David Ainsworth's round-up of what's happening in the finance world
* A free mentoring service for third sector organisations involved in enterprise in Scotland has been launched with funding from the Scottish Government.
The service will allow voluntary organisations to receive one-on-one advice from professional business mentors about how to develop their trading.
* The first housing association to win the social enterprise mark has been announced.
Selwood Housing, which provides more than 5,000 affordable homes in Wiltshire, was also the first organisation in the county to receive the mark, which is designed to make social businesses recognisable.
* The turnover of the Scottish social economy, defined as all mutual and not-for-profit organisations, increased by 1.5 per cent to £2.87bn in 2008, according to figures released by the Scottish Government.
However, the figure represented a fall of 1.2 per cent after inflation was taken into account, its report said. The size of the Scottish economy as a whole increased by 9 per cent in real terms over the same period, the report said.
