Planet Business

The week's business in brief

THE NUMBERS

€97 million– proposed savings at Aer Lingus as a result of its plan to cut 676 jobs from its workforce of 3,900.

€1,058– record high price reached by gold yesterday, as investors turned to the precious metal as a safe haven from a weak dollar.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"I am very uncomfortable with a government with such minority support making such a decision."- Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz wades into the Nama debate during a speech at Trinity College Dublin.

GOOD WEEK

Hedge funds

Branded “bank robbers and asset strippers” by the archbishop of York just a year ago, it is fair to say that the money-siphoning shortsellers known as “hedgies” have had their critics. But the good folk in the Church of England have found it in their hearts to forgive fund managers for making so much money. Church commissioners have written to the House of Lords to signal their “serious concerns” about new plans for hedge-fund regulation, which they say will restrict their ability to raise funds “to pursue our charitable missions” and reduce “our impact for public good”.

IBM

Apart from a spot of bother with a fresh US anti-trust inquiry into its monopoly of the mainframe computer market, this is an exciting time for Big Blue. Its next target is nothing less ambitious than the human genome: the computing giant has entered the global race to drive down the cost of gene sequencing, a development that has the potential to usher in an era of personalised medicine, where tailored genomic medicine offers improved diagnosis and treatments. At the moment, the (currently incomplete) sequencing of a single individual’s genetic code costs up to $50,000 (€34,000). IBM thinks it will eventually be able to do it for $100.

BAD WEEK

Ticketmaster

Britain’s competition commission has made a provisional ruling against the merger of concert-ticket seller Ticketmaster and concert promoter Live Nation (home to U2, Coldplay and Madonna), saying the planned marriage between the two companies would lead to higher prices for live music tickets and less competition. And you thought those handling fees couldn’t get any higher. Ticketmaster has responded by saying live music is now the driving force behind the music industry (not sure how this lessens competition concerns) and the merger “achieves an important and much-needed public interest”.