In Numbers: Currency Waterloo
180,000
Number of special €2 coins minted by Belgium to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo. It then had to scrap them after France objected, saying it would create tensions at a time when Europe really needed to stand united. Or something.
€2.50
Denomination of a new Belgian coin bearing the Lion’s Mound monument at Waterloo. Belgium has skirted the French protests by using a loophole that allows euro zone countries to unilaterally issue coins if they are in an irregular denomination.
70,000
Number of these €2.50 coins that Belgium has minted. “The goal is not to revive old quarrels,” said gracious-in-victory Belgian finance minister Johan van Overtveldt. “In a modern Europe, there are more important things to sort out.”
Image of the week: The depth
of luxury
The big problem with staging a Business of Luxury summit in a country as tiny as Monaco, with only one deep-water port, is quite obviously the parking. Just where does one moor one’s superyacht? The owners of the vessels lined up here in Port Hercule may not have been attending the FT-sponsored summit, but if they were, they will have heard such worrisome nuggets as
Richemont
chairman
Johann Rupert
saying he was kept awake at night by “structural unemployment and envy, hatred and class warfare” – because those nasty things mean the ultra-rich might not want to wear anything “showy” like, say, a Cartier watch. They could probably still wear them on the yacht though. Photograph: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg
The Lexicon: Nothingburger
The nothingburger, or nothing burger – the Irish Times style guide does not provide us with any clues on this one – is a delightful Americanism and piece of journalese that we predict will go far. The phrase surfaced in some headlines this week when US investor and financial commentator Kevin O’Leary told CNBC’s Squawk Alley that Apple Music wasn’t going to amount to much from a shareholder value perspective. “To me the whole thing is a giant nothingburger. Who cares?” he asked. Nothingburger, just to be clear, is defined in the Urban Dictionary as “something lame, dead-end, a dud, insignificant; especially something with high expectations that turns out to be average, pathetic or over-hyped”.
Getting to know: The Hot Dog Bites Pizza At Pizza Hut, sales are sluggish, which coincidentally is how its customers will probably feel if they consume a new item on the chain's menu. The Hot Dog Bites Pizza, which is set to debut at more than 6,000 restaurants across the US on June 18th, contains 28 "premium hot dog bites" that are baked into the pizza crust and meant to be pulled off and dipped in mustard. In some earlier internationally available versions, the hot dogs were hidden inside the crust, but the updated US design has them peeking out of crusted rings, forming a calorific border to an otherwise standard fast food pizza. A picture of the new offering is available, but taste and decency laws mean it cannot be reprinted here.
The list: Highest-paid young sportsmen Dedicated tracker-of-wealth Forbes this week published its list of the highest-paid athletes aged 25 and under. They're fit and they're rich and they could retire tomorrow if they fancied a rest. Who are they? Footballers.
5 Eden Hazard The Chelsea and Belgium midfielder earns $19.6 million, Forbes estimates. Nike has chipped in.
4 Tyron Smith The Dallas Cowboys player is paid $21.4 million, his contract one of the richest in American football history.
3 James Rodríguez The Real Madrid and Colombia striker, the winner of the Golden Boot at World Cup 2014, has contracts with Adidas and Gatorade on top of his Real deal. He's paid $29 million, by Forbes's reckoning.
2 Neymar The Brazil and Barcelona player collects more from sponsors (Nike, Beats by Dre) than his club, taking his total pay to $31 million. And he didn’t even have a good World Cup.
1 Gareth Bale The Welsh Real Madrid winger (right) and Adidas man, who banks $35 million from salary and endorsements, won't be on next year's list as he's very nearly 26.
