Today's other business

THE NUMBERS

18

Percentage capital gains tax rate that private equity executives (and all other business owners) in the UK will now pay after the scrapping of a relief that allowed them to pay as little as 10 per cent, or "less tax than my cleaner", as one private equity boss uncomfortably put it.

€1.4 billion

The sum that Irish venture capitalists expect to have available for investment in Irish businesses by the end of the year, with much of the money headed for technology, knowledge- based and life sciences firms, says the Irish Venture Capital Association

58

Percentage of Irish workers who are considering a complete career change, according to a poll of the itchy-footed workers visiting recruitment site Monster.ie. But how many people actually go through with it?

QUOTE of the WEEK

"For more years than I care to remember, I've been banging on about property investment."

- A non-executive director of property firm Brendan Investments, a man named Eddie Hobbs, greets investors reading the company's brochure. The firm has published an updated prospectus, having based its original plan on a year-old market analysis.

GOOD WEEK

Royal Bank of Scotland

After more than six months of protracted bidding, counter-bidding, legal rows and credit crunch hiccups, a consortium led by Royal Bank of Scotland has won the battle to buy Dutch bank ABN Amro in Europe's biggest ever banking takeover. It now plans to break up the bank into baby ABN Amros.

African companies

Forget about food aid, emergency flood relief, HIV drugs and an end to conflict, sub-Saharan Africa finally has the one thing it really needs: a share index. Investment bank Renaissance Capital, creators of the index, said it would spur investment in the continent's growing economies.

BAD WEEK

Anheuser-Busch

As the beer giants pick sides in the industry's game of consolidation, it's Miller and Coors in one corner and Budweiser in the other. But following the merger of SABMiller and Molson Coors' US brewing operations this week, will Bud owners Anheuser-Busch now need to line up brewer InBev (Beck's, Stella Artois, Leffe) for its team?

London 2012

Building the main Olympic stadium in London's Lower Lea Valley will now cost £496 million (€718 million), a 77 per cent increase on the £280 million suggested in the bid document for the Olympic Games. Olympic budgets have been subject to extra scrutiny since the bidders embarrassingly forgot to consider the cost of dreaded VAT in their initial calculations.