Compiled by LAURA SLATTERY

Court date

Before this week, Planet Business knew three facts about Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich and they went like this: he’s the owner of Chelsea FC, he has had more than one wife and his yacht has its own missile defence system.

Essentially, he is an everyman who likes football, women and expensive toys. Given that Abramovich has said almost nothing in public since arriving in Britain, multiple media eyes and ears were trained this week on the London court where exiled Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky is taking a multibillion suit against him. Alas, Abramovich said very little, save that he had never intended to imitate Berezovksy’s lavish lifestyle – it just ended up that way.

5- The number of years that Dublin "alternative" music station and former pirate Phantom 105.2 has managed to stay in business. It celebrates its fifth birthday this week.

Dictionary corner: 'Super Mario'

“Super Mario” is the nickname given to the new president of the European Central Bank, Italian central banker Mario Draghi, who earned the moniker for his performance at the Bank of Italy. But Draghi, who has succeeded Jean-Claude “strong vigilance” Trichet, in the job will also be “Super Mario” in the eyes of Irish mortgage holders – or at least those whose bank passes on yesterday’s quarter-point cut in the ECB’s base interest rate. The regime change at the ECB effectively allowed it to do a policy handbrake turn, after Trichet increased rates twice earlier this year in what many economists regarded as a mistake.

STATUS UPDATE

Robotic waves: James Gosling, who invented the Java computer language, has raised $40 million (€29 million) to send a robot fleet underwater to gather ocean data. But can they kill jellyfish?

Bank break:Lloyds chief executive António Horta-Osório has been praised for leading by example after it emerged he is to take a break to recover from extreme fatigue caused by overwork.

Map-reading fees: Heavy users of Google Maps, such as travel companies, are to be charged once they exceed a daily limit of 25,000 map hits. Now where is that hotel again?

"Between one day and three months" -Veteran billionaire trader George Soros predicted on Sunday that the European leaders' "deal" would last this long. It turned out that "one day" was the closer estimate.

THE QUESTION

Will this Christmas be good for retailers?

Surely every Christmas is like, er, Christmas for retailers. This is 2011 though and, having taken a battering at the tills over the past few years, Ireland’s retailers are feeling a touch deserted. It doesn’t bode marvellously well that retail sales fell back in September – when the sector had been expecting a pick-up – as back-to-school costs were blamed for keeping discretionary spending subdued. As ever, the scheduling of the budget has prompted sighing statements from industry groups, who blame its proximity to Christmas for both cautious spending during November and a “feel-bad factor” during the week of the budget itself.

Although the fragile variable that is consumer confidence will undoubtedly play a big role in how many box sets and sock sets retailers can flog, there are also two rather more tangible factors at play: weather and VAT. Several retailers have reported that during the recession, their footfalls have held up okay, but their average transaction values (ATVs) have plummeted – essentially, people still want to shop, but can’t.

An increase in VAT in the budget, apart from being a regressive tax that disproportionately affects lower- income people, would also risk further reducing the retailer transaction revenues and in turn cause job losses above and beyond the letting go of temporary staff. Notwithstanding the icy economic conditions, if temperatures stay above zero in the next two months, retailers in city-centre locations and online distributors alike will almost certainly enjoy a better Christmas than last year. It won’t solve all their problems, but it will make the cost of all those decorations seem a little less galling.