Monday Newspaper Review - Irish Business News and International Stories

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Monday Newspaper Review - Irish Business News and International Stories
By Finfacts Team
Nov 28, 2005, 08:23

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The Irish Independent reports that almost 90pc of Irish chief executives expect Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth of more than 2pc to be achieved in 2006, a new survey has revealed.

The survey found that 59pc of respondents expect growth of between 2pc and 4pc next year, and a more optimistic 30pc expect Irish GDP growth in 2006 to be in the order of 4pc to 6pc.

The eighth annual CB Richard Ellis Gunne survey of the top 1,000 companies in Ireland also found that just 1pc expect growth to exceed 6pc next year.

Economy

Almost three-quarters of the respondents to the property consultants' survey felt that the Asian economy is likely to be the best performing economy over the next three years, with 17pc believing that the US economy would, more than likely, be the best performing. Only 6pc of Irish CEOs believe the eurozone economy would outperform other economies over the three years, while a mere 4pc identified the UK economy as the most likely to outperform other economies in the period to 2008.

Despite fears of imminent interest rate rises, 73pc of Irish CEOs who responded to the survey expect interest rates to rise only slightly in 2006, while 24pc expect interest rates to remain at current levels.

Only 1pc of the top 1,000 CEOs expect interest rates to rise significantly next year.

Another encouraging trend is that almost half of the respondents to the survey increased staff numbers in the last 12 months.

Furthermore, almost 75pc of respondents expect to retain existing staff levels, or to increase staff numbers in 2006.

For the third year running competitiveness was identified by the CEOs as being the biggest challenge facing the Irish Government next year. As a result, 35pc of respondents expect that foreign direct investment into Ireland will at best remain stable this year, and a further 44pc expect foreign direct investment to fall.

Property

According to the survey, property is gaining in popularity as an investment medium with bank deposits becoming less favourable.

Marie Hunt, director of research at CB Richard Ellis Gunne, said property is the number one choice of investment for 68pc of Irish CEOs - a slight improvement on last year, when 63pc of respondents chose property as their favoured investment.

In contrast, just 4pc of respondents list bank deposits as their preferred investment medium compared with 9pc a year ago.

Fewer than one-third of the leading chief executives in Ireland identified equities as being their number one choice for investment (up from 25pc in 2005).

The Irish Independent also reports that the Irish Hotels Federation has called on the Government to provide €10m a year over five years to help Shannon Airport thrive, once the Shannon stopover ends.

The federation stressed the need to prioritise infrastructural road improvements for the region, with immediate action required on upgrading the quality of the Galway to Limerick road, improving the rail network and completion of the Dublin to Limerick motorway as per the Government's Transport 21 plan.

It added that these must have a deadline for completion by the end of 2008 when the new US-Ireland air agreement comes fully into effect.

An IHF spokeswoman said these infrastructure developments were a critical factor to sustain tourism and business activity levels in the Shannon region, and to maximise rail and car travel potential. The IHF said the €10m a year was needed to generate business and economic growth in the region and safeguard the thousands of jobs and industries operating along the western seaboard.

"Dedicated marketing efforts, specifically promoting the Shannon region to the US and improved regional transport infrastructure, are the two vital elements to ensure that all commercial interests in the Shannon region are given the opportunity to adjust to the air transport environment following the proposed transition period in 2008," the spokeswoman said.

The Irish Times reports that Irish Ferries and the Siptu trade union have agreed to attend exploratory talks today amid fears of a further escalation of their dispute over company plans to replace Irish crews with cheaper foreign workers.

The move comes following yesterday's diversion of an Irish Ferries vessel from Rosslare to Dublin when harbour workers in Co Wexford refused to allow the ship to dock at its original destination.

The MV Normandy docked in Dublin Port shortly before 11pm last night - almost 24 hours after leaving Cherbourg, France, with more than 100 passengers on board.

A Siptu spokesman said it had lifted its threat to block the ship from docking at Dublin Port on "humanitarian grounds".

Earlier, Siptu workers in Rosslare refused to allow the vessel into the Co Wexford port despite claims from Irish Ferries that a crew member had been injured on board.

The Normandy had departed from Cherbourg more than eight hours after Irish Ferries had been informed by Iarnród Éireann (Irish Rail), operators of Rosslare Port, that the vessel would not be allowed to dock there. An Irish Ferries spokesman rejected suggestions that passengers had been used as "hostages" in the dispute.

