Business Post
Larry Goodman looks set to buy €31m of shares from Jimmy Sheehan in the Galway Clinic, having bought 10% from Louth accountant Brendan McDonald recently. The most recent accounts for the Galway Clinic show profits of €12.8m. This would bring his stake up to 75% in the clinic. Goodman is locked in various court cases with Joseph Sheehan, Jimmy’s brother. HIG Capital are backing Joseph Sheehan and John Flynn to buy their loans back from Goodman, who bought them from IBRC, although HIG Capital may struggle to get equity in its name without Goodman’s intervention.
Shane Ross has been vociferous against cronyism on state boards and he faces a possible stalemate as he will not get the process changed in a hurry, yet he has 47 vacancies on various boards under his Minister for Transport remit to fill.
The Debenhams examinership will result in unsecured creditors getting 5% of the monies owed to them. With a €25m rent roll and a €36m payroll run, they need reduced rents and more flexible terms with workers to remain in Ireland.
Mattress Mick is damning of how NAMA treated him and his neighbouring businesses who tried to buy a property they operate out of from NAMA.
“Pegasus Life, the British nursing home operator backed by the $98bn US private equity fund Oaktree Capital, has abandoned plans for a push into the Irish market.” The company was planning higher-end apartments with a care angle but found the price of sites and the objections culture were not in its favour and it has folded its tent.
There is a profile of Donegal man Ricky Simms who represents a lot of the big athletes, including Usain Bolt and Mo Farah, via his Pace Sports Management Company.
There is an interview with Willie Walsh. What an amazing career: from representative of pilots union, to having one of the biggest aviation jobs in the world heading up IAG. Walsh says that, “The difference between a manager and a leader is that as a leader you have to be able to stand up and give bad news.”
One wonders where Aer Lingus would have got to as a standalone entity if he was allowed do the MBO he proposed? It should serve as a reminder for any business owners with a lot of ambition that if they do not facilitate an MBO they might lose the key drivers of the business and destroy value in what they have created.
The nature of the dispute between Craven House Capital and the owners of Panda Waste has become clearer. Kennedy Solicitors are acting for Cravan and James Wall Solicitors are acting for Panda. There appeared to be heads of agreement signed in May 2015 whereby Craven House intended to buy “Stretaw”, owned by Eamon and Robert Waters. Craven House is looking for specific performance of the same. Panda is currently seeking competition clearance to buy Greenstar which would take it further south than its current North Leinster footprint.
Mark Roden’s Ding will hit $500m turnover this year. It acquired the French company Transfer Credit recently. Roden tells the story of how Mark English, his COO, tracked down the company having been walking through Paris and saw signs for the company Transfer Credit for sale and followed it up from there.
Deloitte is lobbying for entrants to its Fast50 awards.
There is a feature on companies who are cracking Asia.
There is an interview with 72 year-old Pearse Lyons, founding owner of Alltech, who is said to be worth over €2bn; he started Alltech from scratch in 1980. Interestingly, he has managed to grow to $4bn turnover without diluting his shareholding.
Sean Whelan welcomes Ireland’s yields costing 0.357%, which has us above mid-table in European terms. German rates are now negative, which is hard to understand why somebody would accept less for their deposits than they put in. We have low growth, low inflation and high unemployment, along with record low bond yields struggling to turn the dial. It is hard to justify and proves we are living in a strange world.
The Times also covers the fall in bond yields. The low-interest rates help the Irish Government service its €200bn debt pile by saving an estimated €20m per basis point decrease. However, extremely low interest rates continue to pressure pension fund returns. The combined pension deficit of the top 20 Irish firms stands at €5.9bn as of the end of last month, up from €2.9b at the end of 2015.
Michael Murray gives ten reasons why “banks are no longer the safe option that your granny would have invested in.”
There is a two-page special on how investors might be able to hedge against currency volatility. With sterling/euro at £0.863/€, it is becoming a serious problem for a lot of exporters, particularly those whose costs are in Euro and whose competitors are UK-based.
Róisín Burke wonders if Coca-Cola’s appointment of lobbyist expert Ronan Farren as Public Affairs Communications Director could be linked to a possible introduction of a sugar tax in the budget.
Sunday Independent
Isolde Goggin, chairperson of the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, is seeking more sophisticated methods to monitor potential abuses in the €12bn a year public procurement market. The CCPC is currently reliant on whistleblowers to detect wrongdoing and estimates that “bid rigging” adds between 20% – 30% to public procurement costs. Goggins is also the feature of this week’s interview with Gavin McLoughlin.
