Sunday Business Post
The Revenue Commissioners are working closely with the EU and are going through any case that might have been given exceptional treatment or referred to internally as “tax opinions”. Around 100 such “opinions” are issued every year. Apple’s treatment would fall under such a category.
The GAA is understood to be close to announcing a five-year deal totalling €80m. It is expected to be an extension of the current deal whereby Sky will have exclusive access to 14 games and RTE 25, with 6 shared. EirSport and TG4 will hold onto their existing rights which include the Leagues and highlights of the Championships. RTE had lost the Six Nations from 2018 to TV3 which put the GAA in a strong negotiating position.
Online retailer Littlewoods is expected to take over from Etihad as sponsors of the All-Ireland Hurling Championship.
There is commentary on the Vertex Pharmaceuticals negotiations with the Government about the price to be paid for the cystic fibrosis drug Orkambi and wider commentary about the Government’s stance.
“The Oireachtas finance committee will this week write to the Central Bank and ask it to investigate the treatment of over 2k small businesses that had their loans transferred into Ulster Bank’s internal bad bank.”
Some of NAMA’s assets are held in QIFs, QIAIFs and ICAVs. Under new rules, it will be obliged to pay withholding tax on income from these holdings.
Aer Lingus may offer early redundancy to a number of ground handling staff and move to outsource the function in the New Year. SIPTU are also positioning with Aer Lingus for a pay rise for staff represented by them as the pay freeze previously agreed expires in April of next year.
Jim Mansfield Jr., Tommy Keane (former owner of Heritage hotels), Donal Morrissey (Mount Wolseley developer) and Tommy Tougher are reportedly mulling a legal claim to Europe in an attempt to recover over-leveraged assets that were enforced upon and which they lost control of.
Jam Media chief John Rice is unconcerned about a loss of €780k in 2015 as it has a number of good contracts secured, particularly in the preschool kids’ production market.
The Irish Fairy Door Company is expected to turn over €3.5m this year and €10m next year. About 80% of its sales take place in the five weeks before Christmas.
Louth-based Openhydro has got significant backing from French warship builder DCNS.
Michael Dwyer’s company Empathy Marketing has added dealrush. ie to its stable which already includes pigsback. com, DiningRoom. ie and LuxuryBreaks. ie. Emapthy recorded revenues of €9m last year and expects to top €18m next year.
Cubic Telecom has raised €35m to date and intends to raise a further €15m to fund expansion, including expansion into Japan. The firm was originally founded by Pat Phelan who sold Trustev last year. Barry Napier came in as CEO and has clarified the strategy for the mobile technology company.
Cleverbug is also raising money, having already raised $8m. It has just landed a partnership deal with Ebay.
Tom Lyons reports on the start of the Irish Nationwide inquiry.
Lyons also has a two-page feature on the Denis O’Brien versus the Oireachtas case.
There is a page on the Irish Water saga.
The Provost of Trinity College, Paddy Prendergast, is interviewed by Barry J Whyte. While commercial revenues, research grants and student fees have risen, the state grant has plummeted from €66.7m in 2011 to €44.5m. Trinity now gets 43% of its income from the state; this was 70% ten years ago. Costs are rising and he needs the state to help it strive for world-class standards. He thinks a much less severe version of the US student loan scheme to fund fees could also help the situation.
Former secretary general of the Department of Finance John Moran writes his second of a three-part series.
This week he puts forward the case for spending on infrastructure and not pay rises.
– He highlights Dan O’Brien’s recent stat: our spend on infrastructure is exactly where it was in the later 1990s and needs to improve now that our finances are in better shape.
– Capital spending should not just be seen as housing, broadband, public transport, schools, sports facilities, parks and cultural facilities. We are currently one of the lowest spenders on capital in Europe as a % of GDP.
– PPPs (Public Private Partnerships) can provide a solution to funding some of the amount required.
– Moran sits on the European Investment Bank board and thinks Ireland are missing a trick not using this more.
– We need a plan that cannot be changed by the changing on a whim of new Governments.
