With banks firing and crying and moaning and balling, its no wonder that it takes someone from traditionally outside that sector to tear it up: Tesco Personal Finance was a joint venture between the supermercardo and the Royal Bank of Scotland. But the former has bought the latter out now for £950m – giving the RBS a much needed £500m profit to play with. The task for the new team at Tesco Bank is to double annual profits from £450 to over £1bn by offering simple banking products with broad appeal. Let’s face it, you do associate Tesco with consistency and affordability so its not a bad brand to start from. You also associate them with being everywhere and crapping on the competition from a great height – more nice attributes for the people looking after your money. With no exposure to the US mortgage crisis that got the competition into this mess to begin with, £1bn profits don’t seem that far fetched.

Decent business news is thin on the ground over the summer holidays. Hurrah then for gasper peddler, Japan Tobacco who have found a novel way to get some column inches: to coincide with the start of the Japanese eel-eating season they have launched a canned yellow fizzy drink made with eel extract. Many believe the fish can boost energy during the muggy summer months and spokesmen for the drink say it is aimed “mainly for men who are exhausted by the summer’s heat.” Given that the tipple is called “Surging Eel” there may be another reason that it is aimed at limp men. Fortunately the drink has a similar taste to broiled eels. Last year Japan was the sole home to Pepsi Ice Cucumber (that did exactly what it said on the tin) – Coca-Cola responded with slightly less appetising “Water Salad.” 

Most contracts stipulate that you can’t set up in competition to your employer for some time after you leave, so over two year’s worth of water has past under the bridge since a bunch of Google employees left to take on the search engine monster. But this week sees the launch of Cuil (Gaelic for ‘knowledge’ – pronounced “Cool”) a rival engine that they claim has an index at least three times the size of Google and therefore gives a better service. Google deny the new engine is more efficient and IT analysts claim the new firm will struggle to defeat Google – including the bully-baiting named Allen Weiner: “I doubt Cuil will be keeping anyone at Google awake at night,” says he. So lets all use Cuil for two weeks and make him eat his words and lose his authority, and possibly job.

Mars has been told to pull one of its fairly amusing Snickers adverts in which Mister T shouts at people from a tank and then talks about testicles. In the ad, T berates a speed walker in tight shorts for being a “disgrace to the man race.” Apparently this has offended the gay community - presumably because the man was walking like the gentlemen I see coming out of Worthing public lavatories. It’s the second time in as many months that Mars’ marketing has got them in hot water – last month M&Ms ended up in court for allegedly stealing the look of The Naked Cowboy, a New York street entertainer who parades around in nothing but a Stetson, underpants and Cowboy boots…well, their nothing if not consistent in where they get their ideas. It’s a wonder they don’t make Fruit pastilles…or a finger of Fudge.