Planet Business

Image of the week: 'And what do you do?'
A red carpet of Stormtroopers with bonus Darth Vader is probably just an everyday event in the life of the man on the far left, filmmaker George Lucas, but here he is welcoming Singapore prime minister Lee Hsien Loong to greet the dark side.

The men are pictured at the opening of "the Sandcrawler", Lucasfilms' new animation and visual effects production facility in the city-state. Named after a vehicle in the original Star Wars movie, the seven-storey Sandcrawler is the Disney-owned studio's first overseas production complex and it will also house various other bits of the Disney empire, following Singapore's successful positioning of itself as a digital media hub – like Dublin, only with lightsabers and all of South East Asia's talent base in its vicinity. Photograph: Edgar Su/Reuters

In numbers: State of employment
21
Year-on-year percentage increase in job postings in the fourth quarter of 2013, according to CPL's Employment Market Monitor Report. However, survey responses from 830 jobseekers indicate that most people still believe it is an employer's market.
71
Percentage of employers who told the recruitment company's third-quarter market report that they would rather hire someone who is already in employment than someone who is unemployed. Anyone for a re-read of Catch-22?
62
Percentage of jobseekers who check potential employers' social media footprint, in a reversal of the usual snooping by hiring managers. This prompted CPL to warn company executives that their corporate and personal online postings might be monitored by (talented, choosy) job candidates.

The lexicon: The Fragile Five
Arguably accuracy is always an issue with alliteration. Coined last August by Morgan Stanley analyst James Lord, the "Fragile Five" is the group of emerging market countries at risk from the fallout of the Federal Reserve's tapering policy.

But, as the Financial Times warned on its front page yesterday, just because they are fragile, doesn't mean that there are five of them. Joining Brazil, Indonesia, India, Turkey and South Africa on the list of countries vulnerable to tightening monetary policy are Hungary, Chile and Poland, it says. Still, global economic contagion working the way it does, it probably won't be long before someone comes up with a Fragile Fifteen.

Getting to know: Tony Fadell
During his decade-long stint at Apple, inventor-designer-entrepreneur Tony Fadell was referred to as one of the "godfathers" of the iPod, while also leading engineering on the iPhone. "We changed the world twice – I was very lucky," he told The Irish Times during his recent trip to the Dublin Web Summit.

Then, in 2008, Fadell left Apple to establish a start-up that developed a "connective" thermostat and smart smoke alarm – things that were disconcertingly difficult to show off at a party, unless that party had gone badly wrong somehow. The start-up, Nest Labs, was this week sold to Google for $3.2 billion, but Fadell isn't done yet.

"I'm not trying to ride off into the sunset," he told Bloomberg. "I want to build a vision." Short version: Your life and every appliance in it belongs to Google and Fadell is the man who will make this happen.

The list: Christmas retail winners
Their stock listings mean the performances of individual retailers in the UK market are much easier to assess than they are in Ireland. So after several inboxes worth of trading updates, which retailers have emerged victorious in the cold light of January and what does it say about shoppers' preferences?
1 Argos: Sales rose 4 per cent year on year over the festive period, with online purchases making up almost half of the catalogue retailer's sales.
2 Bonmarche: Online sales for the over-50s women's clothing retailer surged 60 per cent in the last quarter. Customers "shopped their way", said chief executive Beth Butterwick.
3 Next: The chain's profits are this year set to overtake those of Marks & Spencer, thanks to its stellar online operation. It never discounts before Christmas.
4 Ocado: Sales have jumped 21 per cent in the six weeks to January 5th and the internet-only grocery company's logistics operation is now adding retail clients.
5 Asos: Yes, there is a clear trend at large and it is that shoppers like the internet a lot. Sales at fashion e-tailer Asos rocketed 38 per cent in the 16 weeks to the end of December, as it continued to benefit from "a structural shift online".