Sunday Business Post
There is lots on Garda pay and the consequences for public sector pay across the board.
Clinton and Trump get plenty of column inches. Bookmaker odds suggest the probabilities are 74% for Clinton to get in, 23% for Trump and 3% the rest. The bookmakers didn’t give Brexit a chance, so anything could happen this week.
The Business Post leads with a special investigation into the practices of big pharmaceutical firms, with some very interesting revelations on the three-page report. The head of the National Centre for Pharmaeconomics (the state watchdog), Professor Michael Barry, believes that “payments from industry are influencing prescribing habits in Ireland”.
The likelihood of a cut in USC in the next budget has lessened as it is expected that the money that might have made this possible will be spent on public sector wage increases.
The Business Post’s Fearghal O’Connor, Susan Mitchell and Tom Lyons all picked up prizes at the 2016 NewsBrands Ireland Journalism awards.
Coolmore Stud has reduced its stallion fees for many of its stallions and it says the decision was Brexit-driven as a lot of their customers are UK-based or will be selling their progeny in sterling. Australia has been dropped 30% from €50k to €35k, Canford Cliffs 43% from €17,500 to €10,000 and Camelot by 40% to €25,000. The fees for flag-bearers Galileo and Fastnet Rock are private.
David Coallier, CEO of Barricade who were recently acquired by Sophos, is interviewed in the Business Post.
There are a number of firms advertising in the Business Post seeking EIIS investment.
Uber have hired the ex-secretary of the Department of Finance John Moran to lobby the government on its behalf. It is lobbying hard to extend the number of Hackney licences allowed in Ireland – getting licenced taxi operators on its books is its route to growth.
Francesca Comyn covers the return of Sean Fitzpatrick to court and details of the 27 counts on the indictment against him.
Quintessential Brands, owners of Dubliner and Dublin Liberties brands of whiskey, have launched a new Irish whiskey Copper Alley and has said it is willing to invest €10m in building a new distillery in the Liberties.
Kantar Media-owned Mediawatch.ie is set to shut down at the end of the year.
Pointy, whose backers include Frontline Ventures and Jamie Heaslip, is expanding into the US. The app allows people search for goods in local stores. The shops pay to be listed on the app.
The Ardmore Shipping share price took a further hit last week as revenue is falling behind. It is trading at just over $5, having been c.$13 last year. Analysts estimate Net Asset Value at $9.50.
Locals in Ferrybank on the Waterford/Kilkenny border are beginning to stand up to the local ABP rendering plant. The smell is said to be “vile” coming from the plant.
Karl Fitzpatrick, managing director of Chevron Training, serial entrepreneur and president of the Wexford Chamber of Commerce, is interviewed in the Business Post ahead of this week’s Wexford Business Expo.
Feargal O’Rourke, managing director of PWC, who employ 2,300 people, is interviewed by Ian Guider.
There is a profile of Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England.
The editorial in Business Post expresses dismay at the reaction of the UK newspapers during the week to the High Court ruling stating that the triggering of Article 50 will require a parliamentary vote. The Daily Mail described the judges as “enemies of the people” and the others all had similar reactions.
Luxembourg Venture Debt Company IPF has put €15m in venture debt funding into Galway medtech company Neuravi, run by Eamon Brady and John O’Shaughnessy. The business was founded in 2009 and was backed by Delta and Fountain in 2012. It secured €19m from Life Sciences Partners last year.
Don Coughlan, who sold Switchcom to Independent Newspapers and Greencom to Clarity Telecom, looks to be on a winner as he has distribution rights to solar powered compacting waste bins manufactured by US company Bigbelly. He has just signed up Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown Country Council for €2.6m.
“Michie Sushi has opened a 40-seater restaurant in Dublin’s IFSC at a cost of €700k.”
There is a focus on Conferencing and Event Management.
Connected (“Your monthly guide to technology in business”) is in the Business Post today.
Róisín Burke has learned that shareholders in Carton House, the Mallaghan family, Paddy Kelly and Nobby O’Reilly, need to sort out some details before the loan is sold by NAMA. It’s suggested the value on Carton House is €50m.
