Sunday Business Post
The Business Post has exposed that failure to enact legislation has resulted in a case where 300,000 public servants will receive bigger pensions than they were supposed to and will add to the annual €2.8bn public sector pension bill.
The Gresham has been bought by Spanish RIU hotels for €92m from NAMA. Over 80 parties expressed interest, six bids were over €80m and Tifco are understood to be the underbidder, followed by Apollo and Cerberus. The story is also covered in the Sunday Times.
Despite the Low Pay Commission’s recommendation that the minimum wage be increased from €9.15 to €9.25, the Independent Alliance are still pushing for a €10 minimum wage. This is likely to put strain on the Government ahead of the budget.
There is coverage of the slap given to EY by Judge Martin Nolan over its signing-off of the Anglo accounts.
There is an interview with Mary Lou McDonald who has expressed her wish to lead the Sinn Féin party in the future and also “hinted strongly of an ambition” to become leader of the country. Adams has led the party for 33 years.
Deirdre Foley talks to Tom Lyons about D2’s exit from NAMA and about the Clerys fallout from the 460 job losses.
Garret Flower of Krust Bakery is raising €500k from EI and other investors for his parkpnp app which is like airbnb for parking spaces.
“American oil giant Philips 66 has pumped more than €120m into the Whitegate oil refinery ahead of its expected sale in the coming weeks.”
There is growing pressure on the Government to justify its acceptance of the various buy-out funds using s.110 companies to avoid paying significant taxes. David McWilliams says on the matter, “Sometimes you could be forgiven for feeling that the best qualification to participate profitably in this Irish recovery is not being Irish.”
Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, Marathon Asset Management and Avenue Capital are said to be the four firms chasing the €250m Project Beara loan book currently being sold by NAMA. The loans were originally drawn by the Love family in Cork and assets securing the loans include the Douglas shopping centre in Cork. EY is handling the sale.
Spanish utility giant Gas Networks Fenosa has plans to invest further in Ireland, having acquired Vayu last Friday. Industry sources believe Vayu to be worth between €30-50m. Accounts to the end of 2014 show Vayu making €2.6m profit off revenues of €50m. IBI advised on the sale.
Denis Desmond’s JV with US events company Live Nation recorded profits of £1.8m in 2014 off turnover of £168m. Its turnover was marginally less in 2015 and recorded a loss of just £30k. There were a lot of exceptional expenses relating to two businesses they acquired. There is a five-year debt facility of £35m in the business.
Ascension Health, the world’s largest Catholic healthcare provider which operates 141 hospitals and 30 senior care facilities in the US, is looking at opportunities to come into Ireland.
There is lots written about the bank trial and the jail sentences given to the three sentenced. Tom Lyons claims that the conclusion to the trial is underwhelming and he says there is a “sense that we haven’t really got to the bottom of what actually went on”. The Sunday Times and Sunday Indo also carry stories this week on the bank trial.
Tyrone-based door manufacturer O&S Holdings has been acquired by private equity firm Sun European Partners for an undisclosed sum. It had a pre-tax profit of £10.8m in 2014. Other companies currently held by Sun include Dreams, Bonmarche and American Golf.
Domino’s revenues in Ireland climbed to £12.3m from £10m in the first half of the year, helped by the Euros. Operating profits rose from £2.6m to £3.5m. Mobile sales account for 7/10 orders; digital sales were up more than 25% year-on-year. It has 47 outlets across Ireland.
“Australian lender Pepper is weighing up the expansion of its Irish lending operations to include small businesses and individuals in need of funding to complete debt deals with vulture funds, The Sunday Business Post understands.”
Hong Kong-based businessman Hau Yan Lee has bought a stately home beside the proposed Center Parcs site in Longford and plans to develop it into a hotel.
Currently the HSE’s home care budget is €132m and home-help budget is €192m. The nursing home budget is more than €1bn. Fianna Fáil have introduced a new bill which if enacted will greatly increase the funding for home care solutions.
Xavier McAuliffe is poised to reclaim control of Lyrath Estate Hotel & Spa.
On Friday night, the stress test results were published by the European Banking Authority and AIB were ranked 50th of the 51 banks, BOI did not fare much better. AIB/BOI/PTSB have made €1.8bn profit between them for the first six months of the year, but their various share prices are all under pressure.
