Business Diary: No room for satire at EMI

They're such a bunch of killjoys over at EMI. For weeks now YouTube has featured a video spoofing the Jay-Z and Alicia Keys track. Newport State of Mind sees the original lyrics replaced with a tribute to all things Welsh. It's been a huge hit online, but search for it today and all you'll find is this message: "This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by EMI Music Publishing Ltd". EMI is no doubt in the right, but where's its sense of fun?

How to lose money fast

We bow to no-one in our admiration for David Buik, the man from BGC Partners who makes so much noise as a media pundit, but his analysis of the ongoing takeover shenanigans at Liverpool FC is surely a little wide of the mark. "The new owner needs passion and commitment above everything else," Buik reckons. Nope, what the new owner really needs is hundreds of millions of pounds in the bank that he or she doesn't mind kissing goodbye to.

Modern art has many forms

More detail reaches us of the great Lehman Brothers art sell-off scheduled for the end of next month. In addition to flogging some of the major works collected by the bank before it went bust, some little mementos of its history are up for grabs. Fancy the sign that used to be on the Canary Wharf office of Lehman? It's expected to raise between £2,000 and £3,000. Or there's even the plaque from the day Gordon Brown opened the building in 2004. £1,500 would probably get you that.

Americans don't want coins

As if the many challenges facing the US Federal Reserve weren't enough, it has a new problem – lack of storage space. For years, it has been minting $1 coins, in the hope Americans would begin using them and it might be able to cut back on paper money which has to be replaced so often. Trouble is American consumers hate the coins and won't use them – as a result, the Fed has $2bn of the coins and is running out of places to keep them.

businessdiary@independent.co.uk