Planet Business

Compiled by LAURA SLATTERY

Product watch: Lego Ninjago

Danish building blocks toy Lego used to come over all “homes and gardens”, with perhaps the odd hard hat to hint at what “Lego Man” got up to in his truck during working hours. Things are a little more diverse in Legoland these days – Europe’s biggest toymaker is boosting its market share with a whopping 32 per cent jump in profit, partly thanks to its new Ninjago sets. Launched in January, Ninjago: Masters of Spinjitzu, which pitches Lego ninjas against an army of skeletons, has helped the company exceed its sales expectations in all markets, according to chief executive Joergen Vig Knudstorp.

Dictionary corner: "Solidarity tax"

Warren Buffett has declared that the super-rich have been “coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress”. French billionaires have pleaded to make special contributions to the French treasury and a group of rich Germans have volunteered to make higher tax contributions, claiming the country could raise €100 billion in two years. Meanwhile, in Italy, the Berlusconi government has shelved plans to introduce a “solidarity tax”, which would have imposed an additional tax of 5 per cent on incomes of more than €90,000 a year, rising to 10 per cent on incomes above €150,000.

STATUS UPDATE

Chinese whispers:Mandarin, spoken by 845 million people, is the second most useful language for business behind English, according to rankings published by Bloomberg.

Faces for radio:UTV Media's TalkSport station saw operating profits fall 13 per cent in the first half, partly due to the cost of hiring ex-Sky Sports presenters Andy Gray and Richard Keys.

Daunting task:New Waterstone's boss James Daunt will try to revive the chain's fortunes by replacing its long-running "3 for 2" promotion with single-book discounts.

THE QUESTION:

Why is the Arctic Circle so coveted by exploration companies?

There’s a very simple answer to this question and that’s the estimate that the Arctic contains around a fifth of the world’s undiscovered and recoverable oil and natural gas. It’s not recoverable by everyone, however, which is why state-owned Russian oil giant Rosneft has signed a deal with Exxon that will give the biggest US oil company – one of the few companies capable of drilling in the Arctic’s deep, dark and icily perilous waters – access to a potential energy bonanza.

Under the deal, seen as a massive commercial blow to one-time Rosneft-suitor BP, Exxon and Rosneft will invest $3.2 billion in the development of three blocks in the Arctic Kara Sea. That’s just for starters, however: total investment under the partnership is likely to be in the hundreds of billions. Rosneft will own two-thirds of the venture, with the remaining third held by Exxon, which described the blocks as “among the most promising and least explored offshore areas globally”. The blocks are thought to hold 36 million barrels of recoverable oil, which is around 9 billion barrels higher than Exxons total proven reserves at the end of 2010.

So these are huge numbers, both in terms of money and the potential windfall – big enough for Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin to describe the investment scale as “scary”, and one assumes he isn’t scared easily. But while receding sea ice is making exploration in the Kara Sea a little less dangerous, it’s still not without its hazards. The polar ice packs and icebergs can be the undoing of drilling rigs, while if there was an oil-spill in winter, the clean-up operation would have to take place in the total polar darkness that lasts for months.

98:Number of years female executives may have to wait for parity of pay with male executives, based on current trends, according to the UK's Chartered Management Institute.