Planet Business

A roundup from the world of business

Closing bids

IT’S NOT been a good week for artists, what with the Government’s curtailing of the artist’s tax exemption – aka the struggling artist’s lifeline – and Bank of Ireland’s move to flood an already starkly devalued art market. On Wednesday night, while the nation was still devouring the regressive misery inflicted by the four-year plan, the bank raised €1.5 million from the sale of 145 works by Irish artists.

Among the works sold was a Paul Henry (€66,000), a Louis le Brocquy (€50,000) and a Sean Keating self-portrait (€32,000). Protesters outside the auction, run by Adam’s, called the sale “an act of cultural vandalism”. The Royal Hibernian Academy deplored the decision to dispose of “a collection of national importance for minor financial gain” instead of making it available to a wider audience. The bank said the proceeds would be used to support outreach programmes of arts organisations.

Dictionary Corner: ‘euro north’

“THE EURO can’t hold together in its current form, says Simon Maughan of MF Global, a derivatives and foreign exchange dealer presumably advising clients to take a punt (no pun intended) on such an outcome. It’s a view that’s developed sufficiently for names to be given to this two-tier euro zone, with the coins of the rich countries, or creditors, known as “euro north” and those of banjaxed debtor countries as “euro south”.

David Marsh, chairman of investment bankers London and Oxford Capital Markets, describes this as “the birth of two disparate twins” and forecasts the development of monetary, technical and institutional ties between the two groups. Despite our geographic location, Ireland is very much in the “euro south” category – reserved for poor, peripheral nations who messed up their economies and may soon be allowed to devalue their currencies to trade their way out of their chaos.

15– Number of years a person on the newly lowered minimum wage would have to work in order to take home the annual gross salary of Brian Cowen.

Status Update

Prayer power:The Church of England has called for News Corp's bid for full control of BSkyB to be blocked by regulators as it has "potential dangers to the integrity of Sky News".

Rich pickings:Corporate profits earned by US companies were the highest on record in the third quarter, according to government data – and yet still they labour to avoid Irish tax bills.

Productivity attack: Mobile phone game drug Angry Birds is set to transfer to game consoles, with versions for Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii due for a 2011 release. Take (deep) cover.

The Question

Are the bond markets turning their attention to Belgium?

FIRST GREECE, then Ireland. Now Portugal is nearing the critical list and “the big one”, aka Spain, is already being lined up in the chain of euro zone dominos heading for penury. Italy, meanwhile, hovers close to the list. We know all this, but Planet Business admits to being surprised to see the ADHD-suffering bond markets have already set their sights on another conquest: Belgium.

With the cost of financing its national debt reaching 100 per cent of its annual national income, the politically tumultuous, government-free nation is, in the view of an increasing number of bond investors, heading for the same fall as Ireland.

The country’s 10-year bond yields have started to climb ominously, rising to 3.65 per cent as of yesterday morning, raising fears that the European Union host nation is the next in line for the dreaded contagion factor.

While the spread that investors demand to carry Belgian debt rather than the benchmark German bonds is still at a covetable sub-1 per cent level, it may only be a matter of time before the bond markets work out that their political system is even more chaotic than ours. As a result of a split vote in its last general election, Belgium hasn’t had a government since April. This makes it difficult for it to inflict the debt-stabilising austerity measures that are allegedly supposed to appease the market vultures tearing up Europe.

"We all partied"

But some more than others, eh,

Brian Lenihan

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