Business podcast: July 1st
John Collins talks to Dan O’Brien about the end of the recession and the unemployment rate, Conal Henry of Enet on broadband investment and Suzanne Dirks of IBM discusses Ireland’s digital economy.
Current Account »
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Business podcast: June 24th
John Collins talks to Laura Slattery about the new banking regulations, Ciaran Hancock explains the proposed State-guaranteed business loans, Felix O’Regan of the IBF on business lending and Francess McDonnell puts the British budget in a Northern Ireland context.
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China’s economic miracle looks good close up
Chinese exports were up about 50 per cent from a year ago in May. Economic growth this year is expected to be about 9 per cent as it and other Asian economic fuel the global recovery.
Little wonder then that Irish business people want to try and see what is behind this economic miracle. (more…)
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Business podcast: June 17th
John Collins presents a Current Account special on China featuring Clifford Coonan of The Irish Times, Liam Casey from PCH International, Deirdre Walsh from China Green and Oliver Hughes, co-founder of The Porterhouse.
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We can laugh at this HD howler but it is hollow laughter
“ITV1 HD will make watching the World Cup an unforgettable experience,” according to the ITV website. Adding the word “not” before “watching” in this sentence would be more appropriate under the circumstances. Legions of ITV HD viewers missed the sole England goal in last night’s clash against the USA when the channel accidentally cut to a car advert before fading to black. Never mind Robert Green, this was a truly massive blunder (which you can watch unfold here).
Football fans who didn’t upgrade their sets in order to see England’s underachievement in its full glory and instead watched the match on standard definition ITV can be forgiven for feeling a schmidgeon of Schadenfreude. But it wasn’t just early-adopter HD enthusiasts who were cut off from what could yet turn out to be the only highlight of England’s campaign. Unlike in Ireland, access to HD channels in the UK is widespread. Both the BBC and ITV’s HD channels are available on the digital terrestrial television (DTT) service Freeview, to which more than half of UK households are connected. It’s really best, at this point, not to ask about the current status of DTT in Ireland.
As of March, it was estimated that some 24 million HD televisions had been sold in the UK. Last week, as armchair fans prepared to settle in for the duration, British department store chain John Lewis declared it was selling a new set every 30 seconds. Every blade of grass, every bead of sweat, etc, etc.
So much cash, so much confusion. Why is Fabio Capello smiling all of a sudden? Why are people hugging Steven Gerrard?
Last night’s epic fail is not just catastrophically embarrassing for ITV, but for the UK broadcasting regulator, Ofcom, which has taken two years to find enough bandwidth to accommodate spectrum-hungry HD services on DTT. Its success in doing so meant the World Cup was billed as the first mass market HD event in the UK, with Ofcom’s pre-tournament press releases describing HD as the biggest development in World Cup viewing technology since 1970, when the Mexico World Cup was broadcast in colour for the first time.
“Back then, England were knocked out by West Germany in the quarter finals. This year, fans will be hoping for a better result from HD,” said Ofcom, tempting fate. Instead, England let in a soft equaliser and the HD howler has been gleefully replayed in full this morning on Sky News. (BSkyB, incidentally, has 2.5 million HD-enabled subscribers, but zero rights to World Cup live matches.) If I worked in Ofcom’s publicity office, I would be furious with the controllers of ITV 1 HD for screwing up so badly and – given a similar incident in an FA Cup match earlier this year – not for the first time either.
But though I was grimly amused by news of ITV’s transmission error, the joke is really on me and all other Irish television viewers – and not just because the ears of the Irish team have been deprived of the vuvuzela nightmare that is South Africa 2010.
To experience HD teething problems, you have to have HD content in the first place. Imagine if RTÉ had broadcast the World Cup in HD. Even with Ireland’s non-involvement, what a nice boost to retail sales that could have been. Now imagine a world in which RTÉ HD is part of a fully rolled out free-to-air DTT service. Neither event requires a technological revolution – just cash that neither RTÉ nor the commercial broadcasting sector appears to have anymore. The money, like the England midfield last night, is spent.
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Business podcast: June 10th
John Collins hosts a Current Account special on the reports into the banking crisis with finance correspondent Simon Carswell and business journalist Barry O’Halloran
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No, Mr Bond, I expect you to work more for less
Sometime last year, I was tickled by the fact that Roman Abramovich’s new yacht had a missile defence system installed. I guess you never can predict what John Terry is going to get up to next. But while disgusted rather than amused is probably the correct response to such displays of sickening wealth, the activities of the Russian oligarchy seemed far removed from the current economic predicament endured by Ireland (even while they are not).
