Planet Business

A look back at the week in business

DICTIONARY CORNER: THE 'SOBER' DECADE

When Bank of England governor Mervyn King announced on Tuesday that the UK was facing up to a “sober” decade, he wasn’t just invoking another use of the “party’s over, here comes the hangover” metaphor. He was also gifting us with a new acronym: the Sober decade will be one characterised by Savings, Orderly Budgets and Equitable Rebalancing. The boom times, incidentally, were the Nice decade, or Non-Inflationary Consistently Expansionary. “The next decade will not be nice,” observed King.

COMMODITY WATCH

French motorists have been busy filling their tanks in blockade-induced panic buying, while aircraft flying to France loaded up with double the amount of fuel they normally carry. But they’re not the only ones who have stockpiled oil. Gasoline supplies in the US have unexpectedly increased, according to data from the US Energy Department, which, coupled with data showing a slowdown in China’s economic growth in the third quarter, put pressure on oil prices earlier this week.

"There's nothing like a set of accounts and a set of accountants to make it completely unobvious what is happening"

– Angela Knight, chief executive of the British Bankers’ Association, speaks of muddied balance sheets at the Irish Banking Federation conference

$285bn

The market capitalisation of Apple following the successful launch of the iPad

STATUS UPDATE

Toilet trials: The Glastonbury festival organisers decided to have a "fallow year" in 2012 instead of 2011 because the Olympics will cause a spike in the cost of hiring portaloos.

Careful now: BP boss Bob Dudley has told the company's 80,000 employees that safety records will be the sole measure for bonus payments in its fourth fiscal quarter.

THE QUESTION

Is the EU's plan to extend maternity leave to 20 weeks on full pay bad for employers?

Yes, according to Mark Fielding of business group Isme, and not only that – its bad for women, too, he claims. With more than a hint of Lord Sugar, he noted: “if there are two candidates and one is a buxom young woman of child-rearing years and the other is a fellow, who is an employer going to hire when he or she knows that they will have to pay 20 weeks’ maternity leave?” This type of cost-based hiring discrimination is sometimes seen as more rational than straightforward misogyny, but that doesn’t make it any less illegal. The EU’s plan for longer maternity leave may convince more firms that their existing discriminatory hiring practices are justified, but big business will save its real apoplexy for when the EU pushes through paid paternity leave or – what it really fears – legislation that allows a chunk of maternity leave to be transferred to the father. How will employers know who to discriminate against then?