Meanwhile, the Labour Relations Commission has confirmed that it has invited Irish Ferries and Siptu to attend exploratory discussions today. The company is due to attend in the morning, and the trade union in the afternoon.

The National Implementation Body, the State's partnership watchdog, is also monitoring the dispute and is expected to become involved if the LRC initiative fails.

In a separate development, the executive council of the trade union umbrella group Congress is meeting tomorrow to discuss plans for a national day of protest over plans by Irish Ferries to outsource jobs.

Siptu had called for a national protest this Friday, but it is understood the Congress executive is more likely to organise the action on Thursday, December 8th, when schools will be closed.

While Irish Ferries had managed to sail the Normandy this weekend, the company's three other ships remain moored in Dublin and Wales amid threats of further protests from crew.

Four officers on the Isle of Inishmore, moored in Pembroke, remain barricaded in the ship's control room.

The stand-off with management at the Welsh port escalated for a time yesterday when the officers sealed off the access bridge for several hours, preventing replacement crew from coming on board.

Siptu says the blockade was lifted when management assured the protesters that they would not bring on board replacement officers. However, Irish Ferries has denied knowledge of the incident.

Alf McGrath, head of human resources at Irish Ferries, said he did not anticipate a service on the Isle of Inishmore today. Bookings have also been suspended for the Ulysses, which is similarly stranded in Holyhead, and on the Jonathan Swift, moored in Dublin Port.

Don Hall, head of media relations at the company, defended its decision to sail the Normandy on Saturday night despite having been told by Iarnród Éireann that it would not be able to dock in Rosslare.

Mr Hall said there was "no impediment to the safe operation of the service" and as a result Irish Ferries had asked Iarnród Éireann to fulfil its contractual obligations and allow the vessel into the port.

An Iarnród Éireann spokesman said: "We would like to be able to facilitate our consumer but we made it clear before they set sail what the situation was. We are unhappy the situation has developed in this way."

Iarnród Éireann is to hold separate talks with Siptu at the LRC tomorrow over the union's decision to refuse to deal with the Irish Ferries vessel at Rosslare.

In a related development, private-sector trade union leaders are meeting today to discuss the dispute and whether it should preclude them from getting involved in talks on a new national pay agreement.

The Irish Times also reports that An Post, which up until recently could not pay the terms of Sustaining Progress, intends to spend €30 million next year on upgrading its security systems and renovating its buildings.

This year the company spent about €7 million on capital projects, but according to estimates submitted to the Department of Finance the company will spend €30 million in 2006. This represents an increase of more than 300 per cent.

A spokeswoman for the company said about €15 million was earmarked for a major security upgrade to the retail operations of the company. This will involve installing new security features, including CCTV and alarms, in many of the company's 1,614 post offices. An Post said it was responding to increased threats to some of its post offices, particularly in isolated rural areas.

The remainder of the funds will be used to upgrade regional offices, extend some mail centres and bring in fresh IT equipment. One of the reasons for this is that An Post is trying to re-integrate the parcels business SDS back into its core mail operation. This operation was closed last year.

An Post rejected suggestions that recent clashes with the Communication Worker's Union (CWU) could make this the wrong time to be making investments of this size. "This is an investment for everyone in the company," said the spokeswoman.

The board of An Post last week accepted a Labour Court recommendation aimed at resolving a long-running dispute at the company which had threatened to disrupt postal services in the run up to Christmas.

Under the Labour Court recommendation, around 8,500 members of the CWU will receive outstanding pay increases due under the Sustaining Progress agreement without conditions. An Post had previously sought to link the payment of the increases to reform in its collection and delivery operations with a view to reducing overtime costs.

The company posted turnover in 2004 of €750 million and a €7 million pre-tax profit. It has been accused of over stating its financial problems, but senior executives claim that if An Post had paid the full terms of national agreements over the last year the company's finances would have gone back into the red.

The company also argues that An Post needs to deal with long-term embedded costs and face up to a new era of competition.

From next year private companies will be able to distribute letters weighing more than 50g and ordinary letter post will be open to competition in 2009. The Minister for Communications, Noel Dempsey, recently warned he would bring forward the date of full liberalisation if the problems at An Post were not sorted out.

The Irish Examiner reports that Taoiseach Bertie Ahern disclosed yesterday that European Commission negotiators have been pulled back from exceeding the agriculture mandate they had been given by member states for the world trade talks.

