LAURA SLATTERYlooks back at the week in business
Product watch: John Walker & Sons' Diamond Jubilee Blended Scotch Whisky
Never a company to miss a trick, Diageo has announced it will sell 60 decanters of a limited edition Scotch whisky to commemorate 60 years of the Queen’s reign. What’s special about this? Well, they’ll be selling for £100,000 a pop. For this royal sum, purchasers will get a blend of whiskies distilled in 1952 that’s been partially aged in a cask made from oak trees grown at royal retreat Sandringham. It will be sold in a lead crystal decanter, of course, that will be decorated with a silver collar featuring a half-carat diamond and an individually numbered seal. Other extras include a pair of hand-engraved crystal glasses . . . which sort of assumes that whoever buys is in the mood for sharing.
Dictionary corner: Jellybook
A Jellybook, thankfully, is not a new social media platform. It’s a social media investment vehicle, which means 99.9 per cent of the population doesn’t have to worry about what it’s up to at all. British businessman Jonathan Rowland plans to float the shell company on London’s Alternative Investment Market, raising at least £3 million.
Shareholders will become indirect investors in the up-and-coming digital media and social networking firms deemed buzz-worthy enough for Jellybook’s taste. Assisting Rowland in this endeavour is Julie Meyer, founder of the First Tuesday business network, who will serve as non-executive director. I guess they’ll be hoping the market doesn’t wobble.
€150m
The size of the proposed European Commission compensation package for farmers hit by the E.coli outbreak.
"This is not just about having a dig at Bono. It is curcial to get people thinking about the ethics of taxation."
Art Uncut explain the rationale behind their “pay up Bono” protest at Glastonbury
STATUS UPDATE
Once you pop:The late Fredric Baur, the food storage expert who designed the packaging for Pringles crisps, has had part of his ashes buried in one of the cans at his own request.
Gross neglect:Geir Haarde, Iceland's former prime minister, has been charged over his part in the collapse of its banking sector in 2008. He says the charges are "political persecution".
Sponsor success: Li Na, who last Saturday became the first Asian tennis player to win a Grand Slam event, is now tipped to become the highest-paid sportswoman of all time.
THE QUESTION: Are discount sites the future of good value or just and unprofitable fad?
There was a brief variety-act moment in Gavin O’Reilly’s address to mildly peeved Independent News & Media shareholders at its agm last week. Touting the bright future of deal-of-the-day site GrabOne.ie, its joint venture with Australian sister company APN, O’Reilly took his “one for everyone in the audience” opportunity.
In lieu of a dividend – they will have to wait until at least 2012 for one of those – shareholders were offered a €25 voucher for GrabOne, which they could spend on the site’s deals for coffee, pizza, “even leg waxing”.
The older shareholders present were nonplussed, as indeed are many market-watchers who have witnessed with bemusement the hype leading up to the initial public offering of the granddaddy of discount sites, Groupon.
Groupon, which also owns Citydeal, has 83 million subscribers, according to its IPO prospectus. But fewer than one in five of these subscribers has ever bought anything using the site’s coupons. Naturally, this hasn’t stopped Google and Facebook racing to launch daily deals services.
Intrigued by peer references to the delights of Citydeal, Planet Business signed up to its e-mail notifications. Since then, it’s become clear that leg waxing offers are the norm, not the exception. Groupon’s shares, once they do float, will essentially be a proxy for consumer demand for novelty massages. The “deals” have all the hallmarks of those “rewards” on The Apprentice that just seem like ghastly endurance tests: Reiki, falconry, kettlebell classes. Ignore, ignore, ignore.
Customer loyalty to the group-coupon concept has yet to be proven, which is a little worrying given that Groupon has already racked up more than $500 million in losses. As Gartner research analyst Ray Valdes told the Financial Times, "[Groupon] does not appear to be near profitability any time soon."
