The numbers: Burberry said in a trading update for the six months to September that revenue rose 7%, to £1.1 billion ($1.8 billion), from the same period last year, with double-digit growth in in Asia and the Americas despite a “more difficult external environment.” The company opened nine new stores—including six at airports—but closed eight.
The British government is selling its 40% stake in Eurostar, the high-speed rail service between London and the Continent. Any Quartz readers interested have until Oct. 31 to submit their bids. “The government’s key objective in a potential sale will be to maximize value for money for the UK taxpayer,” it said.
Finland lost its AAA credit rating from Standard & Poor’s last week, thanks to the “loss of global market share in the key information technology sector [and] structural retrenchment of the important forestry sector,” according to S&P. Today, Finnish prime minister Alexander Stubb laid the blame for the decline of its tech and paper industries at the feet of one company: Apple.
On Oct. 13, the US and the UK will engage in a simulation of what would happen (paywall) if a large transatlantic bank went under. Treasury secretary Jack Lew, his British counterpart George Osborne and the heads of both central banks will take part.
Google’s latest report on its implementation of the European ”right to be forgotten,” which allows people to petition to have search results on them removed, shows a backlash against the ubiquity of information about people and their lives floating around on social networks. Facebook had the most Google search results expunged. The second-most requested site is possibly one you have never heard of.
There are many exceptions françaises, and one is the approach to the super-rich. France is the only country in Europe left with a wealth tax. But all the candidates for head of the rightwing UMP party in France—including, most recently, returning former president Nicolas Sarkozy (link in French)—have come out against it as they bid to take on François Hollande in 2017.
Argentina and Brazil, one of the fiercest national rivalries in the world, face each other yet again today (Oct. 11). It’s their first match since Argentina came very close to inflicting the national humiliation of winning the World Cup in Brazil itself. As of this writing, Brazil was leading 2-0. But both the fans and the emotion are absent: This is an exhibition match in Beijing’s Bird’s Nest stadium, in some of the worst man-made pollution imaginable. How did the ”Super-Clasico of the Americas” come to be played in the smoggy Chinese capital?
The central bank of Norway has decided on the design of its next bank notes after a competition, based on the theme of “The Sea.” And—unsurprisingly, given Scandinavia’s reputation for beautiful design—they are pretty special.
Soccer clubs in the English Premier League, the richest in the world, are considering playing a week of fixtures abroad. The Associated Press was told that the league is conducting a feasibility study into the matter, with alternatives to regular-season globe-trotting that include extending the slate pre-season exhibition matches and expanding the existing Premier League Asia Trophy tournament.
In 2012, a dissident attempted to have Bahrain’s Prince Nasser bin Hamad Al Khalifa arrested in the UK during a visit for the Olympics over allegations of torture during the Arab Spring’s 2011 pro-democracy protests in Bahrain. The UK’s Crown Prosecution Service said at the time the prince was immune to prosecution because of his royal status. Today, the High Court in London squashed the original decision: The prince is not immune from prosecution over torture.
The data coming out of Europe’s largest economy have not made for pleasant reading recently. Germany reported today that industrial production fell by 4% in August from the month before, the biggest decline since early 2009. Earlier this week, factory orders fell by their largest amount in five years as well, with orders from outside the euro zone falling by nearly 10%.
Kazakhstan is selling government bonds for the first time in 14 years, and they are the first to include new clauses meant to avoid long, expensive battles over a debt restructuring like the one that has haunted Argentina since it defaulted on $93 billion of its debt in 2001.
American Mickey is giving European Mickey a helping hand.
What to watch for today
When the Apple Watch was launched after years of speculation, it was greeted with breathless coverage by the tech press. More recently, Apple has courted the fashion world—putting the watch in Paris’s trendy boutique Colette and having Jony Ive profiled by Vogue. But to get a real sense of what the Apple Watch is all about, you should listen to the watch bloggers.
Android—the most widely-used mobile operating system in the world made by Google—actually owes a lot to patents owned by its erstwhile rival, Microsoft. There has been a lot of speculation about just how much Microsoft makes from royalty fees from Android handset users like Samsung and HTC. A glimpse was revealed when Microsoft said in a legal filing that Samsung, the biggest Android phonemaker in the world, paid the software maker more than $1 billion a year to use its technology in Samsung phones.
A British businessman has gotten himself into trouble for making injudicious comments about the French and their approach to life and work. It’s not the first time. The French, of course, are easy targets on everything,from the 35-hour working week to trumpeting spending cuts that actually turn out to be a small increase in spending.
Sweden announced that it will recognize the state of Palestine, becoming the first member of the European Union to do so. Stefan Lofven became the prime minister of a new center-left government this month and used his inaugural address to parliament to say that a “two-state solution requires mutual recognition and a will to peaceful co-existence. Sweden will therefore recognize the state of Palestine.”
The French government unveiled its 2015 budget (pdf, in French) with a stern warning that enough is enough. The country “rejects austerity,” the finance ministry said, in a thinly-veiled attack on what it often portrays as a callous German invention. “No further effort will be demanded of the French.”
Today, in European soccer’s elite Champion’s League competition, the current champions Real Madrid will be in action. So will Liverpool, which has won the European Cup five times. And Arsenal and Juventus and more. But among the boldfaced names, one is missing.
Not only is the surging London real estate market a boon for sellers and developers, it’s also giving the British government a huge tax windfall.
Humans are wiping out animals so fast that populations of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish are roughly half what they were in 1970, according to the World Wildlife Fund’s Living Planet Index (LPI), in its latest report (pdf). The index, which was compiled in partnership with the Zoological Society of London and the Global Footprint Network, tracks more than 10,000 populations of 3,000 different vertebrate species, bundling them the way you might with stocks to compose the S&P 500 or a basket of goods to calculate consumer price inflation.
The English football club Chelsea has begun talks to move to the home of English rugby temporarily as it seeks to redevelop its own stadium. It is not the first time that Chelsea has tried to move or redevelop its ground, and it is just one of several teams in the English Premier League trying to find bigger homes at the moment. They’re all betting these new stadiums are the only way to stay competitive—on and off the pitch—in the cut-throat world of soccer.
What to watch for today