– He thinks there should be a minimum floor on capital expenditure to avoid it being the easiest thing to cut when austerity is needed.
Turkish Businessman Rasim Selcuk has invested €3m in opening a pet food factory in Westport, Co. Mayo.
Maryland Healthcare is investing €10m in an 80-bed home to serve the needs of vulnerable adults living with dementia, learning and physical disabilities. Ulster Bank are providing the debt required to fund the project.
Michael Holland’s Fitzwilliam Hotel is adding 30 rooms onto its Belfast hotel. It recently refurbished the hotel and have got a five-star rating following the refurbishment.
Green Beards has opened its second cold-pressed juices retail outlet on Morehampton Road, Donnybrook.
The shortlist for the Deloitte Best Managed Companies in association with Barclays is in the Business Post.
The Business Post have the Agri Business award winners in the paper and there are focus pieces on:
– ICT in Retail
– RITS security group
– County Carlow
– Future of Work summit
Payzone founder John Nagle is “now starting up a fintech incubator in Yangon (formerly Rangoon) with plans to back a similar digital payment type businesses to Red Dot in south-east Asia”.
Sunday Independent
Aldi, the discount supermarket chain, has announced plans to invest €100m in Ireland over the next 3 years as it aims to open 20 new stores and create 400 jobs. According to the latest research from Kantar Worldpanel, Aldi has a market share of 11.3% and its sales grew by 6.6% year-on-year in the 12 months to November. Giles Hurley, the head of the company’s Irish operation, is featured in this week’s interview.
The Irish Whiskey Association is to unveil a new strategy promoting Ireland as a whiskey tourism destination. The new strategy will involve an internationally marketed Irish whiskey trail and call for greater investment support. The campaign intends to grow the number of tourists who visit an Irish whiskey distillery from c.653k currently, up to 1.9m by 2025. Tourism Ireland reports that 10.5m will have visited Ireland in 2016, up from 9m a year earlier.
“A company controlled by Davy Hickey Properties chiefs Brendan Hickey and Hugh Lynn is set to pay 60% more than the guide price for a 44-acre (7.8 hectares) site with potential for the development of up to 400 houses in the commuter town of Navan, Co Meath.” The €6.4m price is a premium of €2.4m to the €4m price set by joint agents Lisney and Smith Harrington.
According to JLT Ireland, Irish charities and sporting organisations are seeing insurance premium hikes by as much as 60%, with the highest increases coming from employers’ liability, public liability, property and business interruption insurance.
Richard Curran’s pieces this week:
– New car sales are up by 22k in the year to November and now stand at 146k. Personal Contract Plans (PCP), in which the customer puts up part of the contract and drives off with the new car, have been a key driver in the rise in new car sales. Since 2014, there have been 360k new cars registered in Ireland. Curran questions whether the success of the PCP could lead to car manufacturers taking a hit if they miscalculate the second-hand value of these cars. Also, the more successful the PCPs are, the more likely there is to be a flood of second-hand cars coming on the market. New car sales have fallen year-on-year for September, October and November by 1.2%, 12% and 20%, respectively.
– Hays Ireland, a recruitment company, released a survey during the week that shows the importance of salaries when it comes to retaining staff. It showed that 73% of those surveyed were planning on changing jobs in the next two years. He ends the discussion by saying that the pay commission needs to ask the question why there is less attrition in the public sector.
Eurazeo, a French investment firm that recently bought Galway-based Fintrax, reportedly approached Kerry-based Monex about a potential takeover. Monex, founded and run by Frank Murphy, specialises in dynamic currency conversion and made operating profits last year of €6.4m, down from €7.6m a year earlier. Monex has been courted by several buyers in recent years, including private equity firm Investcorp and has also been linked with a potential IPO.
Teamwork, a Cork-based software business set up by Peter Coppinger and Dan Mackey in 2007, is set to hire 50 more staff. The company is on track for €14.5m in sales this year and wants to grow that figure to €100m. Previously, it turned down a €14m demand for the internet domain Teamwork. com and eventually secured it for €500k. The business interview in the Sunday Times is with Peter Coppinger chief executive of teamwork .com and is well worth reading.
