This week's other business news in brief

The Question: Can there be any winners in the war between British Airways and Unite?

Regardless of the outcome of the latest court battle, both BA and the Unite union could lose in their bitter war. If Willie “a reasonable man gets nowhere in negotiations” Walsh concedes now, the argument goes, he loses face, while BA’s inability to slash its cost base could hasten future job losses. If Walsh keeps his fingers in his ears, the dispute could drag on, deterring potential BA passengers from booking with the airline . . . and hastening future job losses.

In both scenarios, it is claimed that union members are signing their own P45s, although there is always the possibility in the first scenario that a better paid workforce will help the airline distinguish its reputation for service. But Walsh only definitely loses out in the first scenario. In the second scenario, he is gambling that the short-term damage will be offset by the long-term advantage of breaking the unions – hence the airline’s hardball tactics in relation to striking staff.

Workers who have nothing to do with the airline sector, therefore, have much to gain from the Unite union’s refusal to roll over. “This dispute isn’t about getting a pay rise – it’s about standing up to bullying and being treated with respect,” the union-affiliated site Brutish-Airways.com states. “Willie Walsh is pants” was the more blunt expression of the same sentiment spotted on union placards.

Arguably, the real losers of Unite’s victory at the appeals court are not airline passengers or even Walsh and his friends, but institutional shareholders such as Standard Life Investments, which has dubbed the union “a malevolent force”.

Dictionary corner

“I’m afraid naked short selling isn’t as exciting as it sounds, Jeremy,” said BBC economics editor Stephanie Flanders, disappointing Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman. Banishing all thoughts of nudist and/or frisky hedge fund managers from our minds, what does naked short-selling (aka naked shorting) entail? In a regular, fully-clothed short sale, traders sell borrowed assets in the expectation of a fall in value, then buy back the shares at a lower price and return them to the owner, keeping the profit.

In a naked short sale, traders don’t even borrow the assets. All bets are on. This can go horribly wrong for naked shorters (a textbook example is the fate of Volkswagen short-sellers in 2008), but it can also be bad news for the target companies. To sum up: naked short-selling is quite a lot like short-selling – just riskier, potentially more destabilising and more frowned upon.

Green shoot

Dublin Port likes to call itself the “mouth of the economy”, which meant that the company which operates the port saw itself starved of revenues as exports weakened and imports plummeted. But the company’s chief financial officer, Michael Sheary, says a run of five consecutive months of growth in trading activity means the port’s throughput is now just 10 per cent below its 2007 peak.

“It’s not just about moving trucks and containers around like some kind of board game,” he told an accountants’ conference recently, stressing the port’s link to the “real economy”. Sheary has also confirmed that Dublin Port Company is in a position to fund its €200 million Gateway expansion project without recourse to exchequer funding – a project that will employ 485 people during the three-year construction period.

Status update

Cash generation: John Shepherd-Barron, inventor of the cash machine, has died aged 84. In 1967, the first machines paid out a maximum of £10. Now they won’t give you a tenner.

Smooth operator: Chemist Boots has posted a double-digit rise in profits, with chief executive Andy Hornby, an ex-banker, swapping property bubbles for anti-ageing cream manias.

Roots manoeuvre: Tourists with Irish ancestry may be given discounts at visitor attractions under a government scheme to boost tourism revenues – and those of genealogy companies.

17: Percentage year-on-year rise in global mobile phone sales in the first quarter, with sales driven by smartphones, according to researchers from the Gartner group.

I'm afraid to tell you there's no money left.

- Note that Liam Byrne, former chief secretary to the UK’s Treasury department, left to his successor David Laws.