This was straight out of the Beginners’ Guide to Bond Villainry – an open audition for the next 007 outing, in fact. What a shame, then, that the financial controllers at debt-smothered MGM have had to shout cut on that movie before Daniel Craig even had time to hit the gym.
Perhaps Avatar director and self-described “king of the world” James Cameron could pitch in and finance it once he’s finished cleaning up the ocean. In recent weeks, coverage of BP’s horrendous oil spill catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico has revealed that Mr Cameron offered to lend BP his own private fleet of submarines, which he has parked somewhere in Lake Baikal, Russia. As open bids for Bond-esque megalomania go, this comfortably outstrips even the fanciest of Abramovich’s yachts, although to be fair to the grizzly Chelsea magnate, he is said to have snapped up an Airbus A380 for personal use.
Luckily, Mr Cameron appears to be trying to save the planet rather than seize control of it – although I haven’t quite ruled out the possibility that the middle hour of Avatar was all part of some grand plan to send the human race into a deep coma so he could facilitate a submarine-led coup.
So which of the world’s billionaires can compete with Abramovich and Cameron in Bond villainry stakes? The world’s richest men – Carlos Slim and Warren Buffett – claim relative personal modesty. (The key word here being “relative”.) A quick scan of Forbes.com’s big spenders list reveals that Oracle founder Larry Ellison, who graces the global rich list’s top ten, has a house the size of Stamford Bridge. It’s unfair to say that Ellison is entirely spendthrift. On the occasion of his fourth marriage, for example, he skimped on official wedding photographer fees and just got his mate, Steve Jobs, to take a few snaps. (History, or rather Wikipedia, does not record what Mr Jobs wore to the wedding.)
But Google “Larry Ellison house” and you will find that his $200 million Californian kingdom has its own man-made lake, its own on-off waterfall and its own zip code (probably). In 2008, Mr Ellison won a you-couldn’t-make-it-up $3 million tax break after his lawyers successfully claimed that the house suffered from “significant functional obsolescence”. It turns out there is a limited market for 23-acre estates modelled on 16th century Japanese summer palaces, especially as 16th century Japanese summer palaces tended not to have stadium-sized video projectors plonked at the end of drained swimming pools filled by giant subwoofers.
I’ve never been to Japan, the 16th century or Mr Ellison’s stately pleasure dome, though, so it’s hard to be certain that any of this is true.
It all has the air of the fantastical, just like BP’s desperate attempts to plug the Deepwater Horizon well with everything from golf balls to rubber tyres. Relations between the Titanic director and the “morons” at BP appear to have strained, but I retain hope that Washington will send Mr Cameron in with his submersible cameras, if only to distract him from making Avatar 2. And if he could take Abramovich, Ellison and the rest of the world’s private jet owners down along for the ride, so much the better. The leaking plumes of black coating the sorry birds along the Louisiana coastline are a direct visual manifestation of the unfettered and astronomical exploitation of natural resources by such men, while their serfs are herded, numbed and guilt-tripped. Where is Judi Dench when you need her?
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Business podcast: Episode 20
John Collins discusses Paddy Power’s proposals to fund the horse racing industry, talks to Caroline Madden about the unemployed self-employed, hears about new research from the Institute of Directors, and chats to Laura Slattery about Ryanair’s results.
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WSJ joins the chorus of approval for Ireland
For anyone who hasn’t seen it the main editorial in the European edition of today’s Wall Street Journal is entitled The Irish Example. It’s quite a complimentary piece which says that unlike Greece or Italy the Irish government made its cuts early and deeply.
“The last year-and-a-half of Irish asceticism is now seen as Europe’s Ghost of Frugality Future, and politicians around Europe could do worse than to look at Ireland’s cuts as a model.”
It also points to OECD research which suggests the drop in costs and demand has improved our competitiveness and as a result growth could pick up quicker than expected. This chimes with research from Ernst & Young this morning which suggests Ireland’s prospects are more favorable than those of other indebted European countries such as Greece and Portugal.
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Does Google’s ambition know no bounds?
On the internet it’s invariably the kiss of death for your business if Google decides to enter your space. With the exception of social networking it’s become a major player in almost every new category it enters – just look at the popularity of Gmail where Hotmail once reigned supreme.
This interesting Businessweek article highlights the internet giants latest addition – a trading floor staffed by former Wall St types. They have been hired to manage Google’s $26.5 billion in cash and short-term investments. As you’d expect Google’s engineers have written them some very funky tools to help them with the job.
Can’t imagine there was too many problems luring staff from Wall St to California with the lure of Google stock, a laid back environment etc. But I think the big investment banks can rest easy for the time being that Google is going to start luring away their clients.
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