LAURA SLATTERYlooks back at the week in business
Shop talk
How long can a business run on sentiment? The answer, in the case of Dublin music shop Road Records, is roughly 18 months. After announcing it was in trouble in January 2009, the retailer managed to survive with a whip-round from its loyal customers. However, as debts mount, owners Dave Kennedy and Julie Collins have announced the store will close on July 24th.
In the pre-iTunes era, if you were looking for that number 47 song in the John Peel Festive 50, you would head to Road Records, find it and buy half the new releases not HMV-bound . That was then . . . The owners were resigned this week, with Kennedy saying the world was “a changing place, and I can’t see any room in it for kooky little indie stores like ourselves”.
Dictionary corner
Graduate tax: Legislative copycatting means Irish higher- education watchers will be keeping a close eye on news that the British government is recommending a “graduate tax”. However the tax, announced yesterday by business secretary Vince Cable, is to replace tuition fees, not complement them. A tax, Cable says, is a less regressive way of reclaiming education costs than the current system, whereby universities charge pretty much the same fees to a care worker or a teacher as they do to a corporate lawyer, whose share of the “graduate premium” (the extra lifetime earnings secured by graduates) will be much higher.
$9.9 billion
The sum wiped from the stock market value of Apple on Wednesday, as speculation grew that the reception-dropping iPhone 4 would have to be recalled.
"I would like to dedicate this little victory to all those members of the travelling public who have suffered verbal abuse and hidden extras at the hands of O'Leary"
Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou, the founder of EasyJet, wins a rare apology and settlement from Ryanair, after the airline depicted its rival as Pinocchio in adverts
Status update
BP block:Washington is to bar BP from future offshore leases. In an even more cutting rejection, Dallas oil baron JR Ewing (actor Larry Hagman) is now advertising solar panels.
Paper money: Management of the proliferating rainbow- coloured stationery chain Paperchase has bought the firm from book retailer Borders in a deal worth £30 million.
Should Ireland's bankruptcy laws be changed?
There are a lot of people who will be quite glad that it could take Seán FitzPatrick up to 12 years to extract himself from bankrupt status, especially when economists such as David McWilliams reckon the State will be in the same position for even longer. Now is not perhaps the most PR-friendly time for the Government to be talking about how onerous the Irish bankruptcy law is compared to that of other countries.
Critics say bankruptcy law in Ireland is expensive (because of the court costs) and antiquated. As bankruptcy penalties in the UK apply for only 12 months, some fee-deprived solicitors claim people are moving to the UK for the less restrictive regime.
Across the pond, the debate centres on the fear that entering and exiting bankruptcy has become too easy, with little incentive for the indebted to pay their debts back and almost no stigma left. Here, the Law Reform Commission is pursuing a middle ground, recommending the period for discharge be cut in half to six years. For struggling debtors who are neither vagrants (for whom Minister Batt O’Keeffe says the law was originally designed) nor former bank supremos, this should be welcome.
