Planet Business

Image of the week: Clown and out

This sad clown is a Mexican circus performer who has taken time out from the ring to protest against a law in Mexico City banning the use of circus animals in big tops.

In June, the city’s government overwhelmingly passed a law that imposes stiff penalties of up to $60,000 on circuses in the Mexican capital that use animals such as lions, camels and horses for entertainment. The circuses have one year to comply with the ruling and claim the ban will spell ruin for their business.

Animal rights advocates say keeping animals in cages is cruel and that circuses should be about human talent. The circuses argue that they are actually the only ones who care about the animals, and also, what about that bull-fighting that’s going on up the road? Photograph: Henry Romero/Reuters

In numbers: iPad slide 13.2m

Number of shiny new iPads shipped by Apple in the second quarter, some 8 per cent fewer than in the same period last year and lower than Wall Street estimates of 14 million.

15%

Percentage of Apple’s revenues accounted for by the tablet, sales of which have fallen short of analysts’ expectations for two quarters in a row. A good thing it has all those mooted new iPhones to fall back on.

12%

Percentage growth expected by research firm IDC in the global tablet market in 2014, far lower than the 52 per cent expansion of the market recorded last year. Tablet sales, noted one analyst, have “hit a wall”.

The lexicon: Blue Note Milano

The Blue Note Milano, based in Milan’s trendy Isola district, is ranked 10th out of 363 “Milan nightlife” options on the travel site TripAdvisor. It is has also become the first jazz club to list its shares on a stock exchange, the Financial Times reported this week.

The club, which has links to the famous Blue Note Jazz Club in New York, is one of a wave of small Italian companies raising funds from private investors on Milan’s small-cap index at a time when banks are holding back on lending as a result of Italy’s financial crisis.

The club listed about 40 per cent of its shares, raising €1.4 million, in a move said to have been planned, and not improvised, by the owners. Expect its share price to go against the beat of the market in unexpected ways.

Getting to know: Dave Lewis

Tesco, having sacked chief executive Philip Clarke, has chosen someone who goes by the nickname "Drastic Dave" to replace him and stem the decline in the performance of the supermarket chain. Dave Lewis (49) is the first non-company man to run Tesco – his two immediate predecessors Terry Leahy and Clarke were both shelf-stackers who worked their way up the company. Lewis, on the other hand, is a marketing man nabbed from household products empire Unilever, where one of his early successes was the 1992 UK launch of its Dove soap brand. Tesco has been suffering because it is being squeezed by competition on price from Aldi and Lidl and competition on quality from, well, almost everyone else. But it still has something left to lose if it turns out that hiring Drastic Dave is a bad idea.

The list: Millionaires on the map

A new study by Wealth Insight, specialists in data about high net worth individuals (HNWI), has helpfully identified which cities in the world have the most millionaires – defined as assets worth more than $1 million – per head of population.

1 Monaco: No surprises as the city state of Monaco takes the crown for the most millionaires per capita – a third of its "residents" are that rich.

2 Zurich: Some 27 per cent of its population are millionaires. The other 73 per cent are seething.

3 Geneva: Another exciting Swiss city makes the cut – almost one in five is a millionaire.

4 New York: One in every 20 inhabitants of the financial capital of the US has a million reasons to love New York.

5 Frankfurt: Edging London into sixth place, the German city has one millionaire for every 30 residents. Incidentally, Aer Lingus flies there.