Sunday Business Post
There is a tribute in the Business Post to Anthony Foley RIP.
Questions are being raised on why NAMA sold a neighbouring site to the Abbey Theatre without seeking rival bids.
Mike Flannery of Bartra is warning the government that impending legislation on changing tax rules could spook international investment in Irish property, healthcare, social housing, renewable energy etc. David McWilliams celebrates the introduction saying it will level the playing pitch and calm down property price inflation.
Greg Kavanagh, who cashed in during the week on his mass acquisition of development sites at the bottom of the market, is planning to help Peter McVerry build homeless shelters according to the Business Post.
There is an article about HIQA having the power to close down private nursing homes but not public ones which does not seem like a level playing pitch.
Retail sales for the three months to the end of September were down 0.1%. Fashion, footwear and jewellery have been the biggest fallers in this category. A suggestion that people are shopping in sterling is being suggested as a possible reason for the decline.
“The government is under intense pressure this weekend to establish a full-scale inquiry into alleged anti-competitive practices in the waste sector, after fresh whistle-blower claims were passed to senior ministers and the competition watchdog.”
“An expert has called for the government to establish a cross-disciplinary Commission of Inquiry into the concentration of media ownership in Ireland”.
The Finance Bill has ensured that any EIIS investments will not be subject to the high earner’s restriction.
The Irish subsidiary of Virtu, an electronic trading firm where Charlie McCreevy is a director, reported profits of €8.4m last year.
Frankfurt is beginning to put pressure on Irish banks to act on non-performing loans. There was a recent report from the Central Bank showing the tally of non-performing loans at €45.5bn in Irish banks.
Ardmore Studios went up for sale last week with an estimated €15m price tag. Enterprise Ireland own a third of it. It made a profit of €1.4m last year. Neighbouring Joe O’Connell’s Ashford studios is likely to be a contender to buy it. Róisín Burke has a special on the Irish Film and TV sector. IBI are handling the sale.
Irish Investors in a Belgian hotel group that is up for sale are aggrieved that they have not been accepted into the next round of bidding for the group of hotels in which €44m of equity was originally invested. The sale is likely to leave KBC and AIB whole and equity investors will only get a small portion of their original equity back.
H&M sister brand “& Other Stories” is due to open in Grafton Street soon where A-Wear used to trade from.
Norman Crowley sold his first company to Eircom for €14m, his next one to Rupert Murdoch for €80m and was one of the founders of the $500m revenue business, Inspired Gaming Group. He is now driving on Crowley Carbon; they deliver energy savings of up to 33% to large commercial and industrial clients. They employ 100 people and are a truly global concern. He said that when you sign up to build a start-up, you commit up to ten years of your life. He wants to do something that has a positive impact on the planet as he makes money.
US America Aero Group has bought Eirtrade aviation, an Irish aircraft and engine parts sales company for a reported €18m. Jon Griffin is an investor and adviser to the company.
One51 is expected to have sold its metals division within the next few weeks. There is speculation that its entire environmental division will be seen as non-core to plastics and sold off also.
Boylesports is planning to write to the British Competition Market Authority questioning why its bid was not accepted ahead of BetFred and Stan James for the forced sale of 359 betting shops coming out of the Ladbrokes/Coral merger. Mark O’Neill has joined Boylesports as CFO from the Kerry Group and is interviewed in the Business Post. They are committed to moving into the market across the water.
“The long-running battle between the Alken brothers and Febvre, the €20m wine business built up by their father, was settled in an 11th hour move at the four courts”
There is a special on the rising industrial pressure across the public sector and the prospect of a winter of discontent.
Sunday Independent
“Developer Sean Dunne has launched an extraordinary attack on the court officials administering his dual bankruptcy in Ireland and the United States. He has accused both them and his main creditors – Ulster Bank and Nama – of relying on “narrative fallacy” in an effort “to vindicate their theory” on his agreement to transfer €100m in assets to his wife, Gayle.”
Hines, the US real estate giant, is believed to be in the process of agreeing heads of terms to acquire the “Grafton collection” for a c. €55m sum, well ahead of the €40m price guided by Savills. The portfolio was assembled by property developer and co-founder of Cuisine de France bakery Ronan McNamee and consists of a multi-let block of retail buildings, including Hickeys Pharmacy on Grafton St. The properties are offering a current annual rent roll of €1.95m, an apparent net initial yield of c. 3.2% – there must be some upside in the rent roll.
Tom O’Mahony, chief executive at Origin Enterprises, saw his pay decline by c. 80% last year, from €3.16m down to €701k; according to the company’s latest annual report. Earnings per share at the agri-services business declined from 60.1c to 44.5c in 2016. Kate Allum, chair of Origin’s remuneration committee, said: “based on these results no bonuses were paid to executive directors in respect of the 2016 financial year”.
Richard Curran comments that the government debt and deficit measures have become meaningless as a result of “leprechaun economics”. Currently, the level of interest payments on our national debt is running at 9.6% of government revenue. Meaning that almost 1 in every 10 euros collected by the government goes to servicing our national debt. This compares to 7.6% in Greece.
