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Robert Doochin says his next step is fairly simple: After nearly half a century at the helm of American Paper & Twine Co., pass the business on to his three children. But with an estimated value of $10 million to $20 million, there’s one problem: the tax bill.

Doochin’s estate attorney has advised him to move out of state, he says. He’s considering it.

“It’s a big hit,” he said. “You take this business. We’ve never cashed in. So where does that money come from?”

Doochin, like many successful business owners, has been pressing state leaders to lower Tennessee’s main tax on wealth, the estate tax.

Gov. Bill Haslam and Rep

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WIRRAL manufacturer ANH Refractories Europe is reporting a record increase in turnover from £4m to around £7m in 2011 driven by strong export sales.It follows a raft of contract wins in the Middle East bolstered by robust growth in UK and European markets.The Bromborough based company manufactures materials used in linings for furnaces, kilns, incinerators and reactors operating at high temperatures.It is part of the ANH Refractories family of companies headquartered in Pittsburgh, USA.ANH Refractories Europe managing director, Peter Rooney, said: “The last 12 months have been hugely successful.“We are entering the New Year following a sustained period of growth and the forecast for 2012 is extremely positive.“We have strong growth in the domestic and European markets which has been backed by major deals with oil and industrial firms in Saudi Arabia.“Our core business has been in insulating and dense refractory products, where our tonnage of product distributed to the Middle East has doubled in the last year.“The petrochemical sector is proving a major driver of growth for ANH.”The firm has made new appointments in 2011 increasing the staff count by %. Plans for exp

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Tags: Wirral Manufacturer, £7m

Attempts to legislate against online piracy and copyright infringement in the US have triggered an angry response from some of the world’s largest web portals and services. Wikipedia, WordPress, Reddit and the business news site Cheezburger are just some of the major web sites that have blacked out for 24 hours in protest against the anti-piracy and anti-infringement bills, known as Sopa and Pipa that are being considered by the US Congress.

The Stop Online Piracy Act (Sopa) bill from the House of Representatives and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (Pipa) from the Senate aim to stop websites using and circulating unauthorised copyright materials.

Opponents to these bills include many of the web’s founding fathers who say they built their businesses on a free web and fear legislating against content will begin a process of censorship that will damage free access to information for generations to come.

Under these bills, copyright owners would be allowed to apply for court orders to force websites associated with piracy to close down. Fur

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Tags: Web, Web Shuts

SAN FRANCISCO — Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang is leaving the struggling Internet company, as it tries to revive its revenue growth and win over disgruntled shareholders under a new leader.

The departure, announced Tuesday, punctuates the end of an era at Yahoo, a tarnished Internet icon that has spent much of the last decade scrambling to catch up to Internet search leader Google Inc. — a company that got early encouragement and advice from Yang. It comes just two weeks after Yahoo Inc. hired former PayPal executive Scott Thompson as its CEO.

Thompson is the fourth CEO in less than five years to try to turn around Yahoo.

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Tags: Company

This is another question received in my ask-me form on my timberry.com website:

Im hoping you might be able to help direct me in finding the perfect letter that I need to send out to potential private (mainly friends) lenders for a start-up Im involved.  I need this letter to spell out the details of the lending terms, conversion, etc.  Im a numbers person (CPA) not a writer but I need this letter to be very appealing to convince them to lend us the start-up capital we are seeking.

My answer:

Youre focusing on the wrong thing. People dont invest or not because of the perfect letter. Get the details right and the letter will follow. If

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Tags: Perfect Letter, Potential