Planet Business: Sky taxis take off and why our seafood profits are anything but fishy

In numbers: Fishy business

€1.15 billion

Value of Ireland's seafood sector in 2017, taking it past €1 billion for the first time, according a report this week by Bord Iascaigh Mhara.

€249 million

Talent shortage drives wage growth in IT sector

---

Outstanding government bonds stood at €131bn in January

---

Employment now just 12,000 below all-time peak

---

Norway’s $1tn sovereign fund almost doubles its exposure to Ireland

---

Value of the seafood bought in Irish shops, up 4 per cent, with the seafood “top five” led by salmon, followed by cod, prawns, pollock and hake, which sadly knocked haddock into sixth place.

€96 million

The 2017 value of salmon sales in Irish shops, which was double that of cod. Salmon is also Ireland’s top seafood export, with overseas sales rocketing 69 per cent in value last year to €121 million.

Image of the week: California screaming

For the first time since becoming president, Donald Trump ventured this week into the enemy territory of California, a state where popularity eludes him. After checking out some Mexico border wall prototypes in San Diego, where the placards were out in force, it was off to Los Angeles, where the deputy chief of a "heavily deployed" LAPD said the police force was "prepared for anything". The visit comes a week after US attorney general Jeff Sessions sued California over three newly enacted laws that will protect undocumented immigrants from being deported. Trump's main message during his trip to the economic powerhouse state was to contend that governor Jerry Brown, a Democrat, was doing a "terrible job".

The lexicon: Cora

Is it a plane? Is it a drone? It's Cora, a pilotless "sky taxi" that's sort of both. Developed by Kitty Hawk, a company financed by Google co-founder Larry Page, Cora is a two-person craft that uses vertical take-off and landing (like a helicopter) and then has a propeller that allows it to fly at about 180km/h (but only for about 100km). Kitty Hawk has now announced that it will begin the regulatory approval process required for launching this passenger-drone system in New Zealand, after a series of secret tests under the cover of another company called Zephyr Airworks, and a development period of some eight years. "Cora has the potential to transform spaces like rooftops and parking lots into places to take off right from your neighbourhood," said Kitty Hawk. Indeed, if all goes according to plan, Cora will soon be inspiring a fond swell of nostalgia for "ground taxis".

Getting to know: David Solomon

David Solomon is an occasional DJ in New York who plays electronic dance music under the name DJ D-Sol, and according to Vanity Fair, he is "one woke dude". Oh, and he's also the investment banker tipped to be the next chief executive of Goldman Sachs, aka the heir apparent to outgoing CEO Lloyd Blankfein, so that's nice. Vanity Fair reports that Solomon, now the company's sole president after the retirement of rival Harvey Schwartz, previously tried to change Goldman Sachs from a "high-powered sweat shop to a place where a healthy work-life balance can be achieved by making sure people are working, at most, around 70 hours a week" – when they're not working on a deal. Well, he sounds like a lovely man… wait a minute, 70 hours a week? The Financial Times, meanwhile, suggests Solomon "can be gruff and quick to anger", which doesn't sound quite as woke. Who to believe?

The list: South by Southwest

It’s that time of year when it seems like everybody cool is at South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, Texas. But how good can a conglomerate of media, music and film industry festivals and conferences really be? Here are five of the luminaries who sported a lanyard there this year.

1. Melinda Gates: She almost quit the "aggressive", male-dominated Microsoft when she first joined it; now Gates says she wants to modernise work environments still designed for "people who look like my dad".

2. Lyor Cohen: For YouTube's global head of music, another keynoter, the big question was the expected arrival date of its long-teased subscription service.

3. Sadiq Khan: The mayor of London read out some of the tweets he's been sent. Let's just say the one that suggested he looked like a pigeon was the mildest.

4. Esther Perel: The Belgian psychotherapist's keynote was on "the future of love, lust and listening", giving everybody something to talk about during the late-night networking.

5. Mark Hamill: He may have spurned the Force, but Luke Skywalker is quite rock-and-roll in real middle-aged life.