Sunday Independent
A proposed investment of over €200m into a new Maternity Hospital for women and infants is at risk due to disputes over the independence of the legal entity that will see it become a subsidiary of the St. Vincent Hospitals Group. The proposed state-of-the-art facility is being funded through at least €150m of taxpayer money and the sale of the National Maternity Hospital on Holles Street, which is expected to exceed €60m. The talks are being mediated by Kieran Mulvey, former chief executive of the Labour Relations Commission.
“Gene Murtagh, the chief executive of global insulation maker Kingspan, has warned that any attempt at EU level to meddle with our low 12.5pc corporation tax rate should be cause for Ireland to pull out of the union.” Murtagh is also the feature of this week’s interview.
More banks and financial institutions are facing the possibility of a multi-million euro fine after Ulster Bank’s fine of €3.3m last week for breaching anti-money laundering and terrorist financing regulations, the largest single penalty to a bank following the improved Central Bank administrative sanction powers.
Paul Sommerville, chief executive at Sommerville Advisory Markets, has three interesting discussion pieces this week, including: OPEC’s meeting on a potential output agreement at the end of November, whether or not the EU should continue with its current quantitative easing program and the fragility of the US economy ahead of the presidential elections.
Irish taxi company Lynk, headed by Noel Ebbs, has secured a number of deals in the US last week with its international partner Riide. The new agreements with taxi companies in Phoenix, Arizona will see the number of drivers in the US triple from 5k to 15k. Lynk’s Irish operations currently have 11 taxi firms under its umbrella and 2.5k drivers.
Independent TD Mick Wallace intends to table a number of amendments to the proposed tax treatment of the ICAVs and QIAIFs and other investment undertakings included in the Irish Real Estate Funds regime. Wallace confirmed that the Department of Finance said to him: “non-resident investors may seek relief from the newly-enacted 20% withholding tax if they are resident in a country in which Ireland has a double tax agreement”. The proposed legislation limits Ireland’s ability to collect the 20% Dividend Withholding Tax from non-resident investors as Ireland has double tax treaties with 72 countries, including the US.
Arnotts, the department store, is showcasing Ireland’s fashion entrepreneurs in a new area dedicated to Christmas gifts, titled Gifted. The dedicated area will include items from designer Ali Delaney, Hamilton Bear creator Caroline Barron and jewellery designer Tory Long.
Kildare Village, the luxury fashion outlet, expects full year revenues to be up by 28%, following the opening of a €50m extension a year ago. Visitor numbers at the outlet are nearing 4m a year, a year-on-year increase of 30%, according to business director Andrew Marshall. There are currently more than 90 stores in the village and Marshall expects the village to be 90% occupied by the end of next year.
Tailored Image, a family-owned corporate clothing specialist based in Dungannon, Co. Tyrone, has won 12 design and manufacture contracts worth over €1m (incl. VAT) to supply dress uniforms to thousands of personnel in the Irish Defence Forces. The firm was founded 18 years ago by the Birt family and is currently being managed by brothers Bernard and Brendan. Latest accounts show a cash pile of €650k at the firm.
Harp Renewables, a Meath-based renewables company, has secured €750k in funding from the Davy EII Tax Relief Fund, which is managed by BES Management, a joint venture between Davy and BDO. The company, founded by Shane Finnegan, intends to use the funding to capture growth opportunities in the waste recycling space.
UK Prime Minister Theresa May has vowed to stick to her Brexit timetable of triggering Article 50 by the end of March 2017 and is confident that the court ruling that could delay Britain’s departure will be overturned.
The number of lawyers from England and Wales admitted to the Irish roll of solicitors has increased nearly tenfold this year. The number of applicants per year is usually in the range of 50 and 100, however this year that number has increased to 618, with a further 93 applications currently in progress. The Law Society of Ireland could net an extra €1.4m p.a. as a result of the increased numbers.
“Conor McGregor has launched a fightback against a suspected trademark and cyber squatter who has laid claim to his money-spinning brand name.”
