A business roundup
The numbers
2,717
– The height in feet of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the world’s tallest building, which opened on Monday. The rocket- shaped tower was formerly known as the Burj Dubai, but was renamed in honour of the president of neighbouring Abu Dhabi.
$10 billion
– The size of the bailout recently provided by Abu Dhabi and its president Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahyan to the economically volatile Dubai.
Quotes of the Week
"On some level it's quite peurile, it's almost childish."
– John Fingleton, the Irish head of the UK Office of Fair Trading, gives his take on Ryanair’s booking charges tactics.
"Ryanair is not for the overpaid John Fingleton's of this world, but for the everyday Joe Bloggs."
- The airline's Stephen McNamara responds, in an exchange referred to as the "fighting Irish" by the Financial Times
"I presided over the worst deal of the century."
– Nothing to do with Ryanair’s baggage charges, but Jerry Levin, the former boss of Time Warner, giving an impromptu mea culpa for his acquisition of AOL at the peak of the dotcom bubble in 2000.
GOOD WEEK
Iceland
In the political equivalent of two fingers to the global financial system, Icelandic president Olafur Ragnar Grimsson has blocked a deal to compensate the British and Dutch governments for coming to the aid of savers in Icelandic’s bust banks. The Icelandic public, understandably eager not to bear the brunt for the banking sector, staged large demonstrations against the £2.3 billion deal, which would have saddled each person in Iceland with the equivalent of £11,000 of debt. Banking analysts were unimpressed, while credit rating agencies Fitch and Standard Poor’s also took a negative view, which only reinforced the feeling in Iceland that Grimsson’s political intervention was the right one.
3DTV
Get ready to tear your “HD-ready” plasma screen TVs off the wall and on to the scrapheap and get prepared for “3D-ready” sets instead. Manufacturers were falling over themselves at this week’s International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas to announce the future unleashing of sets capable of recreating the Avatar experience at home in your sitting room. However, the first 3D TV sets are likely to cost thousands of euros, with little 3D content available to watch except James Cameron’s floating dragonfly epic and a handful of other big budget movies – and not even the chance of enjoying the sight of rows of strangers wearing spookily retro 3D glasses to justify the expense.
BAD WEEK
Productivity
As if workers weren’t feeling sluggish enough after the January break, along came the worst cold snap in 30 years to ensure that most of the first working week of 2010 was spent suffering the effects of the weather or comparing stories about suffering the effects of the weather. As 3pm became the new 6pm for car-commuting Dublin office workers and skating became the new mode of transport for bus users, phone calls went straight to message minders, spreadsheets remained unfilled and meetings were cancelled due to lack of attendees. According to the Dublin Chamber of Commerce, every hour of a working day that is lost costs about €40 million to the Dublin economy in terms of lost productivity. Ah, but doesn’t it look so pretty?
