The business week in pictures

Apple says it sold 1.7m iPhone 4s in its first three days, a record for the newest version of its top-selling product, and the company could have sold more but for production constraints. The latest model features video calling and an updated body, although some users have reported problems with reception, apparently due to a design flaw
Photograph: Dmitry Astakhov/AP

The G20 group of developed and developing nations nations collectively pledged to halve their budget deficits by 2013. US president Barack Obama welcomed the commitment, saying he was "serious" about reining in the soaring US budget deficit, and adding that that would present Americans with "some very difficult choices" next year. US President Barack Obama (R) and British Prime Minister David Cameron (L) exchange bottles of beer to settle a bet on the US-UK World Cup Soccer game
Photograph: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

The world's oldest brand – Lyle's Golden Syrup – changed hands when Tate & Lyle announced the sale of its historic sugar business to American Sugar Refining for £211m. ASR inisted no jobs would be lost in the deal, and that it intended to carry on operating Tate & Lyle's long-established refioneries in east London, as well as its facilities in Lisbon
Photograph: Jamie Hodgson/Getty Images

Lord Browne, the former head of BP, was named as the coalition government's Whitehall "super-director" charged with injecting business ethos into the heart of government - a controversial appointment given his resignation from BP in 2007 after he lied in the high court to protect his personal life
Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

Scientists found growing evidence that BP's ruptured well in the Gulf of Mexico is creating oxygen-depleted 'dead zones' where fish and other marine life cannot survive. In two separate research voyages, independent scientists have detected what were described as 'astonishingly high' levels of methane, or natural gas, bubbling from the well site, setting off a chain of reactions that suck the oxygen out of the water.
Photograph: Lee Celano/Reuters

Big Brother creator John De Mol was linked with a bid for Channel Five, which has been put up for sale by RTL. De Mol is understood to be working with Greek broadcaster Antenna on a joint bid, through his investment company Cyrte Investments.
Photograph: Channel Four

A private Treasury assessment of the planned spending cuts revealed that the coalition government's austerity measures would cost 1.3m jobs over the next five years. The unpublished estimates showed that the government is expecting between 500,000 and 600,000 jobs to go in the public sector and between 600,000 and 700,000 to disappear in the private sector by 2015. The figures became the basis for a political row when the Office for Budget Responsibility was drafted in to rebut them
Photograph: Martin Argles/For the Guardian

Lord Alli's media company Chorion reported an 11% rise in annual profits, helped in large part by the animated adventures of a six-and three-quarter-year-old pig called Olivia, who has inspired an unlikely quasi-feminist movement in the pre-school market. Launched in the highly competitive US market last year, Olivia has proved a hit and is now broadcast in 120 countries.
Photograph: Handout

The CBI's boss, Richard Lambert, who recently warned his members that they risked being seen as "aliens" if they did not change their ways, stepped down early as director general. Sources close to the employers' organisation insisted that the 66-year old was leaving early next year – several months before his five-year contract expires – to allow time to appoint a successor. But Lambert's departure follows a series of bruising encounters with the outgoing government and his own members over the future of business regulation and taxation in the post-financial crash landscape
Photograph: Sarah Lee/for the Guardian

Popular anger over economic austerity measures in Greece exploded on to the streets as striking workers brought the debt-stricken country to a halt and militant seamen stopped holidaymakers from boarding island ferries
Photograph: Orestis Panagiotou/EPA