Padraig Slattery, head of PSG Communications, has invested €34k, through his corporate hospitality firm The Hospitality Partnership, in a tech start-up that aims to solve the skills shortage in Australia’s construction industry. The company, ConX, is based in Sydney and was founded by Slattery’s daughter Annie and son-in-law Keith Moore. ConX is raising €700k and plans to launch in the UK and Ireland next year.
“BWG Group, which owns the Spar convenience store chain in Ireland, will complete a €23m capital investment program for 2016 with the opening of a new cash-and-carry facility in Dundalk, Co Louth this week.” Recently the group reported an increase in sales of 14.5% to €1.4bn and an increase in operating profit by 41%. The group acquired Londis in June 2015 and is headed by Leo Crawford. Crawford, John Clohisey and John O’Donnell are reported to retain a 20% stake in the business.
Taxpayers may now have to wait years to solve disputed tax bills as a new Tax Appeals Commission will deal with the cases. New figures reveal that only 1-in-10 have settled appeals with the Revenue and it is believed the caseload will take years to clear. In January of last year, there was a total of €770m of taxes in dispute, a snapshot at that point in time.
Boodles, the luxury jeweller, has acquired a rare green diamond which it hopes to sell in its Grafton St. store for €275k. In the year to February 2015, the group, chaired by Nicholas Wainright, had sales of £60.7m and pre-tax earnings of £8.1m.
Two resolutions aimed at tidying the balance sheet at Independent News & Media are expected to be passed by shareholders tomorrow. The resolutions would potentially allow for the company to resume shareholder dividends. There is expected to be protests ahead of the meeting due to company’s decision to wind up its defined benefit scheme because it had become unsustainable.
Brian McFadden, the former Westlife star, paid himself £90k in dividends last year through his company BMF Media Limited.
Cyclist Sean Kelly and two-time Olympian Philip Cassidy have written letters of support for Johnny Ronan’s application to develop a 141-bedroom hotel in Enniskerry, Co. Wicklow. The hotel is proposed to be located in the grounds of St. Valery’s House and is aimed at growing the market for sports tourism.
Frank Cushnahan has issued a letter, through his solicitor, in which he said that he “had no knowledge” an alleged fee would have been made payable to him and the English businessman proposed in an information memorandum prepared for prospective Chinese buyers of Nama assets in 2011.
Yoky Matsuka, a health tech executive at Apple, has left the company after only six months with the company. She was hired to lead teams involved with the company’s HeathKit tracking software, the CareKit tool, the ResearchKit and related machine learning algorithms.
Michael Noonan’s ministerial drivers are costing taxpayers close to €100k a year. The two drivers, Denis Dwyer and Gerry Rigney, are paid an annual salary of €33k and claimed a combined total of c.€31k in expenses last year.
Ailish O’Hara has a great piece this week discussing the waves of populism flooding across the globe in the wake of Brexit and the election of Donald Trump. She writes that in Ireland it came in the form of a report to the Expert Commission on Domestic Public Water Services which said the “vast majority” of people will no longer have to pay charges and recommends that normal household usage is funded via general taxation.
Dan White writes this week on the strained relations between the Kerry Group’s plc and the founding co-op and its milk suppliers. The co-op still owns around 13.7% of the plc, with each share reported to have an implied value of €400, and the co-op and milk suppliers are expected to own an ever-decreasing share of the plc going forward. White questions whether the current and future CEOs be able to combine the two within the one corporate structure or whether will they be forced to split the two sides of its business, as Glanbia has already done.
Paul Wyse, the managing director of Smith & Williamson Ireland, has a great article on the importance of succession planning to ensure the survival of any organisation. The article is written with a specific focus on law firms and is filled with good advice.
“The goal of any good succession plan it to get the right person in place for tomorrow’s job. The way to accomplish this is get a match between the firm’s future needs and the aspiration of individuals.”
