Planet Business

A roundup from the world of business

4,000 – number of jobs that will be created by the Government’s plan to install water meters in 1.1 million homes.

STATUS UPDATE:

Onion news:

A US financial reform Bill promising stricter supervision of financial derivatives has upheld a 52-year law banning bets on the future direction of onion prices.

No, Mr Bond:

MGM has suspended production of the new James Bond film “indefinitely” due to ongoing uncertainty about the future of the debt-laden studio.

Game, set, million:

The winners of the singles titles at Wimbledon will earn a record £1 million, as the All England Club boosted prize money.

Can regulators bring Goldman Sachs – aka the “giant vampire squid” – to account?

Rolling Stonejournalist Matt Taibbi memorably wrote that investment bank Goldman Sachs was "a giant vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money". Now it appears the vampire squid has been just that little bit too relentless.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has accused the bank of defrauding investors by not declaring conflicts of interest in the selling of subprime products. Goldman rejects this as wrong “in fact and law”, but the US regulator’s move has encouraged Angela Merkel and Gordon Brown to moot similar investigations.

While proving illegality is likely to take every ounce of the SEC's might, Vanity Fairwriter Michael Lewis believes regulators have "launched what amounts to a culture war" on Wall Street.

However, regulators need to cut off the money supply as well as getting the mud to stick. Goldman’s latest bonus-tastic profit announcement suggests destroying the vampire squid won’t be easy.

Dictionary corner

A “fat tax” used to be a processed food levy proposed semi-regularly by politicians jumping with both feet onto the anti-obesity bandwagon. The new Fat tax targets the banks and its one that should prove more digestible to the electorate at large.

Disappointingly, the Fat tax proposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is not an official reference to “fat cats” but the tasty acronym for “financial activities tax”. Anti-poverty campaigners are disappointed that it will be based on the profits and pay structure of the firms, rather than operating as a levy on every financial transaction. For its part, the banking sector has warned darkly of “consequences”.

Shop talk

The mighty Tesco machine has been on the attack and this time its target is the gloriously large array of items known collectively as “non-food”. Publishing its annual results, Tesco paused to note that it had made “significant market share gains” in non-food, “as some competitors have felt the strain”. Take, for example, games. Tesco reported that its market share in games has doubled in the last year “as a result of allocating it more space in store, revamping the range and layout and being more competitive on new releases”. On the receiving end of this price-cutting strategy are pure videogame retailers such as Game Group, which under the “strain” of supermarkets’ advances has announced the departure of its chief executive and a 28 per cent drop in profits.

If a plane crashed in Irish airspace I'm sure I'd be here in this House trying to explain myself.

- Minister for Transport Noel Dempsey rejects claims that authorities overreacted to the volcanic ash cloud