll only hinder your ability to raise capital. Call a professional to write your strategic business plan. Next you’ll need a way to distribute equity or debt shares, a Private Placement Memorandum is the most common mechanism for helping companies raise capital quickly and easily while staying within the regulation guidelines of the SEC. Your PPM must be written by a professional to deliver the ultimate protection for your company while simultaneously spelling out the technical intricacies of your business to the investor.
Now that your company is structured properly, you have a business plan and a PPM, you are ready to start raising capital. Your first call should be to a corporate turnaround consultant with an arsenal of global funding contacts composed of all the necessary contacts such as: venture capital firms, private equity firms, angel investors, private investors, accredited investors, structured finance firms and so on. This turnaround consultant, if they are part of an established firm (always use a small boutique firm if you can find one, they are much more affective and one on one than the larger firms and tend to get the job done quicker without the headaches) they will have a service call and ‘Investor Finder’ service. They will reach into their gargantuan bag of contacts and give you so many funding options your head will spin, thus, making your fund raising efforts fast and painless.
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Monday, March 15th, 2010 at 7:53 am
In the UK drug driving is a major problem. If you are under the influence of a substance of any kind this will impair your driving skills and will an endanger lives. In a year there are only 1,500 offences that lead to a conviction of drug driving. In comparison to the number of drink driving offences this is a very small amount. It is a worry that there are so few convictions, as it begs the question of how many people drive under the influence of drugs and do not get caught!
There is a worry that though that the fact that there are so few convictions just means that there are many people doing it without getting caught! The same people are also worried that the media focuses too much on drink driving and neglects drug driving.
The information about getting behind the wheel under the influence of drugs is not as widely known as it is about drink driving. This is a major problem. There are all kinds of media campaigns about drink driving, but the same message about drug driving is given nowhere near enough coverage.
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Sunday, March 14th, 2010 at 8:33 am
With legions of halfwit, template loving business plan wannabe writers polluting the web it’s no mystery that companies are having a tough time getting funding. It use to be that when a company was ready to get down to business for serious expansion they would call a consultant that would help them bring all the pieces together in a strategic fashion and then this consultant would take their extended industry knowledge in combination with the unique concepts of the client’s business and he would author a business plan.
This business plan would include everything that the venture capital firms, angel investors, private investors and institutional lenders would need in order to make a quick, no nonsense decision about whether to fund the company and how much equity they would get in return.
Today with the cancerous cloud of predatory consultants seeking out startup business prey to suck dry that businesses are too broke and exhausted to move forward with a solid consultant after they have been through the costly obstacle course and fun house of mirrors set up by wannabe consultants who reel in their prey with a few big words and industry terms and at the end of the day, they are going to put your business plan together with some cracked template software that spits out overly generalized business plans that receive laughs and snickers before being tossed in the trash by investors and venture capital firms.
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Sunday, March 14th, 2010 at 8:33 am
With global economics the way they are it would be redundant to rant and rave about the downsides of corporate fund-raising. Quick infusions of cash from venture capital firms and institutional lenders are on hold and it is what it is but companies are becoming creative and corporate attention is steering away from the problems and toward the solutions.
The US and Chinese markets are intertwined in many ways and now a new trend in finance is making the relationship even closer. It’s a fact that Chinese corporations are still trying to figure out how to make their domestic stock market profitable and stable. Many of these companies have global ambitions with unique technology solutions business products and strategies but because of the week Chinese economy (compared to the power of other currencies) they have no choice but to head to the Frankfurt Exchange or the OTCBB market here in the United States.
As a corporate consultant that facilitates the process of going public for both domestic and global entities I have received maybe 5 to 10 calls per year from Chinese companies wanting to set up American corporate subsidiaries to absorb their foreign corporations and trade on the Bulletin Boards but all that has changed. I now receive 5 to 10 calls from Chinese and Indian companies per week to take advantage of the global market place that centers around America’s gravitational pull.
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Sunday, March 14th, 2010 at 8:32 am
Do You Need Capital For Your Company? Build Strong Strategic Partnerships! In this economy, companies who survive have more than just a strong business model; they have aligned themselves with strategic partners in a joint effort to create a win/win relationship where each contributes to a pool of contacts, promotional initiatives and industrial knowledge.
Strategic alliances are the number one way to strengthen your company if you are trying to raise capital from venture capital firms, angel investors, hedge fund lenders, angel investors or if you are trying to take your company public. Empirical evidence companies who demonstrate a track record of unified success strengthens the package and puts you on the radar as an invest-able entity and you’ll start to get attention from the big players as you watch the value of your company soar.