Irish farm leaders have criticised EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson on the conditional concessions he has already made on farm products ahead of the World Trade Organisation ministerial meeting in Hong Kong next month, and claimed he had gone beyond his mandate.

But the Taoiseach, at a commemoration for former Agriculture Minister and War of Independence leader Sean Moylan in Kiskeam, Co Cork, said that situation had been pulled back.

"Thankfully, I think we have reined that in during the past few weeks.

"We have a situation now where the Agricultural Council and the General Affairs Council have given a very clear line of what the mandate is," he said.

Responding to questions, he said Mr Mandelson was trying to go outside the mandate.

"We believe he was trying to go too far. I think we have pulled that back now," he said, stressing he believed the EU is now going into the negotiations in a more satisfactory position than Mr Mandelson was trying force it into a month ago.

Mr Ahern said that as a trading nation, Ireland would like to see a decision taken in Hong Kong but not a decision at any cost. Trade liberalisation is a good thing, particularly for an open country like ours.

"We certainly believe the negotiations have to be handled very carefully," he said.

The Taoiseach said last week's sugar reform negotiations were very difficult, but he believed Ireland got a satisfactory arrangement in the end because there is another two years to continue growing.

"And then we got very substantial resources, far higher than what they were offering us in the first place," he said.

Mr Ahern said Agriculture and Food Minister Mary Coughlan now has a substantial package which she will be able to use to try and ease the impact and move forward.

But IFA president John Dillon warned that farmers' involvement in social partnership could be severely tested, depending on how the Government decides to allocate EU compensation to beet growers.

"To give the compensation to Greencore would undermine the whole process and irrevocably damage the principle of inclusion," he said, adding that it would be a political scandal for the Government to give the company €130 million of windfall funding.

The Financial Times reports that Britain is to propose significant cuts to the European Union’s budget, with some of the continent’s poorest countries losing aid, in a move to help resolve the row over the UK’s €5bn budget rebate.

Senior British diplomats say there will be significant changes to the proposed €871bn seven-year budget rejected at a fractious summit in June.

Britain’s EU presidency plan has caused concern in countries that stand to gain most from the 2007-2013 budget, including those in eastern and southern Europe. But Tony Blair, British prime minister, will argue that every country must share the pain if a deal is to be struck at the Brussels summit on December 15-16.

On Sunday night Mr Blair met Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, Spain’s prime minister, at the start of an intense round of diplomacy on the margins of an EU-Mediterranean summit in Barcelona. He meets Baltic state leaders in Tallinn on Thursday before going to Budapest on Friday for talks with the leaders of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia.

Britain will produce a new draft budget for an EU foreign ministers meeting on December 7, including reforms to the UK budget rebate, which is set to rise from last year’s figure of €5.1bn as total EU spending increases.

British diplomats say the package will be very different from that proposed by the Luxembourg presidency in June, and blocked by the UK, the Netherlands, Sweden, Spain and Finland. “For some member states a big wedge of British money is the key to the whole deal,” said one, recalling that Luxembourg proposed to peg the British rebate at about €5.5bn. “It’s not going to happen. There is no way we are going to pay the vast sum of cash the Luxembourgers want.”

Making cuts from the €871bn budget proposal would release cash to allow the British presidency to cut the net payments of the Netherlands and Sweden. More importantly the savings could be used to cushion the impact on the UK if, as expected, Mr Blair agrees to negotiate away part of the rebate.

Since Britain has only minimal backing in its campaign to cut EU farm support in the next budget period, the biggest area for savings is in the so-called structural funds for Europe’s poorest regions. Germany would support the cuts, as would France, which wants a tight budget in spite of its support for maintain- ing planned farm subsidies.

Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, Poland’s prime minister, said last week he wanted a deal, but there are growing fears in Warsaw that it could lose part of the €60bn of net EU transfers it was expecting by 2013. But British officials said yesterday that most east European leaders were crying out for a budget deal next month.

Meanwhile, Mr Blair said he would use a meeting next weekend of finance ministers from the group of seven wealthy nations to try to make progress before next month’s Hong Kong trade meeting.

The FT also reports that Swisscom's state owners on Sunday struggled to defend their decision to ban all foreign acquisitions, as signs increased of an impending clash at the Swiss telecoms group.

Speculation mounted about an imminent meeting of Swisscom's board and the possible resignation of leading staff, including Jens Alder, chief executive.

Swisscom officials declined to confirm the timing of any meeting, but said the new circumstances made clarification urgent.

