Compiled by Laura Slattery
The Numbers . . .
£150 millionRecord level of spending by Premier League football clubs on player transfers in the January window for signing new players from other clubs, according to Deloitte.
£1.99Tesco's new UK price for a chicken, which it says will benefit "shoppers on a budget" but the move has angered animal welfare and farming groups who say it is neither a sustainable nor an ethical price.
Good Week . . .
Chat line callersLonely hearts can approach St Valentine's Day in the comforting knowledge that the lovely people at RegTel, or the Regulator of Premium Rate Telecommunications Services, are thinking of them. In a new draft code of practice, RegTel has cut the spend limit on "chat and dating" calls from €60 to €40 and the limit on "live" calls from €90 to €60, while price warnings must - somewhat unromantically - be given along the way.
Time WarnerA record December film opening for Will Smith movie I Am Legend helped Time Warner's movie and television business to a 46 per cent rise in earnings in the final quarter of 2007. But analysts are still waiting for the world's largest media conglomerate to offload struggling internet business AOL - the company with which it was expected to take over the world after they struck the biggest ever corporate deal in 2000.
Bad Week . . .
Macy'sThe iconic US department store chain is to slash 2,300 jobs following a 7 per cent drop in sales in January, as American consumers collectively forgot their PIN numbers and failed to convert their dollars to goods. Macy's recession-like performance sent shockwaves through Wall Street and is unlikely to be cheered by the boardroom of one of its luxury goods suppliers - Waterford Wedgwood.
NokiaFinnish-German relations have taken a sour turn, after the German state of North-Rhine Westphalia told the mobile maker that it must repay €41 million in subsidies following its decision to close its factory in the state. Nokia, which is relocating the factory to lower-cost Romania in a move dubbed "caravan capitalism", says it fulfilled the conditions of the subsidy agreement and won't repay a cent.
