Welcome to the Business Post’s Live News section. We’re here all day to keep you up to date on developments in business, tech and current affairs.
12.50 – Tines named Ireland’s top start-up to work for
Tines, the workflow automation company, has been declared the best start-up to work for in Ireland in a LinkedIn list of top Irish start-ups published today.
Founded by Eoin Hinchy and Thomas Kinsella in 2018, Tines grabbed the second spot last year as Aimee Connolly’s make-up brand Sculpted by Aimee was ranked first.
Vish Gain brings us the rest of the top ten.
Photo by
Fergal Phillips
12.35 – Germany must go back to reforms to lift economy, says OECD
Germany needs to carry out reforms to improve competition and cut bureaucracy in order to help kickstart Europe’s biggest economy, according to Alvaro Santos Pereira, chief economist of the OECD.
The Paris-based organisation forecast today that the country’s gross domestic product would only grow by 0.1 per cent this year – well behind rates anticipated in Italy, France, Spain and the UK.
Read the rest in Bloomberg.
12.20 – Passive funds boost treasury trading at month-end, fed blog says
The final day of each month has become the busiest trading session for US treasuries, according to New York fed researchers.
There’s been a marked change in trading volume over the past four years at that time as well, as a drop in transaction costs that coincide with the growth of passive funds that track index changes, according to Henry Dyer, Michael Fleming and Or Shachar.
In a post on the New York Fed’s Liberty Street Economics blog, the three researchers said that asset managers are increasingly managing relative to indices that are rebalanced at the end of each month – and that this may be causing investors to increasingly trade at that time.
Read more here.
12.10 – UK property site Rightmove rejects ‘unattractive’ £6.1b takeover bid from Murdoch-owned company
Rightmove, the UK property site, has rejected a third “unattractive” takeover bid from Rupert Murdoch’s REA Group.
Rightmove confirmed this morning that its board had unanimously rejected the non-binding cash-and-shares offer put forward on Monday, which valued the company at £6.1 billion – around £200 million higher than the bid submitted last week.
REA – majority-owned by Murdoch’s News Corp, which this year pumped into its loss-making Irish asset Storyful – described the latest rejection as “disappointing”, frustrated that the Rightmove board had refused any “substantive engagement” with it.
Read the full story on the Guardian.
11.55 – Diageo says horse-drawn carriage operators at Guinness Storehouse have threatened tourists and pulled weapons
Diageo has issued a sharp warning to the government over what it calls the “growing safety issues” posed by horse-drawn carriage operators near the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin 8.
The London-listed drinks giant, which employs around 1,200 people in Ireland, says it has reported 672 “incidents” involving those operating horse-drawn carriages near the storehouse between July 2022 and July 2024 – working out at nearly one a day in the last two years.
These incidents, it says, include “brandishing weapons”, “threatening and scamming tourists” and “overturning overturning carriages with passengers onboard, resulting in injuries which could have been life changing”.
Read the rest from Donal MacNamee.
11.45 – Press Up closes Wagamama restaurants with immediate effect
Press Up has closed its Wagamama restaurants with immediate effect.
Last week, receivers were appointed to a dozen restaurants that are part of the Press Up Group, including Portalon Limited, which operates Wagamama’s South King Street, Dundrum and Blanchardstown venues.
Killian Woods and Catherine Sanz have the full story.
Photo by
Mike Egerton
11.15 – Analysts warm to Air France-KLM after tough year
Analyst’s have begun to warm to Air France-KLM, with the airline’s outlook brightening after a tough year.
Pointing to resilient underlying pricing and a historically-low share price, Harry Gowers, an analyst at JP Morgan, said that an earnings inflection was a possibility in the run-up to winter.
Shares in the airline saw a jump of 8.4 per cent – their biggest in nine months.
See Bloomberg for the rest.
11.00 – Co-operative Group loses £40 million to crime in first half of 2024
Co-operative Group, the UK grocery chain, has said that the cost of shoplifting rose by 20 per cent to just under £40 million last year.
The company, which posted half-year pre-tax profits of £58 million pre-tax profits, took a hit of took a £39.5 million hit from theft and fraud in the first six months of this year.
This was despite the member-owned chain spending £18 million so far this year on staff measures including body-worn cameras and fortified kiosks.
Read the full story in the Guardian.
10.45 – Eamon Waters’s property firm refused permission to demolish Tesco building on Baggot Street
Eamon Waters’s property development firm has been refused permission by Dublin City Council to demolish the building that houses Tesco’s store on Baggot Street.
Last month Sretaw PE, Waters’ property company, asked the local council for permission to demolish the building that houses Tesco’s store on Baggot Street and develop a new six-storey development on the site.
The project faced some opposition from The Merrion Hotel, which said the development would have a “detrimental impact” on its business if granted permission.
Killian Woods has more.
10.30 – Ardagh bonds edge up, as food can venture sale draws closer
Certain Ardagh Group bonds have crept up this week, amid hopes the packaging giant will be able to dilute its $12.5 billion debt pile with the sale of its food and speciality metal cans joint-venture.
