Planet Business

Image of the week: Well-oiled campaign

UK business minister Jo Swinson (who is standing for re-election for the Liberal Democrats) and Miriam González Durántez (centre, the wife of Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg) appear to share a joke with an employee of Scottoiler, a motorcycle chain lubricant manufacturer in Milngavie, Scotland. As part of their campaign trail duties, Swinson and González Durántez – whom the right-wing British press insists on calling "Mrs Clegg" – have launched a plan to create opportunities for women, with one key element being the creation of a "Dad revolution". Mr Clegg's party has already pushed through a shared parental leave policy, and now the Lib Dem manifesto proposes tripling paid paternity leave to six weeks. How much paid paternity leave exists under Irish employment law? Oh, that would be zero days. (Photograph: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

In numbers: Ikea Ireland

2.4 million

Number of trips taken by Irish consumers to Ikea’s store in Ballymun last year. This worked out as about 100,000 more ventures under its roof than in 2013.

€7.1 million

The pretax profit at Ikea Ireland Ltd in 2014, up 22 per cent on the year before, as business truly was “wonderful every day” for the Swedish purveyor of furniture and meatballs.

€113 million

Sum spent on goods in this sole store last year, up 8 per cent on 2013, as more consumers decided it was no longer good enough just to buy the serviettes. You absolutely must get the special serviette holder too.

The lexicon: Paperless cockpits

The paperless cockpit is much like the paperless office, work-life balance and voice-recognition software. It's a nice idea, and congratulations if you can make it work. This week, American Airlines discovered the downside of the paperless cockpits it introduced in 2013 when a faulty app on its pilots' iPads forced it to ground dozens of its jets. The glitch meant pilots and co-pilots preparing for take-off were unable to view their flight plans – at least, not until the app-maker, Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen, told them how to solve the problem. Its advice was to uninstall and reinstall the app, a version of the old "turn it off and turn it on again" solution. Does this work mid-air too?

Getting to know: Mike Coupe

In 2004, Mike Coupe went to work for British grocery chain Sainsbury’s as its trading director and 10 years later he became its chief executive. Supermarket champagne all round. When he got the top job, he’s unlikely to have foreseen that months later a Giza court would summarily convict him and sentence him to two years in jail for an alleged criminal breach of trust – not least because the charge relates to Sainsbury’s failed foray into Egypt in 1999-2001, before he had even joined the company. Sainsbury’s says the allegations are “baseless” and, last Sunday, Coupe took the risk of travelling to Egypt for a hearing to appeal, in a move the Times said was orchestrated by the British ambassador and involved weeks of careful negotiations to ensure Coupe could get in and out of the country without being arrested. Groceries can be perilous.

The list: Early earnings leaks

Twitter’s corporate earnings leak this week proved costly. Its figures were bad, and their premature availability before the US stock market closed on Tuesday caused its shares to tank even more than they would have had the figures been released, as is normal, after the bell. It was a veritable Twittershambles. But it’s not the first leak, and it won’t be the last.

1 Microsoft Selerity, the analysis firm that found Twitter's numbers ahead of time by crawling its investors relations page, previously did something similar to Microsoft.

2 Disney What kind of Mickey Mouse operation would put worse-than-expected results on its website too early, allowing it to be picked up by Bloomberg half an hour before markets close?

3 NetApp Bloomberg flashed its numbers and guidance one hour before the bell, saying it had found them posted on the site “without any required password or firewall”.

4 Transocean The offshore drilling company’s earnings report, uploaded with undue haste, was also discovered early by Bloomberg, which, to be fair, doesn’t make a secret of its interest in this kind of thing.

5 Google Its earnings leaked early in October 2012 – with the heading “pending Larry quote”. They, too, were pretty rubbish numbers. No one waited to see what Larry (Page) had to say.