Planet Business

LAURA SLATTERYlooks back at the week in business

Office politics

For the average workplace, aspirations towards the eco-friendly (and hotdesking-friendly) "paperless office" are merely that – aspirations. Newsrooms, in any case, are a sea of obliquely angled piles of dead trees, somewhere within which lies hastily scrawled mobile numbers, discarded supplements and decade-old annual reports of long-since-nationalised banks. Other workplaces, however, have a safety imperative to ditching the A4. According to the New York Times, pilots on US airlines have dispatched about 40lb worth of reference material – the operating manual, logbooks, airport diagrams, etc – in favour of 1.5 lb iPads, creating "paperless cockpits".

Shop talk

The retail resilience of the cosmetics industry, dubbed the “lipstick factor” by Debenhams, helped sales at the department store rise 1.5 per cent over its most recent trading period. “People still buy health and beauty whatever,” Debenhams boss Rob Templeman declared. And indeed so it is proving at the premium-range specialist beauty retailer Space NK.

The chain, founded by Belfast businesswoman Nicky Kinnaird, saw sales at stores open for more than a year rise 5 per cent to almost £50 million in the year to the end of March, and is now expanding its US presence by opening a store in sunny Los Angeles.

How serious for News International is the loss of the News of the World?

THE QUESTION:The News of the Worldwill publish its final edition on Sunday, with the edition likely to be heavy on apologies and devoid of advertising.

Led by carmaker Ford, a stream of advertisers deserted the title after a week of multiple allegations of illegal and unethical practices at the newspaper, including but not limited to the systematic phone hacking of the relatives of murdered children, terrorism victims and servicemen killed in action.

Halifax, Virgin Holidays, Mitsubishi, Sainsburys, Asda, Dixons and Boots were among the household brand names to follow Ford’s example, prompting its under-fire publisher, News International, to deem the title irreparably tarnished.

The News of the World'sannual advertising sales are estimated at £40 million by analyst Alex De Groote, an analyst at Panmure Gordon Co, while it had a circulation of 2.66 million per issue. There's no guarantee that a Sunday edition of the Sunnewspaper – were News International to go ahead and launch one – would mop up all of those readers or ad revenues.

Indeed, while Ford said earlier in the week that it would re-allocate its advertising spend "within and outside News International" – providing a possible advertising boost to rival newspaper group Trinity Mirror – media analyst Doug McCabe of Enders Analysis told Bloomberg it was "perfectly plausible that the money simply disappears for a period of time". Many NOTWreaders may also decide not to migrate to other titles, and simply decide to exit the Sunday reading market entirely.

Status update

Cash-for-gold:A gold vending machine (as in, a machine that vends gold) has been plugged in at London's Westfield centre – for those in the mood for something more than a Twix.

Masculinity for sale:Actor Hugh Laurie (51), famous for playing a dishevelled, misanthropic doctor, is the new face of L'Oréal – it said he was the perfect example of a modern man.

Huffington outpost:US news site the Huffington Posthas launched a UK edition. Founder Arianna Huffington sold the blog-led site to AOL earlier this year for $315 million, but does not pay her bloggers.

It seems strange that there is not a single rating agency coming from Europe

- José Manuel Barroso, European Commission president, takes aim at credit ratings agencies after the Moody’s downgrade of Portugal

$500m

Sum that Zynga, maker of FarmVille and CityVille, will generate for Facebook next year – 10 per cent of Facebook’s total forecast revenue, say analysts GreenCrest