The speculation followed Friday's statement by the Swiss government, which owns 66.1 per cent of Swisscom, that it would oppose attempts by the company to break out of its limited home market by buying counterparts abroad.

Swisscom has been in takeover talks with Eircom of Ireland, and has been seen as a likely bidder, alone or in a consortium, for TDC in Denmark.

Hans-Rudolf Merz, Switzerland's finance minister, and Christoph Blocher, justice minister, tried in separate Sunday newspaper interviews to justify the ban, which has been met with astonishment in Switzerland and abroad.

Mr Merz, from the centre-right Radicals, claimed Swisscom should have known the government's reluctance to back any moves threatening its steady dividend stream Mr Blocher, driving force of the ultranationalist Swiss People's party, said the latest events underlined the need to remove Swisscom from state ownership as it ambitions were incompatible with its role as a dependable revenue source for the state.

Mr Blocher also claimed the privatisation could be completed in 12 months – significantly faster than the three-year process that has been widely predicted for such a complex and controversial move.

Underlining the difficulties of a sell-off, the left wing Socialist party, Switzerland's second-largest political group, said it would demand a referendum as part of its strategy to prevent full privatisation.

The ministers' claims that Swisscom should have been aware of the government's position appeared unconvincing, given the group's attempts in recent months to identify acquisition targets. Even before matters came to a head over Eircom and TDC, the Swiss group was poised to buy Cesky Telecom in the Czech Republic, before being outbid by Telefónica of Spain.

A Swisscom official noted that the group's current strategy document, covering the period 2002-05, makes provision for foreign deals. Even the most recent revision, still in draft form, gives no indication of a change of approach.

The interviews suggested ministers had been traumatised by the collapse of Swissair, the state airline that went bankrupt in 2001, partly because of acquiring stakes in other companies. However, while Swissair bought minority stakes in often unprofitable airlines, Swisscom has focused on full control of successful counterparts.

The New York Times says that as the nation's retail executives began poring over, and in some cases despairing over, sales receipts from the holiday weekend, one pattern became clearer: consumers mobbed discount chains, with their $398 laptops and 5 a.m. openings, but largely shopped right past other specialty retailers at the mall.

The disparity, analysts said, could indicate a tough season ahead for clothing retailers like Gap and Aéropostale and even deeper discounts for shoppers as the chains scramble to build momentum in the crucial approach to Christmas.

ShopperTrak, which measures purchases at 45,000 mall-based merchants, found that sales for the day after Thanksgiving fell 0.9 percent from last year, to $8.01 billion, a figure not adjusted for inflation.

"The specialty guys just got outgunned this time around," said John D. Morris, a retail analyst at Harris Nesbitt.

The winners, he said, were the discount chains with locations outside the malls, apparently the beneficiaries of an 11.4 percent increase in weekend spending among Visa USA cardholders. Wal-Mart reported that a record 10 million shoppers walked through its doors before noon Friday. In a recorded phone call over the weekend, the company said Friday sales "exceeded plans" and that consumers continued to shop after the early discounts expired.

One possible explanation for the in-the-mall, outside-the-mall discrepancy: discount chains, led by Wal-Mart, blitzed consumers with advertising well before Thanksgiving, opened their stores even earlier than last year and offered the most talked-about discounts, like a $188 15-inch flat-panel television at Circuit City and a $77 H.P. four-megapixel digital camera at Staples.

The mall-based merchants, on the other hand, largely avoided circulars or television advertising. Gap, in a surprising break with tradition, stopped marketing its marquee brand on TV after years of aggressive campaigns with stars like Sarah Jessica Parker, Missy Elliott and Joss Stone. (Gap, saying store traffic "deteriorated beyond anticipated levels," is predicting a relatively weak holiday.)

It appeared that the Web snatched at least some of the traditional mall business. ComScore Networks, a market research firm, said online purchases rose 22 percent for the day after Thanksgiving, to $305 million.

Later mall openings may have also hampered specialty retailers. "If you look at the retailers that went all out on Friday, many of them opened at 5 a.m. You did not see a lot of malls doing that," said Ellen Davis, a spokeswoman for the National Retail Federation, an industry trade group in Washington

Karen MacDonald, a spokeswoman for Taubman Centers, said most of the company's 23 shopping centers did not open until 8 a.m., three hours after bargain hunters sprinted into Best Buy, Circuit City and Wal-Mart.