Sunday Times
Origin Capital, the Dublin-based non-bank commercial property specialist lender, has signed a new funding deal with Morgan Stanley. Origin has already lent in the region of €150m to the commercial property sector in Ireland, in loan tranches of €3m and above. The Morgan Stanley tie-up is expected to target the refinancing of the tens of billions’ of property loans purchased by investment funds such as Cerberus and Loan Star from Irish banks and NAMA. The funding arrangement is open-ended and there is no cap on the funding line. It is also understood Origin has secured a further €37.5m from Tricadia.
Brian Carey’s pieces this week:
– The beauty parade has begun to win the government mandate to float AIB – pitches were received last week. It is understood that the third quarter of next year is being targeted and a minority stake of c.20% will be put to market. The elephant in the room is still the non-performing loan book; while well down from its peak, it still represents 16% of gross lending. The bank’s option to trim it down further are limited as loan sales are out for political and public opinion reasons.
– Carey sums up the recent expert commission on water report well. “The government would not be capable of implementing water charges, so it recommends an inferior tax-based approach.”
– The Central Bank regulator Cyril Roux was on a charm offensive last week, making it clear that the Central Bank would be very welcoming of international banks post-Brexit, countering recent negative press on the Central Bank’s position. Richard Curran, in the Sunday Independent, questions the ability of the Central Bank to provide oversight on large UK Banks and investment houses if they were to relocate here. “The risks would be off the charts and the Central Bank would need to seriously ramp up on expertise if it were to cope with keeping an eye on the activities of these firms.”
– Gary McGann is expected to be appointed as Aryzta chairman at its AGM this month.
Macquarie, the Australian investment bank, is hoping to invest €3.5bn into the Corrib gas field.
Pension funds and other private investors will be offered state-backed rents linked to the rate of inflation to encourage them to buy the homes of up to 100k borrowers with unsustainable debts. The incentive is part of planned reforms aimed at tackling the mortgage crisis by allowing more distressed borrowers to surrender ownership but remain in their homes as social housing tenants under the state’s mortgage-to-rent scheme.
The big message coming out of Cormac Lucey’s piece this week is that by the law of averages, we are now experiencing an “economic bubble”.
A group of investors including Global Reach Securities and Kish Capital have acquired the former Loreto nuns building on St. Stephen’s Green for €8m. They are proposing to build a hotel on the site at No. 77 St. Stephen’s Green, which will have 95 bedrooms split between the existing building and a new nine-story block to be built out the rear. The total investment is envisaged at c€40m.
Leveris, a fast-growing Irish fintech start-up, is set to raise €15m from new investors as it launches its banking software system internationally.
Abercrombie & Fitch Ireland has received a €3m investment from its Swiss-based parent. The Irish business had turnover of €13.5m last year and made a profit of €442.5k.
Cerberus has hit a legal hurdle in its bid to take control of lands at Knocklofty House in Co. Tipperary. A High Court judge has ruled that the investment company did not establish it was legally entitled to appoint Ken Fennell of Deloitte as receiver to the property, which was owned by Denis English.
PTSB has reduced mortgage rates and extended its cashback offer for new customers in a bid to protect its mortgage market share. The biggest reductions are aimed at first-time buyers; they will pay 3.7% variable on a mortgage of up to 90%, down from the previous rate of 4.2%
Ethanol Europe Renewables, backed by the Turley family who were the founders of the car hire portal CarTrawler, recorded a profit of €16.4m last year.
Five defined benefit pension schemes have been placed on the pension regulators watch list as concerns grow that they may have to be compulsory wound up because of the scale of the financial difficulties (the schemes aren’t named in Niall Brady’s article).
The Wild Geese Irish whiskey company is set to enter the Australian market after it won a long running trademark dispute with Campari. The Australian High Court has rejected a request by Wild Turkey, which is owned by Campari, to appeal a decision to find in favour of Wild Geese concerning the non-use of trademarks by Wild Turkey.