“Dublin Port Company wants to build a 600-bed hotel on the Poolbeg Peninsula alongside the nearly 3,000 houses planned by Dublin City Council and is considering building another one just across from the 3 Arena”
Niall Anderton, CEO of Topaz, is interviewed. Topaz has a market share of just over 35% with 444 stations. Its new owners Couche-Tard have more than 15k sites across the world. Eventually Topaz will be rebranded Circle K, probably sometime in 2018.
Stephen Kinsella paints an ugly picture post-Brexit:
“British indicators of market sentiment, like purchasing mangers’ indices of both services and manufacturing are showing readings not seen since the global financial crisis of 2008 and 2009. Large British banks are laying people off. One-third of foreign students are now less likely to come to Britain post-Brexit. Global car makers like Ford are warning they’ll have to close British and European plants. Profit warnings from PLC’s are everywhere. Giants like IAG, the owner of British Airways, announced it lost nearly £150m in the last few months, just because of the collapse in sterling’s value. Rolls Royce’s profits fell 80 per cent.”
The regional focus is on the border region.
Westport business Portwest is investing €4m in its new HQ. The company has turnover of €125m and is also close to acquiring a company in Australia.
The Padraic Kierans-owned Anglo Printers is investing €1.75m in new equipment bringing its total investment to €4m over five years. As other print companies have fallen during the recession, market leaders Anglo have adapted to the market which is still printing plenty, but wants more flexibility in output and quicker turnaround times.
Sunday Independent
Independent TD Mick Wallace has said that up to 40 different individuals have contacted him with accusations of grave misconduct concerning NAMA. This figure is expected to grow with the establishment of Namaleaks, a whistleblowing site. Wallace is set to have a meeting with Taoiseach Enda Kenny to discuss his request for a commission of inquiry into NAMA’s sale of its €5.6bn Northern Ireland loan book to US private equity giant Cerberus.
Everseen, a Cork-based firm, has just raised €3.5m from backers including Total Produce chairman Carl McCann, former Tayto crisp owner Ray Coyle and technology entrepreneur Cyril McGuire. Marcol Capital, a London-based investment fund headed by Terence Cole and Mark Steinberg, also invested €1m in the latest funding round. The firm, founded by chief executive Alan O’Herlihy, has raised a total of €8.5m since inception and aims to combat the $40bn retailers currently face in annual losses due to fraud, theft and irregularities at the point of sale. Other backers in the company include Eamonn Rothwell of ferry firm Irish Continental; former executive chairman of Grafton group, Michael Chadwick; tech entrepreneur Pat Brazel; Paul Keenan’s Capnua; Philip Nolan, a partner with Mayson Hayes & Curran; and Terry Buckley, the MD of Clear Channel Ireland.
271 Irish Collective Asset-Management Vehicles have come into operation since March 2015. The ICAV, a hyper tax-efficient structure designed to attract fund industry jobs to Ireland, rivals Section 110 companies in popularity. Revenue figures show that 404 companies intend to take Section 110 status in the 2015 calendar year.
Easilocks, a Blanchardstown hair-extension business run by Shane O’Sullivan, has secured deals with 400 US salons and signed up celebrity customers. Easilocks supplies around 2,000 salons in the UK, employs 30 people across Ireland, UK and the US and will have revenues of around €5.9m this year.
Tullow Oil chief executive Aidan Heavey has said that the company is “best as a stand-alone entity”, rather than being subsumed by a bigger entity. The company has a market capitalisation of £1.75bn and net debt of $4.7bn and is to begin producing oil next month from its project in Ghana known as TEN. Tullow is looking to sell assets in Norway, the UK and Denmark when the market improves. The company posted a pre-tax profit of $24m in the first half of the year, up from a $10m loss last year. It made a loss after tax in 2015 of $1bn, largely due to a $749m write-off in exploration costs.
Engineering group Actavo, headed by Sean Corkery and formerly known as Siteserv, is looking to win business out of the National Broadband Plan. According to Corkery, Eir is the only telecom company they’re not doing business with currently. Actavo is majority-owned by Digicel chairman Denis O’Brien and posted a 25% rise in pre-tax profit in 2015. The company bought US-based Atlantic Engineering Services back in March and will consider an IPO if it comes across a “very large, more transformative acquisition target” according to Alan Doherty, the company’s chief financial officer.