Car imports from the UK are soaring on the back of a weakened sterling. Figures due to be released by the CSO will show that the number of cars registered for the first time increased year-on-year by 75% in October to c.7.1k. and by 62% in the July to October period to c.25k.
Stephen Donnelly writes this week on how tax breaks in the proposed Finance Bill could fuel an existing property bubble. “They’ll do this by making commercial property investment, mainly by large foreign landlords, entirely tax free. This will drive up commercial rents, suppress residential development, put Irish banks at risk, and deprive the State of much-needed funds”. A few interesting stats from the article:
– Grade A commercial property currently sells for 6.4 times more than it costs to build. In the EU, only Paris and London have higher multiples.
– Decent commercial property in Dublin is selling for €1.2k a sq. ft. versus €500 a sq. ft. for residential property.
– CBRE expects 80% of all future Irish commercial property investment to come from foreign pension funds, live assurance funds and other Collective Investment Undertakings, which includes REITs.
This week’s focus piece is on the Internet of Things and Beauty business and is well worth a read.
There is a good Q&A styled piece with Eason’s head of marketing, Brendan Corbett, where he discusses competition with Amazon, the impact of Brexit and other trends in the book retailing space.
Last week the Sunday Independent announced in error that Ian Daly had joined Cardinal Capital Ireland (CCI). In fact, Ian has joined the private equity team in Cardinal Capital Group. CCI is actually the acronym used by the Carlyle Cardinal Ireland Fund, the joint private equity fund established by the Carlyle Group and Cardinal Capital Group. The fund is jointly led by Carlyle’s Peter Garvey and Jonathan Cosgrave with Cardinal’s John Dolan.
Sunday Times
Apple had to rule out Ireland’s east coast as a potential location for the €850m data centre it is proposing to build in Athenry, Co. Galway. Athenry is the only site that could fulfil its selection criteria which included a provision that there should not be any “significant nuclear facilities” within 200 miles of the facility and it can’t be within 20 miles of a fuel storage facility or 50 miles of a petrochemical facility. Despite getting planning approval from the planning board in September 15, cutting sod has been held up by objections.
Brian Carey’s Agenda column this week:
– Carey thinks it is time for the resurrection of social partnership, as it would set the balance between enterprise and endeavour and the protection of workers’ rights, as well as providing certainty and budgetary stability.
– One51’s consolidation of the metal recycling business did not go well; it announced a €90m write-down on its investment to consolidate the sector a few year ago, and had recently sold another business, Oran Metals. On a positive note, One51 announced a €54m expansion in its North American plastics business.
– Eir last week announced that it had passed 34k premises on its fibre-to-the-home network. Rival Siro, a joint venture between ESB and Vodafone, claims to have passed 36.5k homes and is passing 10k homes a month.
Irish TV, an expat-focused television station that launched in 2014 with funding of €15m, is in talks to raise new money, amid mounting losses. The company is backed by John Griffin, founder of the London taxi company Addison Lee, which he sold for £300m in 2013. He has stated he will no longer be the sole funder of the business and is believed to have appointed KPMG to evaluate his options.
A1, the Russian property management company appointed by IBRC to recover Russian assets formerly owned by Sean Quinn and Quinn Group companies, exited a partnership with the Irish government last year and it is understood the assets are now being managed by a “non-Russian” entity.
Cormac Lucey this week reflects on Janet Yellen’s, the head of the US Federal Reserve, thoughts about how the world and particularly monetary policy will be equipped to deal with a future and, some say, pending global recession. Yellen thinks ultra-low and possibly negative interest rates and more quantitative easing may become a “recurrent” fact of life.
Aercap Ireland Capital, a Dublin-based subsidiary of one of the world’s largest aircraft lessors, made a pre-tax profit of €843m last year. It did not record any Irish corporation tax paid in 2015 but did record a deferred tax charge of $116m, according to the Sunday Times.
TK MAXX posted a 19% rise in profits of its Irish stores to €11.3m to year end January 2016. Interestingly, the company’s margins fell sharply from 17.3% to 12.1% in the year due to increases in the cost of merchandise and unfavourable exchange rates.
