Planet Business

Image of the week: Policy love-in

There is something of a mutual appreciation society between Janet Yellen, chair of the US Federal Reserve (right), and Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), seen here before a discussion at the Institute for New Economic Thinking conference at IMF headquarters, in Washington, DC, this week. At the event, Yellen said policymakers must be on guard against emerging risks to the financial system – because there never seems to be any shortage of those. She also said equity valuations were a bit high, but she wasn’t worried about a bubble. The first bit of that sentence was enough to put Wall Street into reverse on Wednesday. Lagarde was presumably happy just to take her mind off Greece for a while.

In numbers: Carly Fiorina

$21m Golden parachute received by Carly Fiorina after she was ousted as chief executive of Hewlett-Packard, in 2005, after a nasty row with the board of the technology company.

$5.8m Amount of her own money that Fiorina spent on a failed bid for a US Senate seat five years ago. She has now announced that she will run to be a Republican candidate for the US presidency.

30,000 Number of sad face emoticons you will find on CarlyFiorina.org, one for every person Fiorina laid off during her time as chief executive of Hewlett-Packard. Fiorina failed to register the domain. Someone else got in there.

The Lexicon: Fallout Friday

Today might very well turn out to be “Fallout Friday”, according to UK chancellor George Osborne, who coined the term in a Financial Times interview earlier this week to describe a situation in which Labour wins the election with Scottish National Party support. The economic credibility Osborne says the coalition has built up over five years would “evaporate in five minutes”, he claimed in the interview (the FT has backed the continuation of the coalition). Still, “Fallout Friday” can be easily adapted to describe any kind of hung-parliament stalemate, which at the time of writing was what the polls were predicting. Maybe Nick Clegg is right to warn of the chance (a remote one) that there will be another election by Christmas. Then UK politics really would go nuclear.

Getting to know: Jessica Alba

Certain film fans will know Californian actor Jessica Alba from such movies as Sin City and Fantastic Four, but Alba is also one of a widening pool of celebrities with a sideline in entrepreneurialism that’s turning out to be very serious indeed (see also Snoop Dogg, Dr Dre, Sean Combs). The Honest Company, which Alba cofounded, is valued at just under $1 billion and has attracted initial public offering (IPO) speculation. So what is the Honest Company’s honest trade? It’s a company selling baby products that offers discounts on bundles of “nontoxic”, eco-friendly consumer goods (toiletries, nappies, vitamins) sold via a monthly subscription. “I created The Honest Company to help moms and to give all children a better, safer start,” she says. The money is just a bonus.

The list World's biggest companies

Forbes.com has come up with the definitive list of the world’s biggest 2,000 companies. Impress your friends by memorising these, the top five:

5 Berkshire Hathaway Warren Buffett’s holding company celebrates its 50th birthday this year after posting 2014 revenues of $195 billion and almost $20 billion in profits.

4 Bank of China With sales of $120 billion and profits of $27.5 billion, the Bank of China has the distinction of being the fourth-largest bank in China. Hey, wait a minute, that means . . .

3 Agricultural Bank of China After a record IPO in 2010 (since overtaken by Alibaba), the bank has revenues of $129 billion and its profits are $29 billion.

2 China Construction Bank Its revenues are $130.5 billion and its profits are $37 billion. Are you beginning to sense a theme?

1 Industrial and Commercial Bank of China It has sales of $167 billion and profits of $44.8 billion. Oh, and $3.3 trillion in assets. They’ll still turn you down for that car loan.