Business diary: SEC: bankrupt firms are high risk. Thanks

Never let it be said the US Securities and Exchange Commission is behind the curve. The watchdog issued a report yesterday, Investing In A Bankrupt Company: A High Risk Venture, after an alarming number of investors were said to assume that the old, pre-chapter 11 General Motors was related to the new group. Thanks chaps, but it's a pity you were a bit slower warning about investing in Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scam.

Dial Samsung for an alphabet soup

Press releases are known for their lack of clear English and for over-egging the pudding, but today's prize for utter rubbish must go to Samsung. The Korean mobile phone group said yesterday that its extended kit sponsorship deal with Chelsea Football Club would "see a significant deepening of the mutually beneficial strategic relationship". For our English-speaking readers, Samsung has paid lots of money to have its name emblazoned on Chelsea's shirts for another few years.

Love hotels on their way to Blighty

British businessman Steve Mansfield has been busy extolling the virtues (or perhaps vices) of Japan's so-called "love hotels", which hire rooms by the hour. Mansfield ("they are leisure hotels, not love hotels") was at it again yesterday, telling the BBC he wants to expand his AIM-listed company, Japan Leisure Hotels, in the UK and create a respectable chain of what are seen by couples in Japan's crowded cities as essential resources. So it's out with the kitsch and camp and in with Travelodge-style blandness, thus fulfilling all those national stereotypes about stiff-upper-lipped Brits being real passion killers.

Great meal, but was it worth $23quadrillion?

As we are continually told, debt has fuelled this recession and, despite having loans and credit cards foisted us, it is irresponsible to rack up too much debt. A big tut-tut then to Jon Searle, a Texan who, according to Visa, ran up a credit card bill of $23,148,855,308,184,500.00 at a restaurant owned by the celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck. "It's an obvious, glaring error," he said. Visa, like Sherlock Holmes, deduced there had been a technical glitch.

Number of the day

67%: The proportion of Britons who know someone who has lost their job since the start of the recession.

businessdiary@independent.co.uk