LAURA SLATTERYlooks back at the week in business

Shop Talk

Clarks has a long-standing reputation for selling sensible shoes – a sturdy sandal, a low heel, nothing that would get you kicked out of a nunnery. In recent years, the 186-year-old shoemaker’s fashion credentials have improved, however, helped by effective “new shoes” ad campaigns and the rise to prominence of Clarks-wearing celebrities such as Alexa Chung, who favours their kind of flats, brogues and loafers.

Now the family-controlled British retailer has seen its profits exceed £100 million for the first time. But whereas sales in North America surged 19 per cent, sales in the UK and Ireland rose just 1 per cent.

Closing Bids

The last of the confiscated possessions of imprisoned fraudster Bernard Madoff and his wife Ruth will be auctioned over two days in Miami Beach, Florida, starting from today. But don’t worry if you can’t get a flight there in time – the auction will be simulcast online, according to the US Marshals Service. The sale of the extensive jewellery, antiques and furniture collection follows last month’s auction of the Ponzi schemer’s wine and spirits collection, which ranged from fine Bordeaux to the types of small bottles often found in hotel minibars. Meanwhile, the liquidation of the Madoff estate costs a staggering $8 million a day, a lawyer for trustee Irving Picard claimed in a New York court this week.

€2,000– sum spent by an unemployed Irish graduate on a billboard ad imploring employers to save him from such perils as Sydney Opera House and the Statue of Liberty.

"The bailout programme runs to the end of 2013 and Ireland has sufficient money in all circumstances to deal with that"

Taoiseach Enda Kenny denies the need for Bailout 2.

Status Update

Sea-view sale: The Hebridean island of Taransay, which featured in the BBC television series Castaway, has been put up for sale, with 680 ewes and 200 red deer thrown in.

Vegetable trade: Russia has banned import of all fresh vegetables from the EU after the E.coli outbreak in Germany – the one for which Spanish cucumbers were wrongly blamed.

Tablet trouble: Shares in the world's second-biggest PC maker (and tablet market entrant) Acer dropped after it wrote off $150 million for accounting and stock "abnormalities".

The Question: Australia leading on carbon emissions?

It's been a heady week for anyone vaguely concerned with the future of the earth. The International Energy Agency told the Guardianthat last year's record carbon emissions have left the climate on the brink of catastrophe, Germany decided to phase out its network of (carbon-free) nuclear power stations and Oxfam warned there will be a 120-180 per cent rise in food prices by 2030, with half of this rise to be caused by climate change. On the other hand, a combination of camels and Cate Blanchett seems set to help Australia mount a crackdown on emissions with the kind of urgency that the IEA has recommended. Blanchett spearheaded an ad campaign paid for by several environmental groups asking Australians to "say yes" to laws designed to reduce emissions, while a group of energy firms is imploring parliament to expedite legislation in the area. It's bad news for the camels, however, as the government's Carbon Farming Initiative proposes to reward farmers who embark on a cull of the methane-producing animals.