LAURA SLATTERYlooks back at the week in business
SHOP TALK
AFTER A week of heavy job losses in retail, analysts in the sector are turning their attention to what has gone wrong – and the answer isn’t always high rents and higher debts. For Thorntons, which is marking its centenary by closing half its UK stores, the problem can be described in one word: Tesco.
The company professes on its shopfronts to represent “the art of the chocolatier” but once it started flogging chocs on the supermarket shelves, it became harder for consumers to equate the brand with the luxury market. Meanwhile, as supermarket sales advanced, maintaining a chain of standalone shops started looking like an old-fashioned way of doing business.
OFFICE POLITICS
Business groups were almost uniformly delighted with the Government’s JobBridge scheme, and why wouldn’t they be? The direct cost of taking on interns under the terms of the scheme is zero. “Win-win” was the phrase used by the Small Firms Association. One organisation did have some reservations.
The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development felt that, while a placement could teach interns critical skills, employers should have been given the option of providing additional allowances to interns – over and above the €50 sum added to their welfare entitlements.
“At the very least, interns should be reimbursed any expenses such as travel costs and accommodation.” Indeed, for most commuter-interns, there won’t be much loose change from €50 after transport costs are subtracted.
STATUS UPDATE
Striking out: The LA Dodgers baseball club has filed for bankruptcy, with debt-laden owner Frank McCourt locked in a messy divorce battle as his team played to a half-empty stadium.
Sky's the limit:The British government says it is "minded to accept" News Corporation's bid for BSkyB, although an "independent editorial director" will have to attend Sky News board meetings.
French reshuffle:Nicolas Sarkozy has appointed 46-year-old François Baroin as its new finance minister, following Christine Lagarde's departure for the International Monetary Fund.
"At some point, someone will have to pay the price. This is a long story, not a short story"- Stephen Pagliuca, managing director of investment firm Bain Capital, is not celebrating the Greek parliament's austerity vote
38.4The average weekly working hours for full-time employees in Ireland. That's the second lowest in the EU, according to Eurostat.
THE QUESTION:
How powerful is Pimco, the world's largest bond investor?
George Soros, Warren Buffett, Nouriel Roubini . . . these are the usual suspects quoted by financial news wires whenever the latest crisis emerges. Now there’s another name to add to the list: Mohamed El-Erian. He is the chief executive of the Pacific Investment Management Co, aka Pimco, the world’s biggest manager of bond funds. Together with Pimco founder and co-chief investment officer Bill Gross, his pronouncements are slavishly followed. In a world where bondholders are synonymous with faceless institutions acting on behalf of anonymous investors, El-Erian is the closest proxy we have to a Mr Bondholder.
The California-based Pimco, which is a unit of the German insurance company Allianz, has advised the US government on banking policy in the past, but is now a trenchant critic of Washington’s attempt to wangle its way out of its fiscal and monetary mire. Earlier this year, Gross moved Pimco’s substantial assets out of a hefty portion of its US sovereign debt holdings. The numbers are pretty staggering. In total, Pimco manages almost $1.3 trillion in assets - in February, its $237 billion Total Return Fund dumped all its US bonds.
So what’s El-Erian got to say? Entering the fray on the bubbling political row on raising the US debt ceiling, El-Erian opined last weekend that a short-term default by the US on its debt would have “catastrophic” legal consequences. He also believes that a restructuring of Greek debt is “inevitable” and that, until its problem is solved, “more and more of Europe is going to become contaminated”.
He has also listed five “to dos” for new IMF managing director Christine Lagarde, advising her to prepare for the possibility that the IMF might face massive losses on its recent bailouts. Like all influential organisations, Pimco is on Twitter, although @Pimco’s 27,000-odd follower count perhaps underestimates its global power.