Discounting at mall-based stores nevertheless may have lowered their overall sales for Friday, said Bill Martin, one of ShopperTrak's founders.

For the day after Thanksgiving, the Gap ran a "buy one, get the second half off" promotion; American Eagle Outfitters offered 15 percent off before noon; and by Saturday Aéropostale marked down much of its inventory 50 percent.

At the Aéropostale in Manhattan Mall on Saturday, where striped hooded sweaters and distressed denim appeared thoroughly picked over, Damaris Torres, 23, bought a pair of jeans, regularly $50, for $10. "It's like basically free," she said.

The 50 percent off sale "is really, really good" agreed Yomhyra Martinez, a 15-year-old from Boston, who stood in line at Aéropostale to buy two hooded sweaters because "most of my friends own hoodies."

Despite a slower-than-expected start at the mall, the National Retail Federation stood by its forecast for the holiday season yesterday. It expects sales to rise 6 percent over 2004, which would make this year's performance good, but by no means great. Since 1999, when sales grew more than 8 percent, merchants have learned to live with more modest gains.

In a survey of more than 4,000 consumers over the weekend, the federation found that 61 percent made purchases at discount retailers, 47 percent at department stores and 41 percent at specialty stores. Over all, it estimated that the weekend's spending would rise 22 percent, to $27.8 billion.

A handful of department stores proved a bright spot at the mall. J. C. Penney, whose sustained turnaround has surprised analysts who long ago predicted the death of the midtier department store, said Black Friday broke a record for customer traffic and sales. "The day clearly exceeded our expectations," Ken Hicks, the chain's president, said in an interview.

But customers showed little interest in paying full price. Inside Macy's flagship store in Manhattan, a whirl of gold ornaments and red carpets, customers waved 20-percent-off coupons at the checkout counters. Marilyn Rivera, a 37-year-old single mother, bought two pairs of cowboys boots: designed by Jessica Simpson, for herself; the other by Nine West, for her daughter, both 50 percent off.

"The deals seem to be better than other years," said Ms. Rivera of the Bronx.

It was unclear how much of the increase in spending by Visa users was simply a result of more shoppers with new debit and credit cards. The company said purchases of computers and electronics, a category ShopperTrak largely overlooks because the biggest sellers have moved out of the malls, rose 20.6 percent.

Spending on home furnishings, meanwhile, jumped 14.1 percent. "You don't make those kinds of purchases if you are not feeling somewhat comfortable with your financial position," said Paul Cohen, a vice president at Visa.

On Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, that comfort was apparent. Kathleen McLean, a 41-year-old lawyer from South Dartmouth, Mass., split four bags from American Girl Place with her husband. Neatly packed inside were two pairs of pajamas, one for her niece, the other for her niece's American Girl doll.

"I kind of went overboard," Ms. McLean said.

The NYT also reports that in pop culture, nothing lasts forever. But U2 is coming close.

On the surface, the formula U2 used to send 20,000 fans into sing-along rapture at Madison Square Garden last Tuesday night was as old as rock 'n' roll: four blokes, three instruments, a bunch of good songs. Add fans, cue monstrous sound system, light fuse and back away.

But that does not explain why, 25 years in, four million people will attend 130 sold-out shows this year and next that will gross over $300 million and how their most recent album, "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb," has already sold eight million copies.

For that, you have to look at U2 less as a band than as a multimillion-dollar, multinational media company, one of the smarter ones around.

"We always said it would be pathetic to be good at the music and bad at the business," said Paul McGuinness, the band's manager since the beginning. And while U2 hasn't become a Harvard Business School case study (at least not yet) it offers an object lesson in how media can connect with their customers.

MEET THE CONSUMERS WHERE THEY LIVE For years, the U2 fanzine Propaganda was used to feed the tribe. The band's Web presence was restricted to temporary sites for specific tours. But in 2000, U2 opened an extensive Web site, with an index to every song and album, lyrics, tour news that is refreshed nightly and subscriber features - for those die-hards willing to part with $40 - that allowed them access to tickets, exclusive content and streaming downloads of every song and video the band has ever made.

APOLOGIZE, THEN MOVE ON With the Vertigo tour, it became apparent that some of those fans who had paid good money to join U2's Web site had been elbowed aside by scalpers in the scrum for tickets. The band's response was to apologize immediately and promise to do better.

