Business week in review
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Paul Tucker, the Bank of England's deputy governor, was confirmed as firm favourite for the top job at Threadneedle Street on Monday. As the deadline for applications passed, it emerged that a series of potential heavyweight rivals had declined to put their names forward for the UK's most powerful unelected post.
Former civil service head Lord O'Donnell and Goldman Sachs star Jim O'Neill are no longer in the running, though Steve Hawkes, business editor of The Sun, is continuing his campaign. Suspicions that Tucker and Hawkes have made a "Granita" pact could not be verified at time of going to press.
Not content with being Russia's richest man with a near-30 per cent stake in Arsenal Football Club, Alisher Usmanov on Wednesday confirmed plans for a London float of his mobile phone company. MegaFon, which is poised to capitalise on a Russian smartphone boom, will list about 15 per cent of its shares. That should raise a healthy $2bn (£1.3bn).
On Wednesday, Kate Bostock, once Marks & Spencer's head of clothing, was named as executive director for product and trading at online fashion retailer Asos.
...at a loss
A nasty start to the week for the boss of everyone's favourite condoms-to-limescale-remover giant, Reckitt Benckiser. On Monday, the company admitted that two years ago Rakesh Kapoor pledged the bulk of his Reckitt shareholding against a personal loan.
This could be in contravention of stock market rules, which state that listed companies must reveal their directors' dealings. For a company that makes Vanish stain remover, Reckitt failed to wipe awaythe speculation over why it failed to make an earlier declaration. A spokesman simply blamed an "administrative error" on the part of the company rather than any fault of Kapoor himself.
The Japanese car-maker, Toyota, suffered a huge dent to its reputation on Wednesday with the recall of 7.43 million vehicles – 140,000 in Britain – because of a risk that window switches could catch fire. Executive vice-president Takeshi Uchiyamada blamed Toyota's success. "The fast growth of the past decade has been too much in some areas for the company to keep up with," he said.
Also on Wednesday, JP Morgan Chase's Jamie Dimon admitted the 2008 emergency Bear Stearns buyout lost the bank $10bn (£6.3bn).
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