This week's financial round-up
THE NUMBERS
€43 million - Sum invested to date in digital terrestrial television (DTT) by shareholders in the Denis O'Brien-backed consortium Boxer DTT, which this week beat off competition from RTÉ, TV3, Setanta Sports and others to win the commercial DTT licence, hailed as the future of television once analogue services are switched off.
€7.2 million- Losses suffered by Monopoly maker Hasbro Ireland in 2006, according to accounts just filed at the Companies Office, as competition from China's toy industry (yet to be tarred by the Mattel recall scandals), forced the Waterford-based manufacturer of games such as Scrabble, Trivial Pursuit, Battleships and Connect 4 to axe jobs.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
"There is no question about it: Wall Street got drunk ... it got drunk and now it has a hangover. The question is, how long will it take to sober up and not try to do all these fancy financial instruments."
George Bush is caught on camera cracking a few jokes with his fellow Texans about the economic crisis that led to more than a million repossessions in the US and is still engulfing the global economy. Now available on YouTube.
GOODWEEK
Blogging
The millions who see their internet ramblings as a viable career option will be cheered by the story of Dr Arnold Kim, the American medical doctor who has hung up his stethoscope in order to concentrate full time on his traffic-heavy Apple-centred gossip website, MacRumors.com. With less-busy tech blog sites being sold for sums of more than $25 million, Dr Kim isn't worried about giving up his six-figure salary.
Cinemas
The summer blockbuster season has finally hit its stride, with the latest Batman film, The Dark Knight, estimated to have eclipsed previous opening-weekend ticket sale records with the aid of publicity surrounding the performance of the late Heath Ledger. The film generated cinema stubs worth $155 million in the US last weekend compared to the $151 million taken home in the opening weekend by previous record holder, Spider Man 3.
BADWEEK
Dublin Bus
The company has been accused of "appalling and disgraceful" behaviour (which it denies) by Fine Gael transport spokesman Fergus O'Dowd (above) among others, for allegedly flooding routes serviced by private bus operators with extra busses, causing one private operator to go bust. Just when you're waiting for one private bus, three public ones come along at once . . .
Vodafone
On Tuesday, the phone company's share price went down faster than mobile coverage in a tunnel on New Year's Eve as it admitted that its European revenues were not immune to the "relatively severe macroeconomic environment". The 14 per cent drop was unlikely to soothe the nerves of its 400,000 Irish shareholders, all long-suffering former Eircom investors.