The big question is, “Where do you find these partners and who can help you speed up the search?” You should start by having an executive meeting and put all your industry contacts together and invite these contacts to a networking ‘meet and greet’. Make it nice. Have a caterer, have giveaways etc. After you’ve done this the next step is to talk to your accountant, attorney, members of professional organizations in which you are a member, your banker, your billing service (if you outsource your invoicing), your financial adviser and/or consultant and any other professional that you’ve used in the past who has access to corporations in your industry or in a complimenting industry and can introduce you to new partners. This is exactly how ‘in demand’ executives and powerful CEO’s, CFO’s and consultants do it.
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Sunday, March 14th, 2010 at 8:28 am
If you own or run a company that is trying to raise capital in the current economic conditions you’ve undoubtedly been challenged by the limited funds available. Investors are more difficult to find and the individuals that are actually willing to part with their cash are even tougher to find. You’ve talked to friends, family members, your cpa and your attorney but trying to get them to invest is like drawing blood from a stone, it’s just not happening.
There is an easier way. Most broker dealers and market makers have an emergency number in their Rolodex that reads “Investor Finder”, these specialist consultants are brought in when there is nowhere else to turn for cash. A true Investor Finder has 1,000′s of investor contacts that they can call on to get funding for their clients and are constantly using online viral strategies to attract more investors to their database.
An investor finder usually is not a licensed securities broker/agent or attorney; instead they are traditionally consultants that are active in the investment banking facilitation aspect of the industry. Being that they are not licensed they do not accept equity payments or percentages; instead they work on a flat fee basis.
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Sunday, March 14th, 2010 at 8:10 am
We get calls all day, every day from companies that talk about ‘wanting’ real corporate publicity that will transform their company but few have the stomach for what it really takes and even fewer have the financial dedication it takes to obliterate their competition and take their rightful place at the top of the food chain.
Of course it’s important to cater to the traditional media (TV, radio, newspaper, industry journals, etc) but the genre of publicity that wins every time is viral publicity consisting of video, social and news bookmarks, article submissions, press release submissions and photo/logo sharing sites. The reality is online publicity is where you’re going to completely annihilate your competitors and claim your rightful position.
When you take into consideration the ultra powerful medium and stealth of viral publicity, all other promotional genres cower in comparison. Online your pre public or post public company will claim instant viewers and a cult-like following that TV and radio can’t even remotely compare. Billions of searches take place every day and it is the viral publicists job to do what SEO and traditional publicists can’t do and that is get solid search engine ranking while simultaneously bringing in powerful results that are targeted and strategically placed.
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Saturday, March 13th, 2010 at 12:05 pm
If you are considering obtaining a lawsuit loan, lawsuit funding or settlement loans, there are several factors of which you should be aware. It will be important for you first to determine whether you have sustained injury. Although we have a tendency to equate injury with either physical or emotional trauma, in Law, there are many ways in which injury/harm may be inflicted. However, irrespective of the injury to which we refer, the injury must result in either the loss or diminution of something. That which is either lost or diminished may be either tangible or intangible.
Although there are many classifications of lawsuits one may bring, this article will focus on those classified as “negligence” cases. The primary focus of this article will be on those elements that must be established to succeed when bringing such cases in a Court of Law. The vast majority of “negligence” claims proceed through civil courts. It is significant to note, however, that cases of “criminal negligence” also exist. Those cases brought in civil courts seek compensation (e.g., money) for injuries sustained. In “criminal negligence” cases, it is the state that will prosecute the defendant. The purpose of the prosecution is to penalize the defendant for societal-harm.
A “negligence” claim is predicated solely on the fact that the defendant purportedly neglected to conduct himself/herself in a manner consistent with duties society imposed upon that individual. The standard on which the Court will rely is referred to as the “reasonable person” standard. If an individual fails to comport with the “reasonable person” standard, that individual may be liable for damages others incur as a result of the negligence in which that individual engaged.
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Saturday, March 13th, 2010 at 11:36 am
What are the ways that a criminal defendant can determine the quality of their defense attorney?
Let’s face it, there are a lot of lawyers out there. Finding the right one for you can be a complicated process. If you’ve been charged with a crime, you have a lot of concerns and questions and want to know your matter is being handled properly. In selecting a criminal defense lawyer who is right for you, you need to get an idea of how much experience the lawyer has in dealing with criminal cases like yours. However, choosing the right lawyer for you isn’t about experience alone. It’s about hiring someone that you feel comfortable with trusting your freedom to.
In the area of criminal defense law, more lawyers than in most any other legal specialty are referred to local bar associations as to complaints calling for disciplinary action each year. Here are some potential issues that may cause your defense lawyer to provide you with less than professional representation.
It is important to keep in mind that many criminal cases do not reach a jury trial. Most criminal cases are resolved as the result of a plea agreement. Obtaining a favorable plea agreement may depend a great part on the ability, knowledge, and experience of your criminal defense lawyer. This is an area where it is especially important to select a criminal lawyer who has had experience and success negotiating plea agreements for cases similar to yours.
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