A suitable notion of weak amenability for dual Banach algebras, which we call weak Connes amenability, is defined and studied. Among other things, it is proved that the measure algebra M(G) of a locally compact group G is always weakly Connes amenable. It can be a complement to Johnson’s theorem that $L^1(G)$ is always weakly amenable [10].

We show that if G is an amenable group and H is a hyperbolic group, then the free product $G\ast H$ is weakly amenable. A key ingredient in the proof is the fact that $G\ast H$ is orbit equivalent to $\mathbb{Z}\ast H$ .

We prove that for a Banach algebra A having a bounded $\mathcal {Z}(A)$ -approximate identity and for every $\mathbf {[IN]}$ group G with a weight w which is either constant on conjugacy classes or satisfies $w \geq 1$ , $\mathcal {Z}(L^{1}_{w}(G) \otimes ^{\gamma } A) \cong \mathcal {Z}(L^{1}_{w}(G)) \otimes ^{\gamma } \mathcal {Z}(A)$ . As an application, we discuss the conditions under which $\mathcal {Z}(L^{1}_{\omega }(G,A))$ enjoys certain Banach algebraic properties, such as weak amenability or semisimplicity.

Given a morphism T from a Banach algebra ℬ to a commutative Banach algebra 𝒜, a multiplication is defined on the Cartesian product space 𝒜×ℬ perturbing the coordinatewise product resulting in a new Banach algebra 𝒜×Tℬ. The Arens regularity as well as amenability (together with its various avatars) of 𝒜×Tℬ are shown to be stable with respect to T.

For a locally compact group G and an arbitrary subset J of [1,∞], we introduce ILJ(G) as a subspace of ⋂ p∈JLp(G) with some norm to make it a Banach space. Then, for some special choice of J, we investigate some topological and algebraic properties of ILJ(G) as a Banach algebra under a convolution product.

We show that for n≥2, n-weak amenability of the second dual 𝒜** of a Banach algebra 𝒜 implies that of 𝒜. We also provide a positive answer for the case n=1, which sharpens some older results. Our method of proof also provides a unified approach to give short proofs for some known results in the case where n=1.

Let $G$ be a locally compact group, and let ${{A}_{\text{cb}}}(G)$ denote the closure of $A(G)$, the Fourier algebra of $G$, in the space of completely bounded multipliers of $A(G)$. If $G$ is a weakly amenable, discrete group such that ${{C}^{*}}(G)$ is residually finite-dimensional, we show that ${{A}_{\text{cb}}}(G)$ is operator amenable. In particular, ${{A}_{\text{cb}}}({{\mathbb{F}}_{2}})$ is operator amenable even though ${{\mathbb{F}}_{2}}$, the free group in two generators, is not an amenable group. Moreover, we show that if $G$ is a discrete group such that ${{A}_{\text{cb}}}(G)$ is operator amenable, a closed ideal of $A(G)$ is weakly completely complemented in $A(G)$ if and only if it has an approximate identity bounded in the $\text{cb}$-multiplier norm.