THE Serious Fraud Office (SFO) is pulling out all the stops to be more effective. Stung by criticism that, until recently, its biggest cases rarely yielded results, the SFO is finding new ways to clamp down on fraud including a revamped website, telephone hotline and an FBI-style most wanted list. As our front-page story shows, it may even use networking site Twitter as a new way of gathering information.

The SFO, under director Richard Alderman, is also improving its relationships with the City. We can reveal that last year it wrote to 60 prominent people in the Square Mile asking them where they believed areas of vulnerability lay. At first the City cited hedge funds, asset backed securities and private equity firms.

However, recent feedback has thrown up allegations of bribery at oil and natural resources firms, many of them based in China or Russia. The respondents said they were concerned that British firms were losing out on contracts in different parts of the world because they did not offer sweeteners while their Chinese and Russian rivals did.

A new bribery bill planned for next year will allow the SFO to pursue overseas companies accused of bribery provided they have a presence in the UK. Ahead of the bill, the SFO is launching an information gathering project to look at the allegations.

Alderman has improved the SFO’s success rate, partly through his willingness to strike deals. But as he juggles several high-profile investigations (from BAE Systems to Bernie Madoff, Allen Stanford and Icelandic banks), let’s hope he can continue to deliver.

FRIDAY’S release of GDP data for the third-quarter will show whether the UK economy managed to eke out modest growth after five quarters of deep contraction.

Economists expect GDP to have edged up by 0.1 to 0.2 per cent quarter-on-quarter. Even if the preliminary figure turns out to be negative, experts believe it will be revised upwards in a few weeks’ time to take account of the data for September. The rise may seem like a small number but it carries a big weight: it means the recession is over.