Planet Business

LAURA SLATTERYlooks back at the week in business

The Numbers

230:

– number of compulsory redundancies sought by Aer Lingus. The airline insisted there would be no “sweetheart deals” for cabin crew.

€81 million

– operating loss at Aer Lingus in 2009, quadruple the level of losses in the previous year, according to a trading statement.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"As long as women rather than men take time off work to provide care, there will always be employers who perceive women as less committed to their career than men."

– The OECD’s head of social policy, Monika Queisser, on the effect of men’s failure to take up parental leave opportunities.

GOOD WEEK

Annie Leibovitz

The celebrity photographer was on the cusp of having to give up the rights to her entire career of photographs – including pictures of John Lennon with Yoko Ono and the iconic Vanity Faircover shot of a pregnant Demi Moore – as well as her three Greenwich Village townhouses after she used them as security on loans on which she later defaulted. However, private equity firm Colony Capital came to the rescue, providing the loans that will help her refinance her existing $24 million (€18 million) in debts and keep ownership of some 100,000 photos and one million negatives.

Legoland

When the going gets tough, the tough get going to Legoland, apparently, as the company behind the theme park – Merlin Entertainments – has declared that it is planning new Legolands for Manchester, Dallas, Florida and Malaysia. Merlin, which also owns Madame Tussauds and the London Eye, saw visitors to its global tourist attractions increase 10 per cent last year, as recession proved no barrier to family fun.

BAD WEEK

Leaky washing machines

Say goodbye to kitchen-floor wet patches as a UK company called Xeros has invented a so-called “waterless” washing machine that, while not quite waterless in the literal sense, uses up to 90 per cent less water than a conventional machine. The “dry” cleaning device, which uses tiny nylon beads to suck up stains, will be available to buy for household use from the end of 2011.

Speculators

Watch out shady speculators, Angela Merkel is on your case. The German chancellor says “quick action” is needed to deal with financial speculators in the credit default swap market who are making it more expensive for Greece to borrow funds. European Commission president José Manual Barroso has hinted the EU will look at banning “purely speculative” sales on sovereign debt credit default swaps. The prime minister of Greece compared speculators to arsonists.