Planet business

By LAURA SLATTERY

Is Mary Byrne the best advertisement for a supermarket?

In the battle against Lidl, Aldi and the rest of their respective rivals in Ireland and the UK, the mighty Tesco has achieved something of a coup via the lungs of Tesco Mary. While the likes of Ikea, Yeo Valley and other try-hard consumer brands produce themed spots for The X Factor's relief-inducing advert breaks, Tesco has little need for such expenditure given that one of its staff has made the live finals.

Indeed, one wonders why Tesco ever bothered with such prosaic concerns as supermarket price wars when it had Dublin's Mary Byrne ready and waiting for her transition from the checkouts to the stores' welcome posters. Byrne's rendition of Man's World, complete with hand gestures as authoritative as her voice, symbolises Tesco's marketing prowess better than any special offer. That is unless she gets voted out this weekend. Nobody remembers the early exits.

Court date

Citigroup, the US bank which last week was ordered to pay Dallas actor Larry Hagman $11.5 million (€8.2 million) in damages for breach of contract, is limbering up for a legal showdown in New York next week with Guy Hands, boss of private equity group Terra Firma. It’s suing Citigroup for a staggering £7 billion (€7.9 billion) for allegedly tricking it into buying music label EMI in 2007 by using that age-old real estate agent trick: there’s another buyer on line two.

Pay day

Bonus culture is thriving unfettered on Wall Street to pretty much the same extent as before the global financial crisis, which is why it still generates headlines when a bank – in this case, Swiss bank UBS – declares that bonuses are inherently bad for business. In a new report, UBS said it was the payment of bonuses that encouraged risk-taking and was partly to blame for the crisis that nearly bankrupted it. Next week: politicians admit power corrupts.

Status update

Stalemate profits:Ladbrokes says its third-quarter numbers were boosted by the high number of Premier League draws (37 per cent versus historical average of 24 per cent).

Gap backtrack:The retailer claims it is dumping its alleged plan for a new logo after "recognising" that customers were "passionate" about their original blue box branding.

Red for redundancy:Employees of UK telecoms firm Everything Everywhere were told whether or not their jobs were safe at mass meetings via a "traffic light" code system.

QUOTE:"I started working at 17 and now I'm 50, after 33 years I'm starting to get really fed up with it" - a French striker tells AFP how he lasted 33 years before starting to get fed up with work.

€ 1 million– sum raised through the auction of a large collection of luxury teddy bears that were owned by disgraced hedge fund manager Paul Greenwood.