Image of the week: Hard Times Tavern
Bitter about the budget? Water charges leaving a nasty taste in your mouth? A drink or several at the Hard Times Tavern would surely provide some solace, save for the fact that it's located in Ford Gay, West Virginia, in the US, where towns along what's known as the King Coal Highway have been suffering due to a slowdown in coal production. One part of the problem is that the region's coal appears to be simply running out, but stricter environmental controls and the available supply of natural gas have also hit West Virginia's coal country hard, prompting painful waves of job losses and business closures. Photograph:Robert Galbraith/Reuters
In numbers: Hawaiian retreat
$100m
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has reportedly paid this much for about 700 acres of land on Kauai, the fourth largest of the Hawaiian islands. The land naturally includes a stretch of white sand beach.
$33bn
Zuckerberg's estimated net worth, according to Forbes magazine, making it unlikely that he needed to save a deposit for his Hawaiian purchase.
$600m
In keeping with his relatively “modest” persona, Zuckerberg’s alleged outlay is only a sixth of the price that Oracle chairman Larry Ellison shelled out for the whole of Lanai, Hawaii’s sixth-largest island.
The lexicon: Glamburger
Proof that there is a something of a bubble in the gourmet burger market has arrived in the form of the “Glamburger”, which is like a hamburger except it costs £1,100 (€1,400), in part because it is garnished with a gold leaf. Made from New Zealand venison and wagyu beef, it has a black truffle Brie centre and is topped with Iranian saffron (not cheap), grated Italian white truffle (getting quite expensive now) and Beluga caviar from Russia (oligarch prices). All of the ingredients, seasonings and garnishes are too long to list, and the calorie count is even more swollen at 2,600, so if you happen to be wandering by the Honky Tonk restaurant in Chelsea, London, make sure you’re not on a diet.
Getting to know: Godfrey Davis
Godfrey Davis (65) is the man currently running British luxury leather goods group Mulberry, having switched from a non-executive chairman role into the hotseat in March when former boss Bruce Guillon was despatched like an out-of-season handbag. This is Davis's second stint in charge and so far it's been rough, with Mulberry shares tanking on Tuesday in response to a profit warning. Davis's turnaround plan involves making the company's products more affordable, which in the world of luxury brands means selling bags at a starting point of £500 rather than £900. Davis, once described by the Financial Times as a "low-key accountant", believes it is a "grave mistake for luxury brands to think all their customers are super-rich". But they're not exactly drinking at the Hard Times Tavern, either.
The list: Berkshire’s brands
Billionaire Warren Buffett is in the process of turning his investment holdings company Berkshire Hathaway into something of a consumer brand in its own right. But he has always had a keen respect for the power of the household brand, judging from these Berkshire stakes.
1 Coca-Cola
Berkshire Hathaway owns 9.1 per cent of the soft drinks giant, now busy formulating new products to satisfy the anti-obesity lobby.
2 Procter & Gamble
A near 2 per cent stake in the consumer goods group gives Buffett an interest in household essentials from Pampers to Gillette.
3 IBM
Buffett ignored "Big Blue" for most of its history, but Berkshire now has 6.3 per cent holding in IBM, having increased its stake earlier this year.
4 American Express
Buffett likes the card payments company so much Berkshire owns 14.2 per cent of it. He got in low and early – in 1963, to be precise – soon after an event intriguingly known as the “Salad Oil Scandal”.
5 Tesco
Berkshire has a 3.7 per cent stake in the struggling UK supermarket. Either no one’s perfect, or Buffett knows something everyone else doesn’t.