Jeremy Masding, the chief executive of Permanent TSB, has said the bank is to cut interest rates it offers savers from 0.12% above the market rate, down to 0.05%. Earlier this week, PTSB reported first-half profits of €80m.
AIB has reached a settlement with Nolan Transport and 13 members of the company over the loan facilities relating to the development of the Isaacs Hotel in Dublin and the Lismore House Hotel in Waterford.
Cairn Homes CEO Michael Stanley has said his company has seen interest from institutional investors looking to become involved in build-to-rent schemes here in Ireland.
US Authorities have granted a three-month stay on a court order directing the seizure of assets worth €269m in bank accounts held in Ireland, Luxembourg and Belgium. The assets relate to corrupt payments to Uzbekistan officials by two of Russia’s largest telecom companies. The case allegedly involves the daughter of Uzbekistan president Islam Karimova.
Dan White writes on the broken housing market in Ireland and cites some eye-opening statistics:
– 60% of all transactions in recent years have been cash deals.
– New housebuilding peaked at 93k units in 2006 versus the 12.6k houses and apartments built last year. In addition, there has been a 7% reduction in the number of second-hand housing transactions for the first half of 2016, bringing the number to 20.7k.
– In 2006, new mortgage lending was €40bn; by 2014 this figure had fallen by over 90% to €3.8bn. This figure grew by 25% in 2015, 8% in Q4 2015 and just 2.5% in Q1 2016.
– 200k houses (excluding holiday homes) were vacant in May, almost 10% of the national total. This is equivalent to almost 10 years’ supply based on the Housing Agency’s estimate of an annual requirement of 21k.
This week’s interview is with Independent TD Mick Wallace.
Pokemon Go has rolled out in more than 30 countries and experts say the customer contract may contravene UK, French and EU Statutes. Nintendo’s market value doubled immediately following the release of the game to €15.8bn, but soon dropped off after questions were raised about how much Nintendo will benefit.
Figures released by Ignite Research give insight as to where people are doing their weekly food shop. Tesco came out on top with 31% of shoppers, Aldi came second with 23%, then Lidl and Dunnes with 17% each and finally Supervalu with 11%
Sunday Times
OCS Properties, owned by D2 Private and London-based Cheyne Capital, has outlined its plans for the former Clerys department store it bought amid the redundancy controversy for €29m in June last year. The plan includes redeveloping the former store into a six-storey retail and office scheme, including a top-floor destination area with glass roof and outdoor dining area. The plan provides for a 32k sq. ft. development which will include a former warehouse on Earl Street as well and is estimated to cost €150m.
Brian Carey reminds us of the importance of the mortgage market to our domestic banks. Mark Bourke, AIB’s finance director said last week, “50% of the bank is in a sector that is only operating at 50%”. PTSB is nearly 100% in that sector, although it is trying to increase its personal loan book. AIB currently has 34% of the mortgage market and BOI has 28%. Future trading performance will be heavily linked to a recovery in the mortgage market.
Carey also covers the charitable status tax schemes the vulture funds have used in Ireland to avoid tax. A Lone Star fund paid €540m for Project Stone, a portfolio of distressed loans from the Special Liquidator of IBRC. In the first 10 months post-acquisition, the value of the assets increased by €100m and a further €25m was added when the loans were refinanced. The specialist SPV structure used to acquire the assets nets off asset gains against payments to investors and resulted in a net tax liability of just €125 due to the Revenue.
The number of British and Northern Ireland visitors to the Guinness Storehouse, Ireland’s most popular tourist attraction, has slumped 12% since the Brexit vote last month. UK visitors account for more than one in three visitors to the attraction.
Cormac Lucey’s piece covers the macro political revolt we are now experiencing in the world. He cites slow economic growth, economic inequality, the replacement of people with technology and immigration as being some of the primary drivers.
Developer Noel Smyth is planning to build 17 houses ad 52 apartments in the grounds of his Dublin home at Lisieux Hall in Leopardstown.
Quintessential Brands, a British drinks group, is to acquire a 33% stake in Tempted Irish Cider, an NI artisan cider producer. Quintessential has also recently acquired 33% of the Clonmel brewing company which produces McGrath’s Irish craft ales.
