2013 [BUSINESS ENGLISH PORTFOLIO]

A company, who wants to recruit new employees, can make appointments with agencies to find
candidates from a special sector of industry.
Self Study 6b
Exercise 2
The developments of the number of employees arises to be antithetic for the companies
Mustermann AG and Svensson AB. Starting in 1996, Mustermann had about 230 employees,
whereas Svensson only had 175. Already in 1997, the number of employees working for
Mustermann fell to 200. Svensson stayed with the same number of employees. In 1998, both of
the companies where employing the same number of people, namely approximately 180. This
meant a decresing number of employees for Mustermann and an increase for Svensson. At this
particular time, the relationship between the employment number of the companies was turned.
In the next two years, Mustermann managed to recover from the steadily decreasing number of
employees and reached a number of 190 in 2000. Svenssons staff increased continuously and
developed from 195 employees in 1999 to 215 in 2000.
Self Study 8a
Exercise 4
As competitors on the market of person computers and technical devices, Apple Computer Inc.
and the Microsoft Corporation are compared in the following.
The developments in this sector are really fast, so the description is going to be focused on the
time from July to November in 1999. Starting with share price of 90$ and even increasing to
100$, Microsoft decreased to less than 80$ by the end of August. By the middle of September,
Microsoft managed to reach a shared price slightly higher than 90$ and stayed at this level until
the beginning of October. Considering numerous ups and downs, Microsoft ended up with a
share price of 90$ by the end of November.
Apple started with a share price of 45$, but made its way up to almost 80$ by the end of
September. After a short decrease to 60$ by the beginning of October, the share price of Apple
steadily increased and reached 100$ at the end of November.
All in all, Apple managed to get ahead of Microsoft by the beginning of November.
Self Study 8b
Exercise 4
The percentage of workforce, which is unemployed divers from country to country. In the
following, the unemployment in Germany and Italy between 1993 and 1998 is compared and
described.
In 1993, Germany had about 8,5% unemployment. This percentage increased during the year
and in the first months of 1994 until nearly 10%. After a slight decrease to 9% by the end of
1994, the percentage increased steadily up to approx. 12% by the end of 1997, which is the peak
level for the German unemployment, shown in this chart. By the end of 1998, the unemployment
percentage decreases to 10,5%.