Storyful, a digital news agency founded by Mark Little, is creating 70 jobs in Dublin. The company was bought by News Corp in 2013 for €18m. Storyful made a loss of €4.5m last year, bringing accumulated losses to €10.4m. News Corp invested a further €4.5m into the business in September and it is understood the IDA is supporting the current expansion and new job creation.
Cadbury owner Mondelez is toping up the Cadbury pension scheme by €8.2m a year to plug a €116m hole in the scheme.
The Special Liquidators of IBRC are seeking court directions on how to calculate the amount that customers of the former Anglo Irish Bank may have been overcharged on the repayment of their loans. IBRC filed High Court Papers on the 28th of October and is seeking a hearing under the Companies Act.
Claridges hotel in London, part of the Maybourne hotel group run by Irish property investor Paddy McKillen, has drafted in Jony Ive, chief design officer at Apple, to design its Christmas tree.
Intercom, a messaging technology company founded by Irishmen Eoghan McCabe, Ciaran Lee, Des Traynor and David Barrett, is on track to hit $50m revenues this year and could double that next year, according to Forbes Magazine. The company has raised $116m in venture capital backing and employs about 300 people between its HQ in San Francisco and R&D base in Dublin. The company was reported to be worth more than $500m in its last funding round.
Irelandia Aviation chief executive Declan Ryan is planning to create South America’s largest low-cost carrier. It has 11 aircraft running in Columbia, intends to launch in Peru next year and is planning further expansion in Costa Rica and Argentina, with a target of getting to 100 aircraft.
Paddy McKillen Jr has submitted plans for a scaled down 58-bedroom hotel after plans for a 93-bedroom hotel were rejected. The site is beside the €700m Dublin Landings scheme of offices and apartments and the new HQ of the Central Bank of Ireland.
Charles Hurst, the Dublin car dealers, saw profits more than treble to €753k last year.
Arthur Mallon Foods, the Monaghan-based pork processor, has acquired Wilbay, a meat processor and wholesaler based in Co. Laois.
Nick Webb’s inside track:
– CRH’s US subsidiary, Oldcastle Materials, is getting behind the Republicans in the US presidential election. Staff at Oldcastle created a political action committee to donate in the election campaign and of the $369k donated, twice as much given to Republicans as was given to the Democrats.
– Glen Dimplex chief executive Fergal Naughton has just completed the purchase of Technika, an Australian company that makes cookers, ovens and laundry equipment. The price was not disclosed.
– JP McManus’s charitable foundation had €46m of assets at the end of 2015, a quarter of which was cash.
Gavin Daly’s chief executive interview this week is with Noel Kelly, who was one the early pioneers, shareholders and drivers behind Kentz. He has exited Kentz and is now running Anam, a specialist anti-spam software for mobile operators, in his first big project since leaving Kentz. He has invested €4m of his own money and revenues are now at €5m and Kelly has big plans for the exciting business. Kelly’s son Darragh is chairman of the company.
Eithne Dunne has a good article on how working abroad can help you career prospects and earning potential when you come back home.
Philip Connolly has a great article on how tech entrepreneurs come to terms with their failings and get back up on the horse, and the use of the symbolic “mock wake” to come to terms with failure.
Dermot Page is covered in the small business section this week, he is a farmer and a major Christmas tree grower; he will sell 10k Christmas trees this year.
25% – The year-on-year rise in zone A retail rents on Grafton Street, according to @KFIreland. @IrishTimesBiz
47% – The percentage of workers that are saving in occupational pension schemes, according to @CSOIreland. @IrishTimesBiz
75.63% – The year-on-year rise in the number of used car imports for the month of October. @IndoBusiness
c. 4% – The projected inflation rate in the UK for the second half of next year, according to @NIESRorg. @IrishTimesBiz
€9bn – Projected size of the foodservice industry in Ireland by 2020; it currently stands at €7.5bn, according to @Bordbia. @IrishTimesBiz
€3.18bn – Amount invested in income-producing property investments with a value greater than €1m in the first 9 months of 2016. @MarieHunt73
11.5k – Number of housing units under construction, with a further 12.4k receiving planning permission, in the first 9 months of the year.