LAURA SLATTERYlooks back at the week in business
Court date
NEVER MIND Standard & Poor's. Forget those nasty wiretaps. For Silvio Berlusconi, the big news this week was the BBC lodging legal papers at a Rome court alleging the Italian leader's broadcasting company Mediaset had infringed the copyright on its prized format export, Strictly Come Dancing.
BBC Worldwide had licensed the Italian rights to public broadcaster RAI as part of its profitable plan to teach approximately 35 countries how to turn learning the quickstep into a "journey". Now RAI's lawyers are arm in arm with the BBC in its bid to slap down Mediaset's copycat version, which Mediaset claims is based on a South American format that translates as Dancing for a Dream. It has been known to contain nudity.
Dictionary corner: Merkozy
Merkozy is the portmanteau for the power couple lying at the heart of the euro zone – German chancellor Angela Merkel and French president Nicolas Sarkozy. And while “Sarkel” doesn’t quite cut it in terms of the recognition factor, it is ladies first for more than just linguistic reasons – Sarkozy is the junior partner here.
All the joint teleconferences in the world can’t disguise the fact that there is Germany and then there is the rest of the euro zone. It was Germany, not France, which had its triple-A credit rating reaffirmed this week; Germany, not France, where the off-message comments of the transport minister get reported by international news wires. “Merkozy” can move markets, though not always upwards.
$3 billion –Despite his best efforts to give his money away, Bill Gates got richer by this amount last year, according to Forbes. His total wealth is $59 billion.
"The big issue for employers is, in many cases, the world of work is so crap
John Philpott, chief economist at the UK’s Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, says companies should stop complaining about the lack of “employability” among young people.
STATUS UPDATE
Casino non-shock:"Modest" casinos are in, "super-casinos" are out. The non-virtual poker super-den in Co Tipperary will not go ahead, the Cabinet confirmed. Did anyone ever think it would?
Theme spirit:Disney has won the rights to build theme park attractions based on the movie Avatar, but in China the inspiration has come from apps, with a new park based on Angry Birds.
THE QUESTION
Can the insurance industry recover from its disastrous six months?
In the aftermath of the Australian floods and the earthquakes in New Zealand and Japan, Citi analysts declared that 2011 targets at reinsurance companies were “now, in effect, meaningless”.
The extent of the industry’s exposure to an unusual concentration of large-scale disasters is beginning to emerge in the figures. Lloyd’s of London, the world’s largest insurance market, this week revealed that the first half of 2011 was the costliest six-month period in its 323-year history, as it swung from a £628 million profit to a £697 million loss.
The industry is apparently well-positioned to cope with such a crash. Lloyd’s stressed that it was “well-capitalised” – and no, just because that turned out to be untrue when the banks said it, doesn’t automatically make it a worrying phrase this time.
The insurance industry has been here before. According to reinsurer Swiss Re, 2005 is the year to beat in terms of catastrophe losses. Back then, the industry alighted on the one reliable way to absorb the losses: charging higher premiums. Next year looks set to see similar tactics.