Oisín Fanning’s San Leon Energy, an Irish oil and gas exploration company, is considering whether to appeal against an adverse court ruling in a £13m dispute with Dutch investment company Avobone. The dispute is focused on a San Leon subsidiary’s attempt to buy, from Avobone, the remaining 10% of a Polish asset that San Leon already own 90% of.
“The Central Bank is understood to be witnessing a material uplift in inquiries from financial firms mulling a relocation from London to Dublin, as the UK moves towards Brexit.”
The Great Northern Distillery, based in Dundalk, Co. Louth, has secured an additional €5m funding through the EIIS, bringing its total amount of funding raised to €12.5m. The EIIS will be used to lay down its whiskey stock for three to four years and, according to Cantor Fitzgerald, will earn a rate of return of 14.5% for Investors. The business recorded €9.4m in turnover in the 12-months to April 2016 and EBITDA of €2.4m. Its backers include John Teeling, James Finn and David Hynes who were the founders of Cooley Distillery, which was sold in early 2012 for $95m.
Ronan Daly Jermyn, a Cork-based law firm, is looking to add 25 new staff members by the end of next year.
Aerogen’s chief executive, John Power, has said the pharmaceuticals business is likely to need c. €60m of capital in the next five years to complete drug/device combination products.
Gareth Murphy, the Central Bank’s outgoing director of markets supervision, has warned that the ongoing HR crisis at the banking regulator “would lead to issues being missed”.
Mike Harris, head of the cyber security team at Grant Thornton in Dublin, warns that employees who post work-related information on social media are making their firms more susceptible to sophisticated hackers. Harris states that hackers are increasingly using social-engineering techniques to scam companies out of millions by using fake emails and stolen identities culled from online personal data.
There is an excellent interview with Denis Brosnan in the paper this week. Brosnan, the founder and former chairman of Kerry Group, has recently taken up the role of chairman in the Irish agri-tech business BHSL. BHSL is set to expand globally after securing worldwide patents to turn poultry manure into fuel for energy generation on farms. In addition to his ventures with BHSL, Brosnan is executive chairman of the SPV tasked with €500m worth of investment across Limerick city. BHSL has appointed John English and Martin Higgins, of Limerick and Dublin-based Focus Consulting, as its corporate finance advisors in an equity fundraising round to support its international expansion. It is understood that this is being led by, both directors at Focus Consulting. Focus Consulting has been very active in new technology, renewable energy, healthcare and food sectors in recent years.
John Saunders, president and chief executive of Fleishman-Hillard, offers his views on the PR industry.
Ryanair and Kerry Group have both had to reduce their full-year guidance figures on the back of a plummeting sterling. Merrion Capital’s Darren McKinley thinks this is just the beginning and expects “a continued trend of Irish companies having to lower their forecasts as a function of their sterling exposure”.
The Irish Times finance director Peter Callan and commercial sales director Vivien McKechnie have taken redundancy packages as part of cutbacks aimed at reducing the running cost of the paper by €4m per annum. The company has been experiencing difficult trading conditions for some time and has seen a decrease of 29% in average daily circulation over the past five years, in addition to a steep drop in profits which has seen operating profits fall from €2.7m in 2013 to an operating loss of €1.14m in 2015.
Sunday Times
Over 1k Irish businesses including pubs and shops, have been left in limbo about their insurance cover after financial watchdogs in Liechtenstein seized control of Gable Insurance, the insurer that operated across Europe from Liechtenstein. PWC has been appointed as administrator to the insurer, whose shares were suspended on London’s AIM stock exchange in July.
Gavin Daly takes the Agenda column this week:
- Research by the Irish Government Economic and Evaluation Service (IGEES), a division of the division of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, estimate that the cost of providing the state pension will increase from just under €7bn this year to €9.3bn by 2027.
- Pat McCann’s Dalata Hotel group appears to be seeing no tangible impact from the Brexit vote in its underlying trading performance, it announced a 33% rise in revenue and a 50% rise in profits in its September media briefing. Yet the company’s share price is down 25%, as the market still holds concerns.
- The Brexit vote and strong possibility of the UK having a hard exit from Europe are likely to stifle the exodus of Irish entrepreneurs to the UK, frustrated by the government not taking the opportunity to harmonise CGT rates for entrepreneurs in the recent budget. In the UK, the first £10m gain from the sale of a business is taxed at 10%, in ROI the first €1m is taxed at 10% and 33% thereafter.
AIB is expected to clear a profit on the workout of £750m in boom-time loans it gave to Achilleas Kallakis, a convicted fraudster who used forged documents to secure loans.
Cormac Lucey surmises that when the next global recession hits, there will be little desire to see creative destruction of the world’s over-indebtedness and fiscal policy will have to be deployed as the corrective measure.
