James Mills is a web developer in the North East of England and founder of Refresh Teesside »
Mike Hughes is the Head of Business for the Evening Gazette. He will be blogging on all matters of importance to Teesside businesses - and some that are just worth knowing »
Jez Davison, business writer at the Evening Gazette, is a regular blogger on all things business - particularly finance, entrepreneurship and the state of the Teesside economy » 
Karen McLauchlan is the Evening Gazette's deputy business and features editor - with special interest in all things industry, property and arts related » 
Jeremy Middleton is a venture capitalist and the co-founder of FTSE-200 company HomeServe » 
Deloitte, which has 23 offices across the UK including Newcastle, is among the country's leading professional services firms » 
ClimateNE & Climate Change Schools Project support the move to a low-carbon, resilient economy and help businesses avoid risk and realise commercial opportunities. Posts by Jen Atkinson, Krista McKinzey and Harriet Thew » It is great news that a deal has been thrashed out today to secure the immediate future of Sunderland sofa retailer ScS.
The deal - full details of which you can read in Friday's nebusiness section of The Journal - will see investment group Sun European Partners acquire the retail business for an undisclosed sum. It should hopefully secure the futures of most of the company's 1,300-strong workforce.
The deal is not such good news for shareholders, of course, who stand to gain nothing from the rescue package which was concluded shortly after the business went into administration.
It also means that we lose another North East-based plc, a trend which has become depressingly familiar over recent times. For a variety of reasons, our North 40 listing of listed companies with an interest in the region has been shrinking rapidly.
Barratts (moved HQ to London) and Northern Rock (nationalisation) are the obvious examples, but we have also lost bookmaker Neville Porter (administration), Go Ahead (relocated to London) and Newcastle United (de-listed) in the last year or so.
Given the grim fortunes of the likes of Tanfield this week, it's hard to see many companies scarmbling to float themselves on the Stock Market in the near future. Perhaps we are going to have to rethink the name of our daily feature in The Journal...
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