Other business news in brief
Pay day
For the second year in a row, British Airways chief executive Willie Walsh has said “thanks, but no thanks” to a six-figure bonus. The mathematics on this one are pretty simple: the cost of the bad publicity and resulting industrial relations uproar from accepting such an award would have exceeded the £334,000 that the deferred share award was worth. Walsh can afford the gesture. According to the BA annual report, the former Aer Lingus chief’s salary is frozen at a first-class £735,000, the level it was set at in 2008. Walsh actually received £674,000 last year because he voluntarily gave up a month’s pay in a bid to encourage other staff to do the same.
"He wouldn't be working for me after any of those statements"
- Barack Obama says he would sack Tony “I want my life back” Hayward, after the BP boss thoughtfully noted that the Gulf was “a big ocean”.
STATUS UPDATE
Checking out:Terry Leahy has retired as chief executive of Tesco after building the company into the fourth biggest retailer in the world – and yet there's still no store in Kilkenny.
Starter for Ten:RTÉ has launched a jazzy new showbiz website called RTÉ Ten. For anyone wondering why they skipped a few numbers, the "Ten" stands for The Entertainment Network.
Civic disengagement:A Federal Reserve Bank of New York study has found that business graduates are less likely to volunteer their time for a cause than other graduates.
€1.2bn
The sum BP has spent on cleaning up the Gulf of Mexico spill to date. In an Anglo context, not that much, then.
THE QUESTION
Who are the big commercial winners in the World Cup?
For the next month, the eyes of millions of remote-hogging football fans will be trained on South Africa – or, rather, they will be trained on South Africa via the magic of the new television that they’ll have snapped up in anticipation of the event. British department store chain John Lewis says it sold a television every 30 seconds last week as World Cup fever prompted flatscreen upgrades nationwide. So which other companies will see their bottom line enhanced by all those bums on couches?
All the usual suspects can be found on the official sponsors list: Adidas, Coca-Cola, Emirates, Sony, Visa and Hyundai are the six Fifa “partners”, while a second string of sponsors includes McDonald’s, prompting health campaigners against the sponsorship of sport by junk food vendors to cry foul.
Not being on the list won’t stop SABMiller from seeking a football boost. The company is spending 170 million rand (€18 million) to defend its 90 per cent share of the South African beer market from the competitive ravages of Heineken, Diageo and Anheuser-Busch InBev, which, as one of the official sponsors, has the rights to sell Budweiser to the 200,000 fans pouring into the stadiums.
Among the countless side deals, faded superstar of yesteryear David Beckham has been hired by faded superstar of yesteryear Yahoo as a “brand ambassador”.