A London consultancy firm founded by Mike Aynsley, former chief executive of IBRC, and Richard Woodhouse, the bank’s ex-head of specialised asset management, made a profit of €400k last year.
Staycity, a Dublin serviced apartment business, recorded a near 50% rise in profits last year to €5.7m, on the back of UK expansion. Staycity has 2,700 apartments in 15 developments. It is on target to have 4k apartments by the end of the year and expects revenues to hit €50m this year.
Rising employment and increasing salaries added an extra €1.5bn in disposable income to Irish households last year and most of that extra cash has been spent in the economy, according to analysts.
Openhydro, the tidal energy company based in Greenore, Co. Louth, is part of a consortium selected to supply Japan’s first commercial tidal project.
NAMA is facing a High Court action from a group of investors in a €200m Dublin office block, “the Burlington Plaza”, over plans to charge €7m extra in interest when they repay their loans. The agency has told the owners they owe “default interest” of €7m going back to 2010. If the interest is paid, the return for investors on their original investment of €45m will be largely wiped out.
The National Wax Museum is facing eviction following a legal action by the Irish Stock Exchange (ISE). The ISE bought the wax museum’s premises last year for €2.7m and intends to combine it with its own building for redevelopment.
Kilkenny, the Irish giftware and fashion group, will open its 14th store next month, in Ennis, Co. Clare. The group had sales of €28m and made a profit of €1.5m last year.
Nick Webb’s Inside Track:
– Ulster Bank has appointed the HP Ireland chief executive Martin Murphy to its board.
– Natalya Coyle, daughter of Ray Coyle (Tayto), will join Saskia Tidey daughter of Don Tidey (former Quinnsworth boss), in the Olympics, having qualified for the pentathlon.
– Eddie Jordan has sold out of Destiny Wireless, a maker of digital pens which he backed in 2008.
The Business Interview is with John Goulding of Cork-based CoreHR, who is leading the business to new heights. The company announced last week that it was set to double its staff from 300 to 600 over the next 3 years. The business had its origins in supplying payroll and HR systems to Government departments and state bodies, and has now expanded in multinationals. The business recorded revenues of €40m last year.
Sandra O’Connell of Clarkes of Dublin, a handmade soaps company, and Robert Hallam of 250 Kal, both of whom own small growing business, are very complimentary of the Export Knowledge Programme run by the Irish Exporters Association and the cross-border development agency InterTradeIreland. This is something worth looking into if you are a small business and need some help.
27% – The year-on-year decrease in Irish wholesale electricity prices for July, according to @VayuEnergy. @IndoBusiness
$34.5bn – Amount spent on nearly 60 deals with UK companies, since the Brexit vote, according to data from @ReutersBiz . @examinerbiz
$1.6tr – The potential value of lost deals in the M&A market if a swift Brexit process is not followed, according to @OxfordEconomics.
0.4% – The growth rate for Nothern Ireland in the first quarter of 2016, according to the @NISRA. @IrishTimesBiz
60% – The proportion of cash buyers in the housing market, according to @centralbank_ie economists. @IndoBusiness
€100m – The potential amount raised if the government were to implement a new tax of roughly 10c on fizzy drinks. @IrishTimesBiz
€1.76bn – Amount @AIBIreland will pay the State tomorrow to redeem loan notes issued in July 2011 as part of its bailout. @IrishTimesBiz
6.5% – The increase in retail sales in the year to March, according to @CSOIreland . @IrishTimesBiz
€360bn – The collective holding of non-performing loans by Italian banks, according to @IMFNews . @IrishTimesBiz
7% – The unemployment rate in the first three months of 2016, according to the Dublin Economic Monitor. @IndoBusiness
4.9% – The latest GDP forecast by @centralbank_ie for 2016, a downward revision of 0.2%. @IndoBusiness
8.2% – Year-on-year decrease in residential property sales versus the same period last year, according to @MyHomeProperty @IrishTimesBiz
3.4% – The year-on-year increase in the value of retail sales for the month of June, according to the latest figures from @CSOIreland.
€115bn – The value of goods manufactured in Ireland and sold last year, an increase of 13% compared to 2014. @IndoBusiness