Planet Business

Laura Slatterywith a sideways look business this week.

BAD WEEK

Tom Hicks:Unloved by fans, loathed by his business partner and now cruelly rejected by hedge-fund managers, the Texan co-owner of Liverpool FC is finding that the credit squeeze is as tight as the Manchester United defence. Time is now running out on Hicks's ambition to raise the cash he needs to buy out co-chairman George Gillett (who sits in a strictly separate row of the directors' box) and build a new 70,000-seat stadium.

Airlines

Oil prices are racing past $120 a barrel. Load factors - the number of seats filled on each aircraft - are falling at Ryanair, Aer Lingus and British Airways. EasyJet's losses have trebled. Airbus A380 superjumbos languish in hangars due to wiring problems. The biofuels backlash has whipped Virgin's tail. Business class airlines are going bust. But, hey, at least airlines can drum up some extra cash from higher passenger fees.

GOODWEEK

Disney:A perky 22 per cent rise in profits has given the Walt Disney Company a happy ending, one week after it became embroiled in a row with Vanity Fair. Disney accused the magazine, which photographed wholesome child star Miley Cyrus wearing nothing but tousled hair and a crumpled bed sheet, of "deliberately manipulating a 15-year-old" - a 15-year-old who is the face of its own $1 billion Hannah Montanafranchise.

Asthma sufferers

The Asthma Society of Ireland (ASI) will hoover up the proceeds of vacuum cleaner sales, as Dyson, everyone's favourite maker of bagless household dust-busting machines, marked Tuesday's World Asthma Day by saying it would make a donation for every Dyson DC19 and DC22 Allergy cleaner sold in May. Dyson says the air emitted from its cleaners has 150 times less bacteria, mould and allergens than a room's ambient air.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"Oil is highly unpredicatble and ther are a wide range of predictions from so-called experts"- EasyJet chief executive Andy Harrison covers his ears at the mention of a $200 a barrel super spike in the price of oil.

THE NUMBERS

1- the percentage of wealth among the ranks of Ireland's ultra-rich that is inherited, compared to a global average of 18 per cent.

450- the number of "super-rich" individuals in Ireland with assets, excluding their main home, of more than €10 million, according to Investec and DKM.