Ardagh entered into a joint-venture with US-based rival Exal Corporation, owned by the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board (OTPPB), to form Trivium Packaging in 2019.
According to Bloomberg, Californian buyout firm Platinum Equity is in talks to buy Trivium for over $3.5 billion, with a deal possible within weeks.
The Irish Times has the full story.
10.15 – AviLease sees $44 million loss in first full year
AviLease, the Ted O’Byrne-led aircraft lessor, owned by Saudi Arabia’s PIF sovereign wealth fund, has posted pre-tax losses of $44 million for 2024.
Lease revenue at the aviation firm, which is tax-resident in Ireland, rose to $135.1 million in 2023, its first full year of operations.
At the end of last year, the company completed the acquisition of Ireland-based Pembroke Aircraft Leasing from Standard Chartered.
Read the rest on the Irish Independent.
10.00 – ‘Overwhelming’ Irish health insurance sector requires reform as premiums rise, watchdog warns
The health insurance watchdog has warned that the sector in Ireland has become complicated to the point of overwhelming customers and driving them to paying over the odds.
Legislative changes may be required to simplify the health insurance market, according to the Health Insurance Authority (HIA).
In a new report examining options to simplify the sector, the HIA noted that adult premiums have jumped by an average of 7 per cent since the beginning of 2024, reaching €1,674.
The Irish Times has more on the HIA report here.
09.45 – Apartment viability equation not ‘stacking up’, say chartered surveyors
The cost of apartment construction is higher than the price that can be asked of buyers, according to a leading quantity surveyor.
“In many cases, certainly in and around Dublin, they cost more to construct, when you take in all the costs including the land, than you can actually sell them for,” said Bryn Griffiths, vice-chair of the quantity surveying group within the Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland (SCSI).
“There’s definitely a viability equation that isn’t stacking up,” said Griffiths. “It wasn’t helped by the interest rate increases in the last few years.”
“From a construction-cost point of view, we saw rapid inflation in 2021 and 2022. That has cooled, but it is still going up. What it isn’t doing is falling.”
Read the rest on the Irish Independent.
Photo by
Sasko Lazarov
09.37 – US files debit card monopoly action against Visa
The US has filed legal action against Visa, accusing the financial giant of illegally stifling competition to maintain a monopoly over the debit card market.
The US justice department allege that Visa had punished companies that wanted to use alternative payment networks, and paid off potential competitors to maintain its grip on the market – claims Visa described as “meritless”.
These tactics both slowed innovation and led to significant additional fees for American customers and business, according to the lawsuit.
The BBC has the full story.
09.22 – Angel investor-backed Dublin start-up Ziggytec wound up
Ziggytec, the tech start-up backed by the likes of One4All founder Michael Dawson and Ergo founder John Purdy, has appointed a liquidator to wind up the company.
The commercial property energy start-up’s clients have included US property giant Hines, Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown council, Green Reit, Savills, Dalata and Irish Life.
Two years ago, Ziggytec secured €2.5 million from several well-known angel investors, including Nolan, Purdy and former Fexco director Pa Nolan.
Read the Currency for more.
09.10 – Ted Baker Grafton Street available to rent
The Grafton Street premises formerly occupied by UK retailer Ted Baker is available under a new lease.
Following the closure of Ted Baker’s British and Irish outlets this year, the ground floor and basement of 109 Grafton Street is available at a guide rent of €500,000, according to the Irish Times.
Read more here.
Photo by
Post Reporter
08.55 – ‘Ireland can’t shut out data centres without serious repercussions’ – Peter Burke
Anyone who thinks Ireland can ban data centres without serious economic repercussions is “not in the real world”, according to the minister for enterprise.
Peter Burke was speaking on Newstalk’s Business Breakfast this morning as he continues to woo FDI investors on his latest tour of the US.
Asked about the restrictions on data centre development in Ireland that have come into force in recent years due to energy shortages, Burke said it was now important for the state to “give certainty to that sector”, due to its importance to Ireland’s tech giants.
Fionn Thompson has the rest.
08.47 – Striking Boeing workers ‘overwhelmingly’ against latest pay proposal
Striking Boeing factory workers in the US are “overwhelmingly” against the airline’s latest pay proposals, according to their union.
Earlier on Tuesday, Boeing had said that it would extend the timeline for a vote on a new contract after the union had rejected the initial Friday deadline.
Over 32,000 Boeing workers in Seattle and Portland, Oregon, walked off the job earlier this month in the union’s first strike since 2008 – halting production of airplane models such as the best-selling 737 Max.
Read more here.
08.32 – Volkswagen squares off with union over German plant closures
Volkswagen and unions will square off today over wide-ranging cost cuts, including possible worker retrenchment, with tensions between both sides at their highest in years.
The talks centre on the carmaker’s plan to potentially shutter factories in Germany for the first time after scrapping decades-old job protections earlier this month.
The IG Metall union has vowed to fight those plans, threatening strikes that could paralyse Europe’s biggest car maker