Compiled by Laura Slattery
QUOTE of the WEEK
"He's operating like a young man who's bought a sports car and can't wait to hop in and drive it around."
- Louis Ureneck of Boston University's journalism department describes (for the benefit of the New York Times) the enthusiasm with which Rupert Murdoch is seizing control of the Wall Street Journal wheel following his takeover of Journal owner Dow Jones.
THE NUMBERS
6.5 -The number of years in prison to which former newspaper magnate Conrad Black has been sentenced for defrauding millions from the shareholders of his former media empire Hollinger International.
€31,000The minimum cost per night to rent Necker Island, the luxury 74-acre Caribbean island owned by Richard Branson, which hosted the wedding of Google co-founder Larry Page to doctoral student Lucy Southworth last Sunday.
$20 billion The sum that will be auctioned by the European Central Bank in a bid to inject dollar liquidity into the money markets, as part of an unprecedented joint effort with the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England and other central banks to relieve the credit squeeze that is still gripping global money markets.
€244 billionThe amount that the euro zone's 21 largest banks hold in off-balance sheet assets that may have to be brought back on to their balance sheets and could trigger a credit crunch in the wider economy, the ECB warned.
GOOD WEEK
IKEA
The traditional store-opening log-cutting ceremony has taken place at the Holywood Exchange near Belfast's George Best airport, as the Swedish flat-pack furniture kings arrive in Ireland just in time for the housing downturn. PSNI helicopters were on standby, while Bus Éireann chipped in by announcing a special weekend service - the IKEA Express.
The Financial Times
The pink paper has struck a deal with news agency Reuters to supply its website with the breaking news video content it says is increasingly in demand from text-weary readers/viewers/users. FT.com reports "high engagement" with its self-produced video clips by its users, with an average play time of three and a half minutes.
BAD WEEK Northern Rock
The unloved British bank has dropped out of the FTSE 100 index of leading London-listed blue-chips in the index's biggest reshuffle since the dotcom crash in 2001 - when it was one of the eight companies that were promoted. The bank is now at the bottom of the FTSE 250, having narrowly avoided an embarrassing relegation to the index that tracks small companies.
Montgomery Burns
Springfield Nuclear Power Plant's owner, the Simpsons' villainous Mr Burns (right), has slipped from second to sixth place in Forbes.com's annual ranking of the 15 richest fictional characters, with his fortune plummeting after environmental authorities enclosed Springfield town in a pollution-containing glass dome. Planet Mongo's Ming the Merciless (source of wealth: slavery, technology) was the highest new entry, in at number two behind Scrooge McDuck.
