Two new programs out from the Small Business Administration (SBA) promise easier loan access for US companies, which is good news for the many small firms that have struggled to get funding from banks over the past few years.

The first program is called Small Loan Advantage, and its main goal is to reduce the paperwork involved in getting loan approval and decrease the wait-time from application to money receipt.

Venture capital investment may be declining, but not for start-ups. Early stage financings continue to hold the imagination of VC investors, according to a new report out by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA).

The report provides an update on venture capital investing in the third quarter of the year, and put investment activity at $4.8 billion in VC dollars spent on 780 deals over the quarter. This is a pretty significant decline from the previous quarter, which saw $6.9 billion spent on 962 deals.

With US M&A still going strong both domestically and internationally, bias inherent in traditional valuation methods can lead to incorrect assumptions. Hence it is time to take a new approach to valuation. Or so say the authors of a new M&A methodology out in the Harvard Business Review.

Alexander van Putten— principal at Cameron & Associates and affiliate faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton Business School— Mehrdad Baghai—managing director of boutique advisory firm Alchemy Growth Partners—and Ian MacMillan—principal at Cameron & Associates and Ambani Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Wharton—have come up with a twist on traditional methods for valuing a potential acquisition target that they say reduces false positives in the M&A process.

It may not be as sexy as the latest iPhone or iPad apps, but Google is reaching out to small businesses with a new range of finance and management apps geared specifically at SMEs, and have promised to launch new small company tools each Tuesday.

In its first release, companies can take advantage of accounting and finance app Outright, which provides automated data gathering from various external sources, such as banks and payments service providers, like Paypal.

Potential changes to aircraft export credit rules worldwide, under a review by the OECD, could have a big impact on smaller air carriers, according to some airline industry executives. However, others say that changes must be made for a truly competitive landscape to exist.

The review, by the OECD’s aviation working group, Participants to the Sector Understanding on Export Credits for Civil Aircraft (the ASU), will be completed by year-end—after having its final industry consultation in November.

A recent piece of research by academics Nils Backhaus and Luc Soenen looking at how to determine if a company is holding excess cash and what the impact is of that, which appears here on AFPOnline, made a very good case for some of the potential pitfalls that companies face when retaining extra cash.

Given the tremendous focus by much of the US business sector on stockpiling cash in recent years, understanding not just the benefits, but also the issues that could arise as a result, is an important exercise that should help finance execs to ensure that cash is put to best use.

This will be quite a week for women entrepreneurs. Not only is the first-ever gathering of East coast-West coast women entrepreneurs—and potential start-up investors—happening in Silicon Valley, but there are also events worldwide for women—and men—during Global Entrepreneurship Week.

Such events are critical for encouraging women to seek out financing and partnerships for growing their small businesses or business ideas.

Deutsche Bank has launched a web-based trade finance tool for trade guarantee management. The syndicated guarantee management tool allows companies, syndication banks, and agents to access information on guarantee transactions and capture instructions in real-time, and automate information transfer.

It includes extensive reporting functions, customization, and is fully integrated with Deutsche Bank’s other corporate client solutions.

Goldman Sachs has announced a partnership with small-business and microfinance developer Opportunity Finance Network to launch the 10,000 Small Businesses CDFI Small Business Financing Initiative.

Opportunity Finance Network is an organization supporting community development financial institutions (CDFIs) that provide small and micro businesses in the US with development loans—in particular for low-wealth and low-income individuals and companies.

The unemployment rate may be stubbornly stuck above 9 percent and workers in most professions are afraid to ask for raises and feel like they are doing a lot more for the same pay.

However, this is not the case with accounting and finance professionals. According to Robert Half International's 2011 Salary Guide, starting salaries in these fields are expected to rise an average of 3.1 percent in the coming year. Business analysts, tax accountants and financial analysts are among the professionals projected to see notable increases.