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Interbrand, the leading brand consultancy and authors of the annual Best Global Brands ranking of the top 100 world’s most valuable brands, have turned their attention to the global retail sector.

In a sharp change from the recent past, FICO’s quarterly Survey of Bank Risk Professionals found greater optimism about the health of U.S. consumers than at any point in the past year, with survey respondents expecting delinquency rates on car loans, credit cards and small business loans to decline. However, bankers remain concerned about mortgage foreclosures and credit availability for small businesses. The survey is conducted for FICO by the Professional Risk Managers’ International Association (PRMIA). The results were analyzed by the Columbia University Business School.

The IT industry continues to show strong signs of growth as technology budgets, cloud services usage, virtualization adoption, and IT staffing plans among small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) all showed their strongest gains in more than 18 months, according to a new report by Spiceworks™, Inc., the largest social business network for IT with more than 1.4 million SMB IT professionals.

Nestle CRUNCH® released findings on the state of fun in America, based on a national survey conducted this month to determine the country's first-ever "fun quotient." Despite dismal news dominating headlines, Americans feel they have a "high" fun quotient or level of fun in their lives – with a whopping 86 percent of adults polled having fun at least once per week, most of whom experience fun on a daily basis, according to the CRUNCH Fun Quotient Survey.

Member States recorded a decline in sentiment. Among the seven largest Member States, Poland (-3.1 points), Spain (-3.0) and Germany (-0.7) reported decreases, while the Netherlands (+3.1), the UK (+2.7) and France (+0.9) improved. Meanwhile, Italy (+0.1) remained broadly stable. The ESI is above its long-term average in five of the seven largest Member States. Poland went back to just below its long-term average, while Spain remained well below it.

Consumer prices in the OECD area rose by 2.4% in the year to February 2011, compared with 2.2% in January - the highest rate since October 2008. This increase was again driven by food and energy inflation which accelerated to 3.0% and 10.1% respectively in February, compared with 2.6% and 8.4% in January.

From September 2009 to September 2010, employment increased in 162 of the 326 largest U.S. counties according to preliminary data, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported. Elkhart, Ind., posted the largest percentage increase, with a gain of 6.8 percent over the year, compared with national job growth of 0.2 percent. Within Elkhart, the largest employment increase occurred in manufacturing, which gained 5,570 jobs over the year (14.2 percent). Sacramento, Calif., experienced the largest over-the-year percentage decrease in employment among the largest counties in the U.S. with a loss of 3.7 percent. Within Sacramento, state government had the largest percentage decrease in employment with a loss of 7.5 percent.

Emerging East Asia's local currency bond markets expanded by 13.6% to $5.2 trillion in 2010, driven by strong growth in corporate bonds that helped to offset a decline in issuance by central banks and some governments in the last quarter of 2010.

Private-sector employment increased by 201,000 from February to March on a seasonally adjusted basis, according to the latest ADP National Employment Report®. The ADP National Employment Report, created by Automatic Data Processing, Inc., in partnership with Macroeconomic Advisers, LLC, is derived from actual payroll data and measures the change in total nonfarm private employment each month.

From January to February, the industrial profits of enterprises above designated size achieved 645.5 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 34.3%. The profits of State-owned and State-holding Industrial Enterprises gained 224 billion yuan, up by 25%; that of collective-owned enterprises amounted to 9.9 billion yuan, up by 39.3%; that of Share-holding Corporation Ltd amounted to 357.8 billion yuan, up by 38.6%; that of enterprises with funds from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, and Foreign Funded Enterprises reached 181.3 billion yuan, up by 26%; that of private enterprises gained 162.6 billion yuan, increased 49.7% year-on-year.