Business this week

Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England, dumped the 'forward guidance' that connected decisions on interest rates to Britain's unemployment rate, which has dropped much faster than the bank forecast. Facing down criticism of his policy, Mr Carney said that forward guidance is 'working' and that 'uncertainty about interest rates has fallen.' The bank will consider a broader range of indicators in its future guidance. It is not expected to raise rates for at least a year. See article

Steady as she goes

Markets responded positively to Janet Yellen's first testimony to Congress as chairman of the Federal Reserve. She defended the Fed's 'tapering' of its asset-buying programme with confidence and predicted it would continue throughout the year, though she was 'surprised' by weak recent data from the labour market. Employers added just 113,000 jobs to the payrolls in January, far below expectations.

Portugal's latest sale of long-term bonds at auction was almost three times oversubscribed. Portugal hopes to follow Ireland and make a clean exit from its bail-out programme this year.

Barclays was criticised for increasing its bonus pool by 10%, despite reporting a 32% drop in annual pre-tax profit, to $5.2 billion. Antony Jenkins, who took over from Bob Diamond as chief executive promising a new era, defended the bonuses as necessary to retain talent in a highly competitive market. Profit at its investment bank fell by 37% last year; bonuses rose by 13%. Barclays is shedding thousands of jobs. See article

BNP Paribas said it had found 'a significant volume of transactions' over the years that may have broken the rules under American sanctions-policy. The French bank set aside $1.1 billion for potential fines in its quarterly earnings.

Carl Icahn, a renowned activist investor, ended his campaign to get Apple to buy back more of its shares, after an investment consultancy advised against it. Mr Icahn had wanted Apple to spend $50 billion on repurchases; it has stumped up only $14 billion. Opinion is divided over the role of Mr Icahn (and activist investors in general). Some see his interventions as undermining long-term performance; others see them as an essential check on entrenched and imperious managers. See article

After six months of speculation Comcast emerged as the winner in the battle to take over Time Warner Cable. The deal to combine America's largest and second-largest cable-TV providers will come under intense scrutiny from antitrust regulators.

Making Hay

The success of Supercell, a Finnish developer of games for mobile devices, was underscored when its annual profit soared 810%, to $464m. Supercell has published just two games, 'Hay Day' and 'Clash of Clans', that are free to download but charge users who want to increase the pace of play. It is launching a third game, 'Boom Beach'.

A political row erupted in Australia about Toyota's decision to shut its operations in the country in 2017. That will bring an end to Australian carmaking: Ford and General Motors' Holden division are also closing down. The government pointed to carworkers' demands, but Toyota said it never blamed the union, and instead cited other factors, such as the strength of the Australian dollar. See article

Tokyo yo-yo

Bitcoin's reputation as the virtual currency of the future was further dented when Mt. Gox, an online exchange based in Tokyo, halted withdrawals, saying it had detected a glitch that suggested someone had hacked into its system to make transactions disappear. A few days later two European Bitcoin exchanges reported a similar 'transaction malleability' issue.

It emerged that Britain's Serious Fraud Office had searched several addresses in London and arrested two people in relation to its investigation into alleged bribery by employees of Rolls-Royce. In 2012 the aerospace company provided information to the SFO about 'allegations of malpractice in Indonesia and China'.

Nestlé, a Swiss food group, sold back 8% of the 29% stake it held in L'Oréal to the French cosmetics company. As part of the deal Nestlé gains full control of Galderma, which makes treatments for skin conditions. This will become the core of a new subsidiary, Nestlé Skin Health, that will focus on the growing business of 'nutricosmetics'. See article

Starbucks did not see the funny side when a television comedian opened Dumb Starbucks, a coffee shop in Los Angeles that mimicked the original in close detail, but inserted the word 'dumb' in front of various items on the menu and gave beverages new names, such as Wuppy Duppy Latte. It was promptly shut down because it did not have a permit to sell drinks.

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