Planet Business Battles of the Year

Alcoa vs Erin Brockovich:Hollywood loves a sequel. So Australian aluminium giant Alcoa won't have been best pleased when Erin Brockovich, the legal clerk cum class action litigator immortalised on film by Julia Roberts, showed up in Sydney in August.

Brockovich said she would examine the merits of a class action suit on behalf of 160 residents of Yarloop, South Australia, who believe an outbreak of nosebleeds, nausea and skin rashes in the town is the result of emissions from Alcoa's nearby refinery.

Mining is a "dirty, dirty business", Brockovich declared - a line that seems destined to make it into the final script.

 S&N vs Carlsberg

It hasn't quite got to the macho fisticuffs stage yet between Scottish & Newcastle and its unwanted suitors, Carlsberg and Heineken, but things got a little tense in November when S&N chief John Dunsmore accused Carlsberg of coming "in through the toilet window" by making a takeover approach, while Carlsberg chief Jorgen Buhl Rasmussen hit back that it had "chosen not to be extremely emotional" as the "less professional" S&N had done. But Carlsberg and Heineken will have to pass the bouncer on the front door soon, as they must either make a formal offer for S&N or a discreet exit by January 21st.

The Bancroft Family vs itself

They say all family businesses implode in the end. The Bancroft dynasty, which has controlled the Wall Street Journal since 1902, proved to be its own worst enemy this year, with familial feuding leaving it vulnerable to the preying attentions of Rupert Murdoch. The family's younger generation were tired of being treated like children by the older generation and resentful about their share of the income from family holdings in parent company Dow Jones. They rebelled by cashing in. Murdoch deftly played the family politics to his advantage and eventually bought the Journal publisher for a cool $5 billion.