Zamano, a quoted SMS marketing and mobile payments group, is making 7 of its 18 staff redundant and has dropped merger and acquisition discussions to preserve cash reserves. Two directors, former chief executive Pat Landy and tech entrepreneur Ed Murphy, have also quit the board. Shares in Zamano have fallen from 15c to 7c this year, valuing the company at €6.8m. Pageant Holdings, as Irish investment group, last week cut its stake in the company from 29% to 19.9%.
The Central Bank is unable to establish the possible cost of an inquiry into 5 former executives of Irish Nationwide that is set to run for months when its gets underway next year. The inquiry has no power to award costs to any of the executives involved, but it can order costs against them. The executives subject to the enquiry are Michael Fingleton, Michael Walsh (the former chairman), Stan Purcell, Gary McCollum and Tom McMenamin.
Directors and management at Draper Esprit, a listed venture capital group, have been awarded share options worth over 4.3% of the company, valued at c.€7.6m.
Goldman Sachs has launched a legal action against Gerry Maguire, a property developer who was one of the so-called Anglo Irish Bank Maple 10.
Atlantic Bridge Capital, a Dublin venture capital funder, is backing a new music-finding app that is headed by a former senior executive at Sony Music. Atlantic Bridge has led a €3.3m investment in Stashimi, which sorts content and news about more than 50k music artists into a real-time information feed.
Marlet, a property group backed by M&G, the investment arm of Prudential, is the preferred bidder on the former ACC Bank HQ at Charlemont Bridge. The office block, on the market through agent Knight Frank, has a guide price of €45m and was pitched as a redevelopment opportunity and is believed to have fetched over €50m.
Universal Innovations, the Co. Wicklow company that supplies barbeques and outdoor heaters to retailers including the Home Depot and Ikea, made a profit of €1.3m last year.
HedgeGuard, a French financial technology company that planned to hire 20 people in Dublin, has closed its Irish office and is currently working with Revenue to discharge a tax liability.
Nick Webb’s inside track this week:
– Annrai O’Toole, co-founder of Iona Technologies and Cape Clear, has teamed up with ex-Precision Construction magnate Michael Boyle to buy commercial property in Dublin.
– Dan and Linda Kiely’s Voxpro opened a high-end customer support centre for the tech sector in Dublin this week.
– Webb thinks the €4.5m fine applied to PTSB due to the charging policy of its subsidiary Springboard does not reflect well on an experienced board.
– INM chief executive Robert Pitt is reported to have considered his position after rowing with chairman Leslie Buckley over how much Newstalk might be worth. Brian Carey’s business focus piece also covers the alleged bust up between Pitt and Buckley. In the Business Post, Ian Guider covers the Pitt/Buckley spat, noting that the share price is down over 1/3rd since this time last year.
– Liam Casey, the PCH chief executive, and electronics group Philips have invested €1.6m in Oraleye, a dental tech firm.
Sandra O’Connell’s small business piece looks at the efforts of small businesses efforts to secure new markets in preparation for Brexit.
3.3% – The rate of jobs growth in Northern Ireland in the 12 months to September, well ahead of the UK average of 1.3% in the same period.
7% – 10% – The predicted rise in retail property rents by 2018, according to @SavillsIreland. @IndoBusiness
4.5% – The agreed reduction in the output of oil by Opec. @IrishTimesBiz
7.3% – The unemployment rate in Ireland at the end of November, less than half the crisis peak of 15%, according to @CSOIreland.
24.4% – Ireland’s tax revenues as a percentage of GDP in 2015, the lowest in Europe, according to @EU_Eurostat. @IrishTimesBiz
4.1% – The year-on-year rise in the volume of retail sales for the month of October, according to @CSOIreland . @IrishTimesBiz
3.4% and 3.2% – The projected Irish GDP growth rate for 2017 and 2018, respectively, according to @Investec_Irl. @IndoBusiness
1.2% – The year-on-year rise in weekly wages across all parts of the economy in the 12 months to September, according to @CSOIreland.