Planet Business

Compiled by Laura Slattery.

Quote of the Week . . .

"Many investors still believe that the credit crisis is purely a US subprime problem. Nothing could be further from the truth . . . There appears to be a growing global credit pandemic."

- Merrill Lynch's chief investment strategist, Richard Bernstein, cannot be accused of underplaying the worsening symptoms being displayed by the world's money markets. But if there is a "pandemic" on the way, who's got the vaccine?

The Numbers . . .

€4.9 billion -The unprecedented loss to French bank Société Générale after futures hedger Jerome Kerviel set a new benchmark for rogue traders, dwarfing previous frauds by AIB's John Rusnak ($691 million) and Barings Bank's Nick Leeson (£827 million) and overshadowing the bank's €2 billion credit-crunch writedown.

7.3 million -The number of digital downloads of the song Girlfriend, a bluntly fun cheerleading chant by Canadian songstress Avril Lavigne, which was the most popular global music download of 2007 - a year in which digital music sales surged 40 per cent, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry.

Good Week . .

Rolling newsFrom the frantic overnight trading in Asia to the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange, the week of plummets, plunges, surges and rallies on world stock markets was slavishly documented by 24-hour news channels, which bamboozled viewers with wildly zig-zagging performance graphs, frequent mentions of the 1929 Wall Street crash and permanent FTSE tickers in the corner of the screen.

NokiaThe Finnish mobile-phone maker rang in 2008 with a 44 per cent increase in profits in the fourth quarter and now has a market share that is bigger than that of its three closest rivals - Motorola, Samsung and Sony Ericsson - put together. Nokia shipped 133 million phones in the last three months of 2007 and says publicity for Apple's iPhone (sales of four million since June) has sparked interest in its advanced "converged" phones.

Bad Week . . .

The Federal ReserveThe US central bank's biggest cut in interest rates in 23 years on Tuesday didn't stop the Dow Jones index from closing down 1 per cent on the day or silence recession-forecasting analysts, while billionaire investor George Soros helpfully weighed in from the World Economic Forum in Davos to accuse the Fed of being "well behind the curve" and its former chairman, Alan Greenspan, of mismanaging the US economy.

StarbucksThe great caffeine clash between the gingerbread latte-selling baristas at Starbucks and the coffee-peddling upstarts at McDonald's has generated some fresh vocabulary for coffee drinkers to stumble over. The cafe chain is desperately piloting $1 (€0.68) eight-ounce "short" coffees in its Seattle stores in a bid to fend off a share price-shaking challenge by the world's biggest restaurant company.