LAURA SLATTERYlooks back at the week in business
Court date
THE LONGEST-RUNNING tantrum in Toytown has once again rolled into a Californian court. It is the return of the seven-year “doll wars” between Mattel and its rival, MGA Entertainment.
Mattel initially won its case against MGA, winning the rights to revenues from the sale of MGA’s Bratz dolls by claiming designer Carter Bryant was its employee when he came up with the idea for the pouty-lipped stiletto-wearers. This was overthrown on appeal and both firms are now back for a repeat trial – only this time Mattel has accused MGA of stealing trade secrets when it recruited Bryant and MGA has counter-claims of its own. Bratz dolls have waned in popularity, making this particular plastic intellectual property a less valuable cash cow, whoever wins. Barbie’s affairs were never this complicated.
Shop talk
While more established retailers saw their sales trends sunk by heavy snow, shares in Supergroup, the firm behind the youthful Superdry label and Cult outlets, jumped this week after the firm reported its “best ever” Christmas trading.
Shareholders in the company, founded by Julian Dunkerton in 1985, will be glad that the chain believes it has “largely mitigated the rise in cotton prices”, although fans of its branded hoodies should note that this has partly been achieved through “selected price increases”.
Unencumbered by private equity debt, the retailer made a successful flotation on the London Stock Exchange last year, while Dunkerton, who started out selling T-shirts on a market stall, also holds the honour of being the biggest UK-born riser in the 2010 Sunday Timesrich list.
He’s valued at £180 million (€214 million).
AU$13 bn– the estimated reduction in Australian gross domestic product as a result of the Queensland floods (about €9.9 billion).
"If you lose your job because of your age and not because you can't do it, it's a disgrace; it shouldn't be happening"
Miriam O'Reilly, ex- Countryfilepresenter, speaks after an employment tribunal ruled the BBC had been guilty of age discrimination when it let her go.
STATUS UPDATE
23rd time lucky:A new Bond film – the 23rd in the series – has got the green light again. Work on the film was suspended last year after makers MGM ran into financial hot water.
Anti-social behaviour:Some 47 per cent of the workforce at social networking site of yesteryear MySpace will lose their jobs, as the site slowly fades into internet history.
Sleek return: Curtis Jackson, aka the rapper 50 Cent, saw the share price of HH Imports soar after he plugged the penny stock, in which he owns a part-share, on Twitter.
THE QUESTION
Will smoking disappear by 2050?
IN A report that offers little relief for tobacco companies, nicotine patchmakers and VAT-raising governments alike, analysts at Citigroup say the declining percentage of smokers across the developed world is pointing to one fate: “By 2050, many important tobacco markets will have gone to zero smoking,” they noted, as they downgraded their ratings on Imperial Tobacco, British American Tobacco and Philip Morris International to “hold” from “buy”.
The Citi analysts cited smoking rates that “appear to be falling in a series of straight lines” since the 1960s and said it was “hard to ignore 50 years of data”. Tobacco companies may continue to see decent earnings growth for many years as a result of price increases, while the advent of generic packaging on cigarette boxes will do little to affect smoking rates or profits, the analysts said. But the zero-volume fate will eventually fox even the most cunning of tobacco marketers.
Before you go short on tobacco shares, however, it’s worth taking a look at some of the Citi data in detail. The predicted date for the death of smoking varied from country to country. In Australia, smoking could die out as early as 2030, the analysts said, while the earliest dates of demise in the UK and the US are 2040 and 2046 respectively. After that, its predictions get a little . . . crazy. Long after even the Greeks have smoked their last, the Germans will apparently keep puffing until at least 2280. Unless the asteroid hits first, presumably.
