LAURA SLATTERYlooks back at the week in business
Shop talk
GAMING MACHINES proved a big winner for bookie chain Ladbrokes, according to its 2011 results, with gross win (bets staked minus payouts) from UK machines rising 19 per cent to £361 million. This compares to gross win of £393 million from over-the-counter bets in UK stores.
The chain is now set to add 60 shops to its 2,700-strong network, but the days when bookies consisted largely of frayed Racing Post pages pinned to notice-boards are nearing an end. Some 40 of the planned new stores will adopt a new shop format that caters more for football betting, bet-in-play flutters and those reliably profit-spinning fixed-odds betting terminals. Proposed Irish legislation, however, will prevent Ladbrokes rolling out the latter here.
Dictionary corner: "Facebook halo"
THE FACEBOOK halo effect applies to companies that have managed to sneak into the Facebook spotlight, claiming a few rays of effervescence that they can ideally convert into shiny, glowing revenues.
First in line, Farmville-creator Zynga, the company responsible for 12 per cent of Facebook revenues and six out of the seven most popular Facebook games. Zynga, which makes an honest crust by flogging virtual goods to social gamers via such titles as Words with Friends, Dream Zoo and Zynga Poker, raked in revenues of $311 million in the fourth quarter of 2011, up 59 per cent, as new titles CastleVille and Hidden Chronicles sucked in millions of players.
Its first financial update as a public company also saw founder and chief executive Mark Pincus make a promise/threat about “a strong pipeline of new games” – so, something fun to pass the time on the toilet for the next year at least, then.
Status update
Iron Lady poetry: Mining and would-be media magnate Gina Rinehart, Australia's richest person, has been accused of writing the "universe's worst poem" - a polemical industry ode called Our Future.
Once-you-snap:Cereal purveyors Kellogg have snapped up Pringles from Procter Gamble for $2.7 billion in a move widely regarded as an endorsement of a crisp breakfast.
Ding dong: Avon Products Inc, of "Avon ladies" fame, is planning a major facelift of its operations after five years of declining North American sales and less-than-silky-smooth management.
"I can say this plane is absolutely safe to fly. I don't want to go into all the specifics here"
AIRBUS CHIEF executive Tom Enders is officially not perturbed by all those A380 wing crack safety checks going on right now.
€80,000
THE COST of a planned bronze statue of Carla Bruni-Sarkozy in a Paris suburb, more than half of which will be funded by French taxpayers. A likeness of the French president’s wife will be used as a symbol of a “plumassière”, or female worker in the area’s former feather factories.
£3.3m
INCOME FROM sales of physical music singles in the UK 2011, down 33 per cent and fast plummeting into extinction. The total physical music market was worth £514 million, down 14 per cent, according to the British Phonograph Industry.
