BARRY O'HALLORANlooks back at the week in business
Shop talk
American Apparel, purveyor of “no sweatshop” sweaters, is causing its investors to, well, sweat a little. Last week billionaire backer Ron Burkle recently cut his stake in the clothing chain to 4.3 per cent from the 6 per cent he bought last year for $5.9 million, or $1.78 a share. The group’s stock price dropped to $1.12 from about $1.37 earlier in January as a result of the move.
This week, some of its creditors agreed to waive terms of its loans that required earnings before interest, taxes and write-offs to remain above a set level. The group had been in danger of breaching this covenant, which would have triggered automatic repayment of part of its $120 million debt, casting doubt on its ability to continue as a going concern.
Meanwhile, its latest round of ads is drawing accusations of sleaziness. At least one of the investors who must be sweating is founder and chief executive Dov Charney, whose original aim of creating an “ethical” answer to Gap looks to have gone astray.
Commodity watch
BP, which has desperately been trying to shore up its image since the Mexican Gulf oil spill, is facing yet another clash with US authorities. This week it emerged that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission are investigating the company over alleged attempts to manipulate that gas trading market in the US. Both investigations are at an early stage.
The oil company said it had not been engaged in any inappropriate or unlawful activity and it was co-operating with both inquiries.
$100
Oil prices broke this barrier for the first time in two years on the back of fears about the ongoing political turmoil in Egypt
"Were the labour market to deteriorate, a rise in delinquencies in mortgage books could result in higher new capital requirements"- Standard & Poor's analyst Frank Gill, who cut the Republic's credit rating to A-, paints a picture of the ongoing risks to the economy
STATUS UPDATE
Snow fall:Figures released this week showed last December's heavy snow reduced the number of people who went shopping by up to 20 per cent in some centres.
Motoring on:Toyota, which last week recalled 1.7 million cars in the second such incident in a year, topped the Republic's new car sales league last year by selling 3,672 vehicles, a market share of more than 17 per cent.
Green backs:Lots of them will be required if the UK government is to get its stalled green investment bank off the ground. An Ernst & Young report estimates it will need the capacity to lend up to £450 billion.
The Question
For whom should you vote?
Now that the balloon has gone up, you have just three weeks to decide, but the people who actually want your vote don’t look like they’re going to be much help. Employment is top of the centre right parties’ agendas. Fine Gael says it will create about 20,000 jobs, except in politics, where it’s planning some involuntary redundancies. Fianna Fáil wants to preserve jobs, especially those occupied by Fianna Fáil TDs.
Over on the left, Labour says it doesn’t want to tax the rich any more, as the outgoing government managed to do just that by introducing the universal social charge in the budget, which the Labour Party didn’t actually support.
Sinn Féin still wants to tax the rich and plans to burn some senior bondholders while it’s at it.
Meanwhile, Joe Higgins, Richard Boyd Barrett and the United Left Alliance want to smash capitalism. But they’re a bit late, the banks have already done that.
