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# The briefcase
Here's everything you need to know about business this week
Everyone was talking about allergic non-workers, Ireland’s most-hated company and a Greek tragedy.
EVERY WEEKEND, TheJournal.ie gives its readers the chance to put their feet up and take a look back at all the goings-on from the world of business.
Once again it’s time to delve deep inside The Briefcase for the important – and sometimes less-important – financial news that has come out this working week:
Michael Noonan thinks some people are ‘allergic to work’. The Finance Minister made the comments at a business lunch in Kilkenny as he promised that soon everybody in Ireland who wanted a job would be in work. But the talk didn’t go down too well, with Noonan and his government colleagues accused of having “disdain” for the poor
No prizes for guessing Ireland’s least-favourite company. It was the much-hated semi-state, Irish Water, according to the latest annual survey from the Reputations Agency. That put it below even the bailed-out Bank of Ireland and AIB on the list of popular brands, which was topped this year by Google
Greece found money for the IMF by apparently not paying its people. The debt-laden country made its latest €200 million interest payment to one of its bailout lenders amid claims the anti-austerity Syriza government was stalling on payments for some workers and suppliers as repayment deadlines continued to loom
Newspapers are not a good business to be in. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation shed over half its profits at the start of the year as its news business increasingly acts as a drag. The drop in ad revenue is hardly surprising as more and more readers migrate to other news sources, although local title the Sunday Business Post has at least managed to trim its losses since it emerged from examinership
Germany was left with no trains… or cash. Strike action hit both the national railway network, Deutsche Bahn, and armoured car workers, putting the brakes on both the country’s trains and its ready supply of cash
The Anglo Avenger struck again. Mayo developer Joe McNamara, who earned the nickname for his high-profile protests against the toxic Anglo Irish Bank, unveiled his latest work – a structure outside the offices of London Mayor Boris Johnson. McNamara has been working in the UK and the project was an apparent dig at politicians acting as a “sword through the heart of Britain”
One of Dublin’s swankiest nightspots was put up for sale. The Dawson building, on the capital’s Dawson Street, is on the market with a guide price of €15 million. The complex also includes a guesthouse, restaurant and spa – in case you’ve got that kind of cash lying around
Bank of Ireland salaries were “relatively generous” before the crisis. That’s according to the bank’s CEO, Richie Boucher, who this week told the banking inquiry the bailed-out lender could never fully repay taxpayers “in moral terms” so it was trying to “do it in financial terms” instead
And one for the road…
Everyone knows drugs – alcohol included – make you do things you wouldn’t ordinarily think were a good idea. Like, say, telling your boss at the work Christmas party what you’ve always really thought about him/her.
But some actions are less-easily explained away as a moment of intoxicated madness – for example, running naked through the streets before trying to have sex with a tree.
That was among the acts credited to an increasingly-popular designer drug, Flakka, as this video shows:
MORE: Have a look at our business wraps from previous weeks >
