Image of the week: The maxi-iPad
The new iPad Pro is so large, you can fit an entire planet on its screen. Apple chief executive Tim Cook is but a speck in contrast to the iPad floating above his head at the tech giant's latest piece of product announcement theatre in San Francisco. The supersized iPad, which has a 12.9-inch screen, will be accompanied by a thin "smart keyboard" that acts as a cover, while a more precise stylus called the Apple Pencil has also been unveiled. It's designed to appeal to business users, who Apple hopes will be saviour of a slumping tablet market. According to Apple, the iPad Pro will have 10 hours of battery life on a full charge. The key words in the previous sentence are "according to Apple". Photograph: David Paul Morris / Bloomberg
In Numbers: Transfer bonanza
57 Percentage of the money in international football transfer deals that has gone into the pockets of the players themselves, according to figures from the FIFA Transfer Matching System.
41 Percentage of the money paid that relates to the club-to-club transfer fee, with agents having to make do with the remaining 2 per cent.
£653m Sum that English football clubs spent on international transfers – buying players from clubs in other countries – during the summer window. This was more than double any other country in Europe.
The Lexicon: Betty Power
After bookmaker Ladbrokes and Coral merged in July, @paddypower tweeted that it could "exclusively reveal that we have merged with Betfair. Our new name is Betty Power". A month later, when the Paddy Power and Betfair get-together was announced for real, the "Betty Power" nickname for the proposed new entity started to stick. Terms have now been agreed and the new group will be called Paddy Power Betfair, with the two brands kept distinct, but unofficially it will likely continue to be known by the nickname "Betty Power", which frankly is a much more convenient length of name for headlines.
Getting to know: Irene Bergman
Irene Bergman, "the oldest woman on Wall Street", has just turned 100 years old. Born in Berlin, Bergman fled Nazi Germany with her family, arriving in the US via a Portuguese boat. She started working as a secretary in a bank in 1942 and, since 1973, has been on the payroll of investment firm Stralem & Co, the first place where she felt she was "treated like an equal" on sexist Wall Street. And she is yet to retire. She still oversees some $2 billion in assets and sits on Stralem's investment committee, working from her midtown Manhattan apartment. "The longer you're in the business, the more pessimistic you get," Bergman said when asked by Bloomberg about her outlook on stocks. The way people do business now, she says, is "much more knives-in-the-back" than it used to be.
The list: The ascent of Ikea
Swedish furniture and meatball retailer Ikea has just posted an 11 per cent climb in full-year sales, taking its annual revenues to €31.9 billion. What? How? Why? Here are five of the reasons why its flat-pack mission continues unabated.
1 China Ikea’s sales are growing faster in China than they are in any other market and should help it reach its 2020 sales target of €50 billion.
2 E-furniture Ikea is really only warming up the ecommerce and click-and-collect side of its operation.
3 Germany Ikea sales are still swelling in its biggest and most mature market, where it is targeting a massive 25 per cent share. Apparently, not everybody in Germany has bought the mini ironing board yet.
4 Wind The company is a renewable energy fan, owning more than 200 wind turbines around the world – part of its plan to become “energy independent” by 2020.
5 More designs More frequent “limited collections” are part of the grand plan, possibly lessening that “oh, I have that Ikea rug too” identikit-home scenario.
