Image of the week: Storm the headquarters
Air France executive vice president for human resources and labour relations Xavier Broseta is not shirtless by choice. Scuffles broke out at the airline's headquarters on Monday after it confirmed in a meeting with staff that it planned to cut 2,900 jobs by 2017. Broseta wasn't the only executive to require the services of security at Charles de Gaulle. Company director Pierre Plissonnier also had his shirt and jacket torn and both men had to exit via a fence to make their escape. Meanwhile, over at Paris Fashion Week, designer Karl Lagerfeld staged the Chanel catwalk show at "Chanel Airlines", transforming the Grand Palais into a "chanelegant" departure lounge populated by visor-wearing models and Vogue editors and not a hint of a ripped shirt in sight. (Photograph: Reuters / Jacky Naegelen)
In numbers: Glencore gorilla
$100 billion Estimated exposure of global financial firms to the troubled commodity giant Glencore, analysts at Bank of America wrote this week in a note titled “The $100 Billion Gorilla in the Room”.
$30 billion Net debt at Glencore, the worst performing stock on the FTSE 100 index this year. The heavily indebted miner and commodity trader, which has been hurt by a slide in copper prices, employs about 180,000 people worldwide.
$13.5 billion Amount of available liquidity to the company, according to the man at the helm of the Glencore rollercoaster, chief executive Ivan Glasenberg.
The lexicon: Adblockalypse
Apple’s decision to allow the installation of ad blockers under its iOS9 operating system has sparked a flurry of app downloads and stuffed the App Store charts with a selection of cheap ways to avoid pop-ups and other mobile advertising irritants. The latest adblocker to generate a buzz is the Apple-approved Been Choice, which significantly says it will block in-app ads, including those that appear on Facebook, while Denis O’Brien’s Digicel telecoms group intends to turn on mobile ad blocking as standard for its customers. The rise of the adblockers, not terribly good news for online publishers such as, er, the part-O’Brien-owned Independent News & Media, has been awkwardly dubbed the “adblockalypse”.
Getting to know: James Daunt
The founder of the beautiful London mini-chain Daunt Books, full name Achilles James Daunt, has been managing director of Waterstones since 2011. "I don't recognise that books are dead," was one of the first things he said when he was appointed by its owner, Russian oligarch Alexander Mamut. One thing he has changed his mind on since then is Kindle. It was Daunt who oversaw their introduction to Waterstones, but now he says sales of the e-reader devices, the product of arch-rival Amazon, "continue to be pitiful" and he would quite like the display space back for some actual books, thanks. The diplomat's son has never been shy when it comes to lambasting Amazon's "destructive" devaluation of books. "How are authors supposed to eat?" It's a very good question.