"The idea that our longtime U2 fans and scalpers competed for U2 tickets through our own Web site is appalling to me," the drummer Larry Mullen wrote in a statement issued by the band as soon as the problem arose. "I want to apologize to you who have suffered that."

EMBRACE TECHNOLOGY While other big acts were scolding and threatening fans for downloading music or, in the case of Metallica, suing Napster, U2 was busy working on a new business model.

A collaboration with Apple yielded a U2 special edition iPod that was a smash hit and gave visibility to the band at a time when most radio station playlists don't extend much beyond a narrow selection of pop singers. With iTunes, U2 produced what may be the industry's first downloadable version of a box set, offering the band's entire musical history for $149.

"We thought it was an opportunity to be taken with both hands," said Mr. McGuinness. Contrast that statement with anything from Hollywood on digital technology in the last three years.

DON'T EMBARRASS YOUR FANS Sure, U2 has recorded some clunkers (1997's "Pop" comes to mind) but the band works and reworks material until it has a whole album's worth of songs, no filler. Last Tuesday, the band played at least four of the songs from the current album, giving the songs a shot at entering the pantheon and affirming U2's status as a contemporary band, not a guilty pleasure or retro musical act that covers their own earlier greatness. (Quick, what's the last Rolling Stones' album?)

"Don't embarrass your fans," Bono told The New York Times last year. "They've given you a good life."

BE CAREFUL HOW YOU SELL OUT U2 has been offered as much as $25 million to allow a song to be used in a car commercial. No dice. They traded brands, not money, with Apple. Bob Dylan may wander around in a Victoria's Secret ad and The Who will rent "My Generation" to anybody with the wherewithal, but the only thing U2's music sells is U2. Just because it will fold and go in someone's pocket - The New Yorker publishing ads illustrated by its cartoonists comes to mind - does not mean it will be beneficial over the long haul.

EMBRACE POLITICIANS, NOT POLITICS I watched Bono, during the Republican Convention last year, hold Bill O'Reilly of Fox News rapt with a lengthy discussion of AIDS in Africa. Last summer, he posed for a photograph with President Bush, congratulating him for the work his administration had done for Africa.

"Their credibility is very strong," said Gary Bongiovanni, editor in chief of Pollstar, a trade magazine covering the concert industry. "I don't think there is anybody who doesn't believe that they are sincere in what they are doing."

(Bono came close to jumping the shark by donning a blindfold and miming a prison torture scene during "Bullet the Blue Sky," the band's fatwa against United States military intervention and then saying at the end of the song, "This is dedicated to the brave men and women of the U.S. military." Which of these things, Bono?)

IT'S CALLED SHOW BUSINESS FOR A REASON In 1980, I was standing with my sister at First Avenue bar in Minneapolis watching a then little-known band from Dublin take the stage. The Edge, the band's lead guitarist, kicked into a chiming, ringing salute, the opening chords of "I Will Follow." Bono ambled out, absently drinking a glass of water and when the drummer kicked in, Bono tossed the water into the lights above him, a mist enshrouding him - and us - as he stepped to the mike.

Much theatrical and musical combustion ensued, on that night and in the decades since. The current show is a testament to reinvestment, with a huge lighting and stage structure that managed to make Madison Square Garden seem like a cozy church, the backdrop for a secular sacrament. The Vertigo tour included seven curtains of lights, consisting of 12,000 individual bulbs, and a heart-shaped runway that may have wiped out a few hundred prime seats, but allowed thousands more to feel engaged as The Edge and Bono strode out along it during songs.

SEIZE THE MOMENT, BUT DON'T STEAL IT For years, U2 declined invitations to play at the Super Bowl, but the first one held after the attacks of Sept. 11 had special significance. Bono, in the middle of singing "Beautiful Day," slyly opened his coat to hundreds of millions of viewers and revealed it was lined with the American flag. The band adopted industrial and electronic motifs into their music in the 90's to give currency to their sound and then promptly stripped it down for the current tour. Not every gesture and instinct resonates: Let's not forget Bono's decision to go with a mullet in the mid-80's.

AIM HIGH As the central icon in the Church of the Upraised Fist - a temporary concert nation of gesturing frat boys, downloading adolescents and aging rockers reliving past glories - Bono can command his audience to do anything. During the concert last Tuesday, Bono asked the audience to send, via text message, their full names to One, an organization that fights AIDS and global poverty. They happily complied and their names were flashed on screen between encores. MTV's "Total Request Live" may attract a wider audience, but its members probably aren't made to think they are part of something bigger.