A round-up of the week in business...
BAD WEEK
Pinstripe chic
Suits, ties and briefcases will all go distinctly out of fashion in the City of London next week as groups acting under the umbrella name G20 Meltdown will hold what their Facebook site says will be “a jolly English protest” on April 1st – rechristened “Financial Fools’ Day”. Financial district employers have told staff to take a no-uniform day in order to avoid becoming targets of protestors who feel less than jolly about a culture of inequality, bonuses and bailouts.
UK government borrowing
The UK’s debt management office was spurned by unimpressed investors after its offer of £1.75 billion worth of gilts failed to find takers, casting doubt on the UK government’s ability to borrow the billions it needs to lift its economy out of recession. Authorities blamed the rejection on the fact that the gilts weren’t due to mature for 40 years and they did manage to shift some shorter-term gilts, but the embarrassment may not be the last to be suffered by debt-seeking governments across Europe.
GOOD WEEK
Bentley
No luck with ladies? Snap up a Bentley and your fortunes will improve, according to researchers from the University of Wales Institute in Cardiff. After showing women a picture of the same man sitting in two cars – a £70,000 silver Bentley Continental and a battered Ford Fiesta – Bentley man unsurprisingly proved the most popular. Next up, the researchers plan to examine something infinitely more useful: whether middle-aged men can offset “the attractiveness-diminishing effects of age” in the eyes of women by buying high-status items.
Tax avoidance
Sometimes you’ve got to ask yourself if it’s really worth going to the trouble of avoiding tax. Take the example of Gerry McCaughey and three other shareholders in Century Homes. In 2005, when the company was bought by Kingspan, they transferred their shares to their wives who sold them on. But to avoid paying the 20 per cent capital gains tax they had to become tax exiles in Italy of all places. This meant they had to spend 183 days in the southern European peninsula, snap up some Italian investments and even buy an Italian car. Tuscany or tax? Tough call.
THE NUMBERS
€3.5 billion
Estimated sum that the world’s airlines will lose in 2009, according to the International Air Transport Association. So nothing a few “discretionary charges” won’t sort out then.
15
Number of the top 20 bonus recipients/economic saboteurs at AIG who caved to public pressure amid threats to their personal safety and returned their cheques.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
"This amounts to robbery of the American people".
Economist Joseph Stiglitz believes the US government’s plan to buy $1 trillion of toxic assets will backfire, leading to cripplingly high taxes for a generation of Americans.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK 2
"It feels like a real car. It does not feel like a golf cart".
Hormazd Sorabjee, editor of Autocar India magazine, sounds a touch defensive as he reviews the Tata Nano, the Indian car company’s new super-cheap four-wheeler.