Chain Reaction Cycles, a low-profile Antrim company that runs the world’s biggest online bike shop, has been valued at £73m in a merger with British rival Wiggle. The company will trade as WiggleCRC and will have annual sales of over £300m.
Martin Murphy, managing director of HP Ireland and one of the country’s longest-serving tech executives, is to step down after more than 30 years with the company.
Mcor Technologies, a Co. Louth company that aims to bring 3D printing to the masses, has raised another €3.5m from investors as it rolls out its first product. Backers include Alpina Partners and John Ryan, the Tipperary-born inventor and entrepreneur who co-founded the US tech group Macrovision.
The Office of Public Works (OPW), the state property agency, is entering the property development world with plans for a seven-story office block close to St Stephens Green in Dublin. It plans to develop a new 7,555 sq. mt. building on Leeson Lane at a cost of more than €30m.
Ireland’s first “crowdfunded” mortgages, where pension funds and other institutional investors bypass mainstream banks to lend directly to homeowners, could be available from next year. Frank Money, a newcomer to the mortgage market, hopes to introduce the first home loan with a lifetime promise since the banks withdrew low-cost tracker mortgages at the height of the financial crisis. Brokers have been told to expect an indicative rate of 2.8% variable, reviewable every six months.
Teeling Whiskey Company is testing the appetite for “super-premium” whiskey with a 33-year-old single malt that will cost €3,500 a bottle, there will only be 250 bottles of the whiskey.
A London PR and Public Affairs group, Hanover, is to open an office in Dublin to take advantage of the predicted influx of companies post-Brexit.
Fossett Brothers Circus, the 127-year-old performing show, made a profit of €56k last year after going through an examinership process and getting investment from theatre producer Donal Shiels and businessman Dieter Hartfiel.
The Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin lost more than €93k, despite a €1.1m rise in revenues to €13.3m.
Frontline Ventures, a Dublin venture capitalist, has jointly-led a $10m (€9.2m) funding round for StreetTeam, a UK peer-peer system to promote events.
Nick Webb’s Inside Track, this week:
- 8 Miles LLP, the Africa-focused private equity group chaired by Bob Geldof, has joined a consortium to buy a significant minority stake in Beloxxi Industries, a Nigerian cream cracker maker in a €73m deal.
- Property developer Paddy Shovlin, who developed mostly in the Sandyford area during the boom and went bankrupt in 2012, has become a director of Terra Strategic, an English property consultancy business. Terra Strategic has 11 sites and developments ranging from Wiltshire to Hertfordshire.
- “The greatest new house in Europe” is how country life mag describes Ryanair heir Shane Ryan’s rebuilt Palladian mansion at Kilboy, Co Tipperary, on the cover of its latest issue.
- China General Nuclear Power Group (CGN) is the preferred bidder for a major part of Gaelectric, the renewable energy group. It has built up 22 wind farms and has brought in Rothschild to find a buyer for some or all of its €700m portfolio.
The new EU proposals to overhaul the corporate tax system, including R&D tax breaks, could disrupt Ireland’s attractiveness for Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). Draft proposals for changes that are intended to harmonise the EU’s tax base include a “super deduction” tax break on research and development. Brian Hayes, the Fine Gael MEP, said the new tax break could create complications for Ireland’s existing package to draw multinationals.
The interview this week is with Colm Grealy, managing director of Adforce.co.
In other news, for any of our North Leinster readers, The Point-to-Point & Country Fair at Dowth, Co. Meath is on next weekend, Sunday 30th Oct. We are reliably told that it looks set to be the most fun you can have with your wellies on. Tickets are €10 each, under 12’s go free and there is lots of entertainment for adults and kids to complement the racing action.
Twitter
70% – New mortgage threshold for first-time buyers applying for a rebate under the new help-to-buy scheme, down from 80% originally.
16% – The year-on-year increase in the amount of British goods and services imported by Irish businesses in September. @IrishTimesBiz
78.7% – The percentage value of a home the average first-time buyer’s mortgage is, according to the @centralbank_ie. @IrishTimesBiz
64.6% – Ireland’s employment rate for Q2 2016, one of the lowest in the @OECD where the average is 66.9%. @IrishTimesBiz
20% – The levy to be introduced by Finance Minister Michael Noonan on money overseas investors receive from Irish properties held in funds.
22.2 – Average hours per week worked by Irish people according to a recent study. @IrishTimesBiz
2019 – The year the ECB is expected to hold interest rates at 0% until according to BNP Paribas. @IrishTimesBiz
3.47% – The average rate of interest on a new mortgage in August, down from 3.77% a year earlier. @IrishTimesBiz
26% – The projected increase in the cost of renting by the end of 2018, according to Savills. @IndoBusiness
€4.95bn – The State’s trade surplus in August, up €1.5bn or 43% on July, according to @CSOIreland . @IrishTimesBiz
40% – The percentage of Irish tourism and travel business that is accounted for by the UK. @examinerbiz
€20bn – The potential divorce bill the UK could be forced to pay the EU in the wake of the Brexit vote, according to @FT analysis.