Planet Business

LAURA SLATTERYrounds up the week in business

Dictionary corner: 'Likejacking'

Ah, the Facebook “like” button. So deceptively benign, so charmingly supportive. So many “where’s the dislike button?” jokes. Now internet security firm Sophos has warned Facebook users about a “likejacking” scam that sends spam to all of their friends on the site. In a “likejacking” incident, Facebook users receive a message such as “this man takes a picture of himself EVERY DAY for 8 YEARS!!”. If Facebookers desperate to see all 2,922 photographs click on the link, it sends the message to their news feeds with a “like” recommendation, encouraging all of their friends to click on the link and perpetuate the spam. Sounds similar to the rest of your news feed? It’s completely different. These are fake “likes”.

50,000:the number of Dutch pigs that had to be destroyed after pharma giant Wyeth illegally exported waste water from its Newbridge plant. It pleaded guilty this week.

"Foxconn is not a sweatshop"

Apple boss Steve Jobs defends conditions at the factories of its China-based contractor, Foxconn, where 10 employees have taken their own lives.

Shop talk

Inditex is the world’s largest fashion retailer. So when the Spanish-owned company makes forays into new territories, it’s likely to be the advance party for a whole fleet of colonising retailers with ambitions to lighten millions of pockets at a time when consumers in Europe are just that bit useless. Inditex has opened its first outlet in India, launching an outlet of its brand Zara in Delhi in conjunction with Indian conglomerate Tata Group, which seems to sell everything. A second Delhi shop and an outlet in Mumbai are due to follow within weeks, so soon all of India will be able to enjoy the delights of blouses that gape at the front and billow out at the back.

Status update

Hair today: L'Oréal's shampoo ad starring Cheryl Cole has been cleared by advertising authorities despite the fact that Coles hair "got its mojo back" from hair extensions.

No shining armour: The Red Knights consortium has shelved its plans to take over Manchester United, but says it will attempt a future purchase at a "sensible price".

King of the sea: After BP's "top kill" plan failed, Washington called in the big guns: Hollywood royalty James Cameron. The Titanicdirector is an expert in all things underwater.

What's next for oil prices?

Such is the dispiriting scale of the environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, it seems churlishly consumerist to turn one’s attention to the price of the stuff that’s causing all the problems. However, with crude oil prices not long out of a spike which saw prices per barrel peak at almost $150 in July 2008 and the European Central Bank given to occasional dark mutterings about inflationary dangers, you don’t have to be a heartless gas-guzzler to be affected if there’s another surge on the blackened horizon.

The most recent 2011 forecasts range from an average of below $70 to $85 per barrel.

Ryanair is one company where success is predicated on making the right call. The airline, which expects to pay €300 million more for fuel this year than last, has hedged 90 per cent of its fuel requirements for this year at roughly $73 per barrel and 20 per cent of its requirements in the year to March 2012 at a couple of dollars more. Based on current oil prices, this sounds like a comfortably stable outlook, but get it wrong and that’s its profit margin wiped out.