TV3 has submitted a planning application to convert c.2.3k sq. m. of existing logistics facility into a new broadcasting studio in Ballymount. The group is known to be planning a third studio. TV3 was bought by Liberty Global subsidiary Virgin Media last year for c.€87m. Liberty is controlled by US billionaire John Malone. Virgin has also announced its intention to buy UTV Ireland for €10m.
FBD has spent around €20m on a new IT system but still has a distance to go, according to chief executive Fiona Muldoon. Losses at the company have narrowed by c.96% to €3.65m as it hiked premiums by 7%.
The restaurant in Harvey Nichols in Dundrum Town Centre has closed down after a deal to take over the outlet by an unnamed Argentinian restaurant company was shelved due to Brexit.
“Laois “Supervet”, Noel Fitzpatrick, of Channel 4 TV fame, booked €11m in sales and a profit of €1.1m in his company’s most recently filed accounts for the year to end of March 2015″.
Wicklow businessman Brian McDonagh, founder of Ecologic Data Centres, is helping a number of tech giants reduce data centre costs by up to €25m per year. The news comes after Apple was recently granted planning permission for an €850m data centre in Galway.
Canadian-based TV giant, Entertainment One, which owns the rights to the popular children’s cartoon Peppa Pig, has raised €331m in funding from an Irish Stock Market bond listing. The bond issue has a 6.875% coupon rate and matures in 2022. Last week ITV made a takeover bid to the firm at 236p a share, valuing the company at more than £1bn.
KBC has not set aside any provisions to deal with the potential costs arising out of the Central Bank’s tracker mortgage probe. Deloitte has been appointed to make sure KBC’s internal reviews comply with Central Bank requirements. KBC’s Irish branch made second quarter profits of €39.5m, up from €17.8m a year earlier.
The then Department of the Environment and Local Government turned down an offer made by Nama chief executive Brendan McDonagh back in 2014. The offer allowed the government to go “rent free” for two years on hundreds of social housing units leased from Nama. The offer was rejected because it was determined the Department would ultimately suffer a net loss.
The row between Greg Kavanagh’s New Generation and Johnny Ronan’s Ronan Real Estate Group over a site in Dublin Docklands has escalated, with Ronan lodging an appeal against a court ruling on the dispute that went in Kavanagh’s favour. The row relates to a number of strips at the Hickey site where Kavanagh owns the leasehold interests and Ronan owns the freehold interests.
Amounts in excess of €1m have been spent by seven state agencies on leases for unused accommodation, according to accounts reviewed by the Comptroller and Auditor General.
The Central Bank has issued a warning on the dangers relating to bitcoin and its risk of being linked to money laundering, financial crime and terrorist financing. The warning comes after the European Banking Authority plans to bring bitcoin providers under the regulation of new anti-money laundering laws. Currently, virtual currencies aren’t regulated in Ireland and there are no protections for consumers when holding or transacting in virtual currencies.
Dan O’Brien discusses artificial intelligence in this week’s paper. Stephen Hawking and other deep thinkers in relevant fields are worried about the possible negative consequences in the advances of AI. The worries come as a result of a computer programme, AlphaGo, defeating a human in a game of Go, a Chinese board game previously considered too complex for a machine to best a human. A study carried out by Oxford University found that 47% of jobs in the US could become automated in the next 20 years, while a more recent OECD paper found that only 9% of jobs are at high risk of being automated.
This week’s paper includes the Independent’s 30 under 30.
Sunday Times
“Management at Actavo, the utilities services business formerly known as Siteserv, are in line for a €6m cash bonus at the end of the year, based on an €100m increase in value of the company since it was bought by businessman Denis O’Brien from IBRC.”
It is expected to be announced during the week that Danske Bank has sold a large proportion of its remaining retail book to Cerberus. Dubbed Project Pluto, and handled by KPMG, it will represent one of the largest sales in residential mortgages seen in Ireland.
JBS, the huge Brazilian beef company which is preparing to move its headquarters to Ireland, has warned that its N.I. poultry business, Moy Park, which it bought for $1.5bn last June, may be negatively affected by Brexit.
Thomas Anderson of the Ward Anderson cinema dynasty has sold 5 of his UK cinemas to rival Cineworld for £94m. Anderson set up Empire Cinemas in 2005 after borrowing €80m from Anglo Irish Bank to buy 16 cinemas being divested from the merging Odeon Cinemas and Cineworld.
Brian Carey highlights that there is likely to be further public discord over the dramatic rise in motor insurance premiums, which are up 38.5% in a year according to the CSO and are likely to increase further. 70% of all motor claims are related to whiplash and soft tissue injury.
As suggested in last week’s Business Post, Boylesports are reported to be bidding £100m for 360 shops to be divested as part of the merger between Ladbrokes and Gala Coral. One of the likeliest rival bidders is Betfred which owns 1,370 shops in the UK.
Carey highlights Dublin Airport’s impressive growth in recent times. Passenger numbers were up 13.4% in the first 6 months of 2016, making it the fastest growing airport in Europe. The airport made a profit of €61.4m in 2015.
The former Clerys department store will be developed into a scheme of shops, offices and a hotel. The development will feature a rooftop “destination” which will include bars, restaurants and entertainment venues. Bennett Construction, the family-owned Co. Westmeath building group, are lined up to carry out the development.
Jon Moulton, founder of Better Capital and former managing partner of Alchemy Partners, has invested €500k in the fast-growing Dublin-based money transfer business CurrencyFair. CurrencyFair raised €8m in March in a funding round which was led by Octopus Ventures, a UK venture capital firm. Other investors include Proxy Ventures and Frontline Ventures.
Fitzbit Investment, a company connected to the family of Willy Smyth has raised €3m from Chinese investors, having raised €3.5m from Chinese investors earlier this year. Another Smyth company, Mirella Investment, raised €2m from Chinese investors. Smyth’s property assets were refinanced out of Nama by Deutsche Bank in 2014.
“Irish marketing and communications group TPI has acquired Dublin event management company Pluto for an undisclosed sum.” Following the acquisition, TPI chief executive said the company would be on track for revenues of €20m in 2017 and now employs 135 staff in two offices in Dublin and England.
Niall Brady analyses the potential introduction of a sugar tax. Two-thirds of Irish adults are either overweight or obese and if current trends continue, Ireland will be the fattest country in Europe by 2030, according to the World Health Organisation. An immediate concern would be an incentive for people to shop across the border if Ireland introduces a sugar tax before the UK and thus creating a substantial pricing gap with the North.
Cormac Lucey brings attention to a recently published internal IMF report which is hugely critical of the IMF’s involvement in the bailouts of Ireland, Greece and Portugal. IMF directors in Asia and Latin America were deeply annoyed by the supposed preferential treatments of the European nations. Internal procedures for approving the programmes also appear murky and the whole process was extremely secretive even within the organisation. Lucey also points out Ireland’s debt levels as a proportion of the state’s annual tax and social contribution revenues remains one of the highest in the EU.
Samantha McCaughren has a piece with Tony Richardson, chief executive of Dublin-based and AIM-quoted medical trials company Venn Life Sciences.
Peter Evans has a piece with Nigel Eccles, originally from Co.Tyrone, and his wife Lesley, founder of FanDuel, an online fantasy sports game site which is one of Britain’s hottest tech companies. The business has been hit by regulatory uncertainty in several states in the US in the past 12 months and has seen its cash reserves falling to $48m at the start of May, down from $274m 10 months earlier. The site has 5m registered users and paid out more than $2bn in prizes last year.
Sandra O’Connell’s “How I Made It” piece is with Malindi Demery, co-founder of Freddy Clothing Ireland, which had over €1m in sales last year.
Nick Webb’s “Inside Track” piece highlights Wexford man Mike Hanrahan’s share in a big pay day last week. Hanrahan was co-founder of online marketplace Jet, which was sold to Walmart last week for $3.3bn.
€60 – Increase in the average household’s annual grocery bill if the sugar tax is implemented, according to the Irish Beverage Council.
6% – The underlying growth in Ireland’s domestic economy last year, according to estimates by @NTMA_IE . @IrishTimesBiz
6.4% – The increase in consumer spending via cash and card for July, according to statistics released by @Visa. @IndoBusiness
20% – The year-on-year increase in new car sales for the January to July period, according to @CSOIreland. @IrishTimesBiz
0.3 – 0.8% – The estimated decrease in Irish growth for every 1% fall in UK GDP, according to the @NTMA_IE . @IndoBusiness
€5.7bn – The pension scheme deficit in Iseq-20 firms, an increase of 97% since January, according to @MercerIreland . @IrishTimesBiz
3.1k – The number of approved mortgages in June, an increase of 22% compared to last year. @IndoBusiness
5% – The Irish economy growth rate for the first half of 2016, according to @DavyGroup. @IndoBusiness
4% – The extra GDP that continued access to the single market could add to the UK, according to @TheIFS. @IndoBusiness
€327m – The total spent on domestic travel in Q1 of 2016, a year-on-year increase of c.22%, according to @CSOIreland. @IrishTimesBiz
38.3% – The year-on-year increase in motor insurance premiums for July, according to figures from @CSOIreland. @IndoBusiness
0.5% – The annual inflation rate for the month of July, its highest level in three years, according to the @CSOIreland. @IndoBusiness
c. 40% – The increase in the cost of rent over the past five years. @examinerbiz