Compiled by Laura Slattery
THE NUMBERS
€166 million
Size of the pretax profit made by Bord Gáis last year. But soaring global energy prices mean consumers will have to pay 17-19 per cent more for gas in October.
4,329
Number of mortgages advanced by Irish lenders to first-time buyers in the first three months of 2008, compared to 7,919 first-time buyer loans issued in the first quarter of last year.
23
Percentage of executives who told a global Ernst & Young corruption survey that someone in their company had been asked to pay a bribe to win or retain business in the last two years.
EUR1,600
Target price of a new car to be made by Renault-Nissan and Indian firm Bajaj. It aims to compete with the Nano car made by Tata Motors, which currently claims to the world's cheapest car.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
"I get the chance to talk to the chairman of the Fed about every six weeks. And I guess he calls me because he'd like to hear the other side of the conversation that he doesn't see in the media every morning when he wakes up, which is, actually, things are fine . . ."
- IBM chief executive Sam Palmisano revels in assuring US Federal Reserve boss Ben Bernanke that the computer company known as Big Blue has had its best two quarters in 25 years.
GOOD WEEK
Godcasting
The Almighty is, it turns out, very keen on social networking, with his disciples spreading the word via the Christian version of YouTube - GodTube. The website, which allows users to watch and rank their favourite faith-based videos, has been blessed with a $30 million (€19.4 million) investment by hedge fund GLG as part of a $150 million fundraising. The site receives about two million believers into its online congregation every month.
Jeffrey Raikes
The 49-year-old Microsoft executive will take over the reins of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the world's largest charitable foundation, after a chat with Ms Gates eased his fears about the personal impact of being exposed to so much human misery. And unlike his predecessor, Patty Stonesifer, who insisted on doing the job for $1 a year, Raikes will take home a salary for his efforts to spend the $37.3 billion (€24 billion) foundation.
BAD WEEK
Spammers
Sanford "Spamford" Wallace and his cohort Walter Rines have been fined a record $230 million (€149 million) by a Californian court for bombarding MySpace users with more than 700,000 advertisements (masked as recommendations from friends) for pornography and gambling websites. The "Spam King" is thought to have made only $500,000 from the spam scam, which will end up costing him almost half the sum that Rupert Murdoch paid for MySpace in 2005.
JetBlue Airways
The US airline is being sued for $2 million (€1.29 million) by a passenger who was asked to give up his seat and "go hang out" in the toilet. Gokhan Mutlu is suing for "extreme humiliation" and "tremendous fear" after he was made to sit in the toilet for three hours of a five-hour flight from San Diego to New York during a bout of turbulence. But did he wipe the wash basin down afterwards?
