LAURA SLATTERYperuses the week in business
The numbers
1.12 billion
– the number of mobile-phone handsets that will be sold in the world this year, according to Nokia. It sounds like a lot, but it's actually down 7 per cent on last year.
15,400
– the number of “green” jobs created in Ireland since June 2007, according to Minister for Energy Eamon Ryan. “If this was a single factory, we would all still be speaking of it,” he said.
$8 billion
– the sum that Citigroup lent to Dubai last December, not long after it had received billions from US taxpayers.
5,000
– the number of bankers in the UK estimated to earn more than £1 million, according to Paul Myners, minister for the City of London.
QUOTES OF THE WEEK
“We all know what is right and wrong and the spirit is as important as the letter. I want to make it clear that in relation to breaches of these policies, I will have zero tolerance.”.
– AIB’s new managing director, Colm Doherty, tells staff there’s no room for any misdemeanours, outrages or scandals in his strategy for “the next 1,000 days”.
"The Romans give people bread and entertainment – they gave them gladiators. Now footballers are the new gladiators."
– Fifa boss Sepp Blatter takes time out from laughing at the FAI to claim that the World Cup will provide emotional support to people hit by the economic downturn (just not in Ireland).
“It is the fruit-bearing tree that becomes the target of [stone] throwers.”
– Dubai is doing just fine, says its ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum.
GOOD WEEK
Nicolas Sarkozy
The French president is very happy following the appointment of his former agriculture minister, Michel Barnier, as Europe’s new internal markets commissioner. The role gives Barnier power over regulatory reform of the financial sector, leading to nervous feet-shifting in the City of London. Sarkozy has blamed “free-wheeling Anglo-Saxon” models of doing banking business for the global economic downturn and claims Barnier’s appointment is a “victory for the European model, which has nothing to do with the excesses of financial capitalism”.
BAD WEEK
Greece
Its finance minister is forecasting a 7 per cent expansion in its economy next year . . . but enough about Zimbabwe. This week it was the turn of Greece to be the subject of the “next Iceland” allegations sometimes directed at Ireland, as a meeting of EU finance ministers discussed the country’s enormous public debt (which is partly the result of hosting the most expensive Olympic Games in history in 2004). Greek prime minister George Papandreou has declared the country to be in “intensive care”.
