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Business week in review

Saturday 06 April 2013 14:02 BST
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In profit...

Let's get out of the City and London and focus on an Edinburgh-based investment firm.

Very, very in profit after the Easter holiday was David Nish, the chief executive at Standard Life. On Tuesday, it was revealed that he took home nearly £5m last year, over half of which came in the form of a long-term incentive scheme.

That means his pay package was almost double his 2011 deal. However, you can still feel for Nish: his basic salary was only up 1.9 per cent to £790,000, which is a similar increase to the rest of Standard Life's workforce.

Who'd heard of Anthony Salz until Wednesday? Well, quite a few people, to be fair, particularly in legal and media circles, having previously been senior partner at lawyers Freshfields and a vice-chairman of the BBC's board of governors.

But the legal eagle is even better known after publishing his internal review into the way Barclays does business, which found a culture of greed that values short-term gains over the interests of the bank's customers. Compelling reading.

Domino's Pizza boss Lance Batchelor thanked disgusting hot dog-stuffed crust pizzas for impressive first quarter sales on Thursday.

...at a loss

Ivan Glasenberg, the big man of the global mining industry, suffered a rare blow on Tuesday. The seemingly endless process of merging his sugar-to-zinc commodities trading empire, Glencore, with miner Xstrata is going to take longer still to finalise after Chinese authorities said they needed more time to approve the deal.

As a result, the £56bn deal's deadline date has been pushed back for a fifth time, on this occasion from 16 April to 2 May. Approval from China is crucial as the country is the biggest buyer of commodities minded and traded by Glencore.

When's it time for the revisionist "he was a saint really" potted history on Fred "the shred" Goodwin?

Not yet, as the ex-knight of the realm – oh yes, the press will gleefully mention that stripped "Sir" at any opportunity – was one of the former directors at Royal Bank of Scotland that were hit by a £4bn claim from disgruntled shareholders on Wednesday. The RBS Shareholder Action Group claims that directors misled investors over a 2008 rights issue.

Tullet Prebon boss Terry Smith admitted to a "not particularly vintage" 2012 as his pay and bonuses fell by nearly £1m on Thursday.

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