LAURA SLATTERYlooks back at the week in business
Dictionary corner: Fatigue cracking
Fatigue cracks do what they say on their rapidly rusting tins. Unfortunately, the tins in question otherwise go by the name of Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engines. This was almost very unfortunate for the passengers on the Qantas Airbus A380 passenger jet whose engine exploded last month.
And its set to prove rather unfortunate for Rolls-Royce, against which Qantas has begun legal action (as a back-up should a settlement not be reached, it said). Australian air safety investigators found that a misaligned component in the engine thinned the wall of an oil pipe, causing fatigue crack “initiation and growth”, which led to a leakage and ultimately fire. Qantas says there is no immediate risk to its other engines.
Shop talk
Nothing says Christmas quite like the mistreatment of animals, and so it was that toy store Hamleys announced plans to import live penguins into its London Regent Street store, attracting the anger of animal welfare groups. The penguins were scheduled to be used as living toys at a festive promotion event until Hamleys finally cancelled it yesterday. The toy store said the penguins, which were allegedly used to human contact, were all about the magic of Christmas for many children who otherwise may never get to see these animals at close quarters. The protest placards would have read more harshly.
Status update:
Watch again: A global version of the BBC's catch-up service iPlayer will be available through an iPad subscription from mid-2011.
Cable guys: Bank of England governor Mervyn King told the US ambassador to Britain that David Cameron and George Osborne lacked depth, Wikileaks reveal.
Royal getaway:UK authorities are to close their investigations into Royal Bank of Scotland without taking action against its former directors.
€1,600
Price of the 50g miniature gold bars, which a French gold supplier recommends as the perfect stocking filler for a child.
"We are constantly looking for holes. And when we find holes we are going to tell people about the holes."
– Central Bank governor Patrick Honohan promises a new era of transparency
What is a fair maximum wage?
Suggestions that the pay of top executives should be capped relative to the wages of their most junior underlings tend to be met with fierce resistance by “let the market decide” advocates, even when the multiples mentioned still seem generous. To wit, the recommendation of British think tank the Work Foundation, headed by economist Will Hutton, which is backing the idea of a 20:1 maximum pay multiple in the UK public sector. This seems like a rather modest proposal, especially given the ratio currently only rises as high as 19:1. In Ireland, the ratio between the Taoiseachs gross salary of €228,000 and the proposed new level of the minimum wage is roughly 15:1. At the Work Foundation itself, the ratio is in single digits. All of this pales in comparison with the pay of private sector executives – in 2008, then Tesco boss Sir Terry Leahy was paid more than 900 times the retailers average wage. Supporters of calls for a high pay commission say that rather than focusing on getting the best people at the top, companies should be looking to get the best people at the bottom. The idea that the best people at the top might be motivated by something other than money is rarely discussed.
