The fragrance firm Coty has pulled out of its $10.7bn (£6.7bn) takeover bid for Avon Products after it said the US cosmetics group had taken too long making its mind up.

The billionaire founders of Cillit Bang cleaner group Reckitt Benckiser yesterday came calling again for door-to-door cosmetics giant Avon with a $10.7bn increased bid and a threat to walk away if the target's shareholders failed to enter talks in the coming days.

Outlook Venerable investment house Schroders has results this morning, and a nice-looking profit of towards £400m is expected (this fund management game's a cinch. The stock market? Child's play.)

Another director of Tesco has picked up shares just days after a profits warning knocked their price down by nearly 20 per cent.

Tim Martin has been predicting the demise of the euro, sometimes with a reference to the pharaoh Tutankhamun (they are equally dead), since the day it was invented. Can't work, he kept saying. Won't work. Shouldn't work. The JD Wetherspoon chairman is now closer to being proved right, which might be cause for a celebratory pint down the local. His own business continues to do remarkably well. Yesterday he reported rising sales over Christmas, but took little credit. They're only up because we're comparing the sales with a period of bad weather a year ago, he said.

Outlook: Tim Martin has been predicting the demise of the euro, sometimes with a reference to Tutankhamun (they are equally dead), since the day it was invented. Can't work, he kept saying. Won't work. Shouldn't work.

The reason forecasting is so often an abject failure is both familiar and predictable

Outlook Warren Buffett's investment in IBM says as much about the evolution of the world's best-known computing business as it does about the sage of Omaha himself. Mr Buffett famously eschews technology companies on the grounds that investing in businesses he doesn't understand is a recipe for disaster. But these days, IBM is not a technology company, or at least not a pure play on computing. Rather, it sees its future as a specialist consultant to organisations large and small seeking expert help with their technology requirements.

We all would like to acquire things for less than their worth. Whether it's houses, antiques, cars or groceries it's always nice to secure a bargain. What makes Henry Dixon and George Godber of Matterley Undervalued Assets Fund excited is their quest to find cheap companies, wherever they may be in the UK market.

Only the departure of a particular man from a particular role at a particular company could have stolen the business headlines from stock market chaos, a surging gold price and the eurozone crisis.

US Outlook: For a man who says his company doesn't need to raise cash, Bank of America's Brian Moynihan has sure raised a lot of cash this week.

The US Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke, risks disappointing financial markets if a major policy speech today does not contain hints of additional monetary easing by the US central bank.

In France and America the super-rich – including Liliane Bettencourt (Europe's wealthiest woman and the L'Oreal heiress) and Warren Buffett, (the US investor who pays just $7m on his fortune of around $50bn) – are clamouring to pay more tax. Yet in Britain, the Chancellor is thinking aloud about cutting the top rate of tax. What is going on?