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Negotiation is crucial to business alliances, but this process can become more complicated if there are language barriers and differences in cultural values, customs, and lifestyles, such as Western businesses negotiating in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Previous studies have presented models of the Chinese negotiating process but these are primarily from the US. This study examines the negotiating experiences of selected New Zealand investors who have had experiences negotiating either Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) or short‐term sales agreements in the PRC to create two conceptual models. The results provide some interesting insights for doing business in China.

The paper aims to examine the direction of the relationship between a firm's internal audit function and its external audit fees, extending a previous study by Goodwin‐Stewart and Kent, which used data from 2000.

The paper uses publicly available information to analyse the relationship between internal audit and audit fees.

The findings support Goodwin‐Stewart and Kent's result that the existence of an internal audit function in a firm has a significantly positive relationship with audit fees. In fact, the strength of this relationship has increased since 2000.

The study focuses on the top 300 public companies from a market capitalisation perspective and, therefore, the results may not be generalisable to other smaller public companies or to private firms. Second, the dichotomous experimental variable used in the study (existence of internal audit) might not be an ideal measure of internal audit usage since it may not be sensitive enough to capture all the variation in external audit fees. The findings suggest that companies use internal audit and audit fees in a complementary way to strengthen their overall control/operating environment.

Although the study extends and validates work already completed by Goodwin‐Stewart and Kent, the true value of its result is that users can use publicly available information to determine that firms with an internal audit function are more likely to use it in a complementary way with audit fees, thereby potentially indicating a commitment by that firm to a stronger monitoring/control environment.

The purpose of this paper is to describe mental health-related contact with educational professionals amongst children in the British Child and Adolescent Mental Health Survey (BCAMHS) 2004.

BCAMHS 2004 was a community-based survey of 5,325 children aged 5-16, with follow-up in 2007. This paper reports the percentage of children with a psychiatric disorder that had mental health-related contact with education professionals (categorised as teachers or specialist education services) and the percentage with specific types of psychiatric disorders amongst those contacting services.

Two-thirds (66.1 per cent, 95 per cent CI: 62.4-69.8 per cent) of children with a psychiatric disorder had contact with a teacher regarding their mental health and 31.1 per cent (95 per cent CI: 27.5-34.7 per cent) had contact with special education either in 2004 or 2007, or both. Over half of children reporting special education contact (55.1 per cent, 95 per cent CI: 50.0-60.2 per cent) and almost a third reporting teacher contact in relation to mental health (32.1 per cent, 95 per cent CI: 29.7-34.6 per cent) met criteria for a psychiatric disorder.

Many children in contact with education professionals regarding mental health experienced clinical levels of difficulty. Training is needed to ensure that contact leads to prompt intervention and referral if necessary.

This is the first paper to report on mental health-related service contact with education professionals in the 2004 BCAMHS survey along with its 2007 follow-up. It identifies high levels of teacher contact which represent challenges in supporting staff with training, resources and access to mental health services.

Liberalisation and deregulation of financial markets, lower currency volatility and the introduction of the euro have reduced transaction and bankruptcy costs for multinationals in Europe. Internal European transfers of cash have become easier and cheaper. This has enabled the centralisation of cash management activities. The centralisation at headquarters of multinational enterprises has also opened the road to financial disintermediation. These trends may have helped to create conglomerate benefits in Europe. The case of the cash management at the Netherlands‐based Royal Philips Electronics is used to illustrate these tendencies.