Will Oprah's Australian jaunt send hordes of tourists down under?

PLANET BUSINESS:Talkshow host Oprah Winfrey, her entourage and 300 of her audience members were flown to Australia this week to film two episodes of her daytime show as part of a bid to boost visitors. It cost tourist authorities AU$3 million. But was the money, and having to endure the inevitable pope-like hype, worth it?

Well, the first thing the billionaire did when she got on a stage erected outside the Sydney "Oprah" House was scream, "I love Australia" to the cameras, swiftly followed by clearcut endorsement "it's so great here . . . and to the rest of the world watching right now, you've got to come to Australia!"

Oh, alright then. The woman credited with helping Barack Obama become president has a proven persuasive effect on people. It helps that her show is broadcast in 145 countries. Tourism Australia estimates that the sight of Oprah and her pack of cheerily middle-aged fans donning grey jumpsuits and attaching themselves to the metal rail on the arch of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, alongside other typical tourist pursuits, will bring about $100 million worth of global marketing exposure. That's not bad considering the size of their outlay.

The best Ireland has been able to muster up in this regard is an episode of NBC's morning programme, The Today Show, which broadcast a show from the Cliffs of Moher in 2007 as part of its Where in the World is Matt Lauerfeature. That show had a US viewership of six million – not to be sniffed at, but sadly just a fraction of Oprah's global viewership. Even more sadly, this is Oprah's swansong series, so the chances of flying her here for some cost-effective advertising are low.

DICTIONARY CORNER: SUPERVENING EVENT

According to Brian Lenihan, the financial difficulties at AIB were “clearly a supervening event which was not contemplated at the time of any agreement in relation to bonus payments”. One dictionary definition of supervening (the non-philosophical one) goes: “to occur as something extraneous, additional or unexpected”. But were the financial difficulties at AIB entirely unexpected in late 2007, the time when the bank now claims it revised its bonus payments policy? The credit crunch had already gripped global markets and Irish property had been heading south for the best part of the year. The bank’s difficulties were already in full flow when AIB’s capital markets division were informed of their bonuses in January 2009. It seems it is the recent public outrage, and not the “financial difficulties” at the bank, that is the “supervening event”.

STATUS UPDATE

2:The percentage of global car sales that are hybrid vehicles, according to industry consultants JD Power.

Magazine accolades:A poll of Timereaders chose Julian Assange as the most influential person of 2010. Timeeditors plumped more conservatively for Mark Zuckerberg.

Sparks will fly:From April, ESB customers will see bills marked "Electric Ireland" – which sounds like a synth-pop compendium – as it rebrands its energy supply business.

Armchair retail:Amazon has a new iPad app that promises to bring "window shopping" to users and make it easier to browse its sites – when they're not being targeted by hacktivists.

PAY DAY

Sticking with bankers and their bonuses, Goldman Sachs chief executive Lloyd Blankfein and his most senior lieutenants are set to collect around $111 million in stock next month in a delayed payoff from last year. Blankfein is set to receive about $24.3 million while president Gary Cohn is poised to collect almost the same amount. The payouts are just a mere portion of the $67.9 million bonus awarded to Blankfein in relation to 2007 and the $66.9 million paid to Cohn. Within a year after these bonuses were approved, Goldman Sachs helped themselves to $10 billion from the US Treasury, converted to a bank and was borrowing as much as $35.4 billion a day from Federal Reserve emergency programmes – AIB can only aspire to such levels.