Current Account: Sir Anthony O'Reilly, the largest shareholder in Independent News & Media (IN&M), really must be starting to lose patience with rival UK newspaper groups at this stage.
First the like of News International and Associated Newspapers decided to trespass on IN&M's closely guarded patch in Ireland. And now the owners of the Daily and Sunday Telegraph, the Barclay Brothers, have decided to enter the fray.
This week the Daily Telegraph did some digging into the "bulk" and "export" sales of the London Independent and Independent on Sunday and - surprise, surprise - they found both papers have the highest rate of bulk sales in Fleet Street. Bulk sales are discounted copies of a newspaper typically distributed to hotels, airports and airlines. With export or overseas sales, the Telegraph said it is often difficult to determine whether the full cover price has been paid.
The rate of such bulk and export sales under Sir Anthony, the paper says, now runs at almost a third, whereas when Sir Anthony took over the UK titles in March 1998, it was a far more respectable 11 per cent.
So how did the IN&M react to this somewhat robust attack from the Barclays? Well, it appears without any sense of irony. A spokesman said the resurgence of the Independent "is one of the great success stories of the modern British newspaper market".
NCB hedges its rate forecast headlines
Not for nothing is forecasting generally the art of the fudge - saying something that sounds clear but can ultimately be read in several ways. And the importance of hedging one's bets in economic forecasting hit home last week - at least for NCB.
On June 29th, the broker's weekly economic bulletin bore the confident headline: "No ECB Rate Hike Before End-August".
Just one week later, the same publication advised: "ECB Steps Up The Pace - (Two Hikes in August) - and Sets a Target?"
Why the change? European Central Bank president Jean-Claude Trichet's unprecedented move to drag the bank's governing council away from their holidays to a physical meeting on August 3rd rather than hold the more cursory teleconference was as clear an indication as a central banker is ever likely to give that a rate rise is coming on that date.
To be fair, NCB's chief economist Dermot O'Brien did caution in the earlier article that Mr Trichet's formal statement and responses to press questions following the July 6th meeting would "bear careful scrutiny" but as Current Account knows only too well, at the end of the day it is the headline that gets remembered.
'Dark angel' Eircom
Whether or not it's true, it was pretty amusing to hear that someone in telecommunications industry regulator ComReg referred to Eircom as the "dark angel" during negotiations with Smart Telecom over the disputed 3G mobile licence offer.
Eircom made sure that it was joined in the proceedings when it emerged that Smart intended taking ComReg to the High Court in an effort to force the regulator to restore its offer of the licence to Smart. Eircom came second in the competition for the licence won by Smart last November.
Commercial director David McRedmond spent most of this week watching the case from the public gallery. Eircom senior counsel Paul Gallagher has been cross-examining witnesses from Smart. Current Account wonders how either of these gentlemen would feel about being described as dark angels . . .
Central Bank in a hole
As companies battle to get their pension schemes back into line with rigorous funding requirements laid down by the Pensions Board, it is somewhat comforting to discover that even the most financially proficient can find themselves falling foul of the rules.
The Central Bank revealed in its annual report, published this week, that it had transferred almost €100 million from its reserves and assets last year to cover some of its €390 million defined benefit pension scheme deficit.
We mere mortals have little chance of getting our act together if the minders of the national purse can find themselves caught out like this.
