Planet Business

Image of the week: As seen on screen
Charlie, Kirstie, Luna, Felix . . . An employee of Asos in this season's loose casuals arranges photographs of models at the online clothing retailer's headquarters in London.

The publicly-traded Asos has come a long way since its forgotten origins as the home for “as seen on screen” fashion inspired by film and television characters. But the company posted a 22 per cent fall in first-half profit, reflecting its move to invest in its IT infrastructure in a bid to double its sales capacity.

While chief executive Nick Robertson said the company was "still spanking it" in the UK market, its entry into China has proven more difficult than expected, with some items even having to be re-labelled by hand to meet Chinese requirements on washing instructions. Photograph: Suzanne Plunkett/Reuters

In numbers: Coal pit closures
1
Number of coal pits that will be left in Britain, after it was announced that collieries in Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire would close with the loss of 1,300 jobs within 18 months.
30
Years since the miners' strike in Britain. Hatfield Colliery, which featured in the film Brassed Off and is located in Ed Miliband's constituency, will be the last remaining deep pit in the country.
1,000-plus
Number of pits in the UK in the first half of the 20th century. This had fallen to about 200 by the time of the miners' strikes.

The lexicon: Low-flation
"Low-flation", or low inflation, or not-quite-deflation, in the euro zone is putting an already sluggish global economy at risk of "years of sub-par growth", according to International Monetary Fund (IMF) managing director Christine Lagarde.

"More monetary easing, including through unconventional measures is needed," she pointedly said on Wednesday, ahead of yesterday's European Central Bank council meeting, thereby guaranteeing herself a non-physical presence in the room. Official euro zone inflation fell to just 0.5 per cent in February, its lowest since November 2009, and well below the ECB's 2 per cent target. "The risk is that without sufficient policy ambition, the world could fall into a medium-term low growth trap," Lagarde said.

Getting to know: Klaus Nyengaard
Klaus Nyengaard, founder of online takeaway platform Just Eat, describes himself on his Twitter bio as "Chief Whatever – plus father, farmer and fantastically happy". He certainly had good cause to be in a good mood yesterday, when Just Eat made its £1.5 billion stock market debut and saw its 260p shares rise as much as 10 per cent.

A windfall is now winging its way to Nyengaard, who increased the company’s size from just 35 employees in Denmark to an international business with more than a thousand staff. In the year since he stepped down as chief executive, he has been busy investing in start-ups. But he still enjoys a “share of frustration, doubt and risk”, he recently blogged. “Without proper involvement it gets too fluffy, and not at all satisfactory for me personally. If you want the fun and joy, you need to take a bit of pain as well.”