PLANET BUSINESS

COMPILED BY  LAURA SLATTERY.

QUOTES OF THE WEEK

"We will never support any opinion that hurts the feeling of the Chinese people."

- Luxury goods group Christian Dior apologises on behalf of actress and face of Dior, Sharon Stone, after she suggested that the Sichuan earthquake, in which at least 68,000 people died, might be karmic retribution for China's policies in Tibet.

"We'll sell 290 million PCs and Apple will sell 10 million . . . Steve can flip his hand and sell a few models and I don't take a thing away from him."

- Microsoft's Steve Ballmer does his best to sound blase about the prospect of Apple's Steve Jobs beating him to the market with a new touch-screen computer.

THE NUMBERS

£13 BILLION

- amount that City of London-based financial institutions have managed to rustle together this year to pay in staff bonuses, down just 1 per cent on the previous year, despite the credit crunch.

€303,000

- sum that Aer Lingus passengers have donated to UNICEF Ireland's Burma cyclone appeal by emptying unwanted foreign currency coins into those plastic bags they stick in the seat pockets.

GOOD WEEK

Premiership footballers

Premier League clubs are spending a greater chunk of their turnover on wages than ever before, according to a new report by Deloitte, with oligarch-rolled Chelsea shelling out the most in the 2006-2007 season with a wage bill of £132.8 million (€168.6 million). Terms and conditions for the Premiership top-flight seem attractive - not only did the players benefit from broadcasting deal cash before their clubs had even got their hands on it, but many of them are also getting a few extra weeks' holidays this month.

Burberry

Despite the sluggishness of the British economy, handbags and gladrags are still very much in demand - presumably from all those City bankers, Premiership wags and sterling-exploiting euro tourists. Profits at Burberry surged 25 per cent in the year to the end of March, with growth spurred by sales of luxury handbags such as the £1,595 (€2,000) Knight bag - a black leather number with metal studs and more than enough room to stash loadsamoney-style wads of cash.

BAD WEEK

The Bratz dolls - Cloe, Sasha, Yasmin and Jade - are in the witness box, or rather their owner, MGA Entertainment, is in court. Toymaker Mattel is suing MGA, claiming Bratz designer Carter Bryant first developed sketches for the big-eyed, pouting dolls while he was an employee of Mattel. MGA once claimed that it was the son of its chief executive that came up with the idea for the dolls, which have hit the popularity of Mattel's Barbie and are worth $500 million a year in sales and licences.