Twitter and Facebook both have compelling promise, if they can behave like grown-up companies

My week: Mr Salmond’s plan is to share the pound in a sterling zone with the rest of the UK, but this idea is not proving popular in the Treasury

Westminster Outlook Ruth Cairnie should be an excellent addition to the board of Rolls-Royce. She is one of the foremost strategists in the City, having plotted Royal Dutch Shell’s advances for three years as vice-president for planning. Then there is this theoretical physicist’s fierce intellect: at Cambridge University, Mrs Cairnie won the Mayhew Prize, awarded to the student “of the greatest merit” in applied mathematics. Finally, she brings breadth of experience: not just an oil executive, Mrs Cairnie serves on the boards of Associated British Foods and Keller Ground Engineering.

Outlook Shares in Applus slumped around 17 per cent this week, only two months after the services group floated in Spain. The online travel company eDreams has dropped 55 per cent since going public in April.

Outlook John Maynard Keynes nailed it 83 years ago. As the great economist wrote: “A sound banker, alas, is not one who foresees danger and avoids it but one who, when he is ruined, is ruined in a conventional way along with his fellows, so that no one can really blame him.”

Economic View: Don’t you love the way in the  US people talk of earnings, whereas we here talk of profits?

Outlook They say youth will have its day. Next adhered to that principle when it appointed Simon – now Lord – Wolfson as chief executive at the tender age of 33, a decision that has worked out rather well for the company.

Outlook It isn’t a great surprise that the results filed by Deutsche Bank and UBS are awash with legal and regulatory costs and provisions.

Outlook They’re playing musical chairs in supermarket boardrooms again, and all the seats are hot ones.

Midweek View: The Med resounds to the laughter of top bankers on their yachts and in their villas, reputations still intact

Outlook: Even so, its £105m fine amounts to little more than a rounding error to Lloyds

Good news about RBS? It’s something of a shock. The sight of a Dodo ambling up Oxford Street would be less surprising.

Westminster Outlook What’s the point of a reshuffle if you promote MPs to the wrong roles?

Westminster Outlook Appropriately for a man whose greatest achievement/failure in the coalition so far has been the privatisation of Royal Mail, Michael Fallon spent his final hours as a business minister announcing a sell-off. The proposed privatisation of Constructionline, though, was rather lost in the reshuffle excitement as Mr Fallon reached the top rank of government with a promotion to Defence Secretary.

Outlook As British firms pour back into corruption-prone Iran in the hope of an imminent end to sanctions, a little-noticed Supreme Court judgment brings some cheer to their stressed compliance departments.