Compiled by LAURA SLATTERY
Office fashion
Swiss bank UBS is to revise its now notorious 44-page dress code, in which it advised male staff to get their hair cut once a month, avoid unkempt beards and wear red ties – and also had a somewhat more intrusive set of instructions for female staff.
The guide instructed women about the best way to apply make-up, what perfume was appropriate and what colour nail varnish would be acceptable to high-finance clients. There is no indication about whether its recommendation that women wear skin-coloured underwear will be lifted, or if it’s red satin-a-go-go for lady bankers from now on. The code, which UBS said was “misunderstood”, also advised that “women should not wear shoes that are too tight-fitting as there is nothing worse than a strained smile” – a facial expression with which those who wrote the guide seem to be unsurprisingly familiar.
Pay Day
When is a banker not a banker? Answer: when he or she is sitting behind a branch counter with only a sheet of Perspex glass and their own quick reflexes separating them from a general public that grows more hostile by the day.
Finance sector union the Irish Bank Officials’ Association stressed this week the frontline banking staff who make up its membership list were not recipients of – or indeed party to – the undisclosed bonus bonanza at Bank of Ireland. Association general secretary Larry Broderick professed himself “shocked” by the decision of senior staff to line their pockets with more than 2,500 redundancies in the offing.
“To add insult to injury, quite literally,” he said, “our members . . . have had to put up with abuse and derision from customers and the public at large in the mistaken belief that all Bank of Ireland staff have received these payments.”
Status update
Asset rehab:Royal Bank of Scotland is to sell Priory Group, owner of a popular clinic for celebrities seeking a paradoxically well-publicised refuge from stress and addiction.
Parental power:Couples will be allowed share maternity leave in the UK from 2015, with deputy prime minister Nick Clegg (right) describing the current situation as "Edwardian".
Philatelic profits:Stamp group Stanley Gibbons saw its share price rise as it confirmed it would benefit from sales of royal wedding collectibles such as first-day covers.
I assumed Mr Sarkozy would receive an immediate rebuke from the government
Labour Party leader Eamon Gilmoredeclares that the French president's dislike of Ireland's 12.5 per cent corporation rate should be countered with "blunt speaking rather than diplomatic niceties".
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– the initial percentage drop in the value of Apple’s shares, as Wall Street digested the news that its chief executive, Steve Jobs, was taking a medical leave of absence.
THE QUESTION:Is Europe's Galileo satnav system a 'stupid idea'?
In one of the first WikiLeaks-inspired cases of careless talk costing jobs, Berry Smutny, the chief executive of one of Germany’s biggest space companies, has been sacked because he was reported in a US embassy cable to have described Europe’s Galileo satellite navigation project as “a stupid idea that primarily serves French interests”; a waste of European taxpayers’ money; and “doomed to failure”.
Smutny’s employer, OHB-System, has removed him from his post, despite the fact he denied making the statement. But is what he is alleged to have said so outrageous?
Galileo was conceived as Europe’s answer to the US-controlled Global Positioning System (GPS) – a way of competing with the timing and location data service used for everything from landing planes to berating motorists. So far, so sensible. However, Galileo has been a troubled endeavour ever since commercial backers withdrew from the project in 2007, meaning that the EU was forced to commit public money to the plan, which is now both overdue and over-budget. This week the European Commission admitted that the €3.4 billion plan needs an extra injection of €1.9 billion to become operational by 2014. The cables assert that Smutny predicts the bill for the system of 18 or more satellites will balloon closer to €10 billion.
However, once completed, Galileo should enable Europe to compete in a market for satellite services estimated to reach €240 billion by 2020. With the Russians and the Chinese likely to have bankrolled their own satnav systems by then, it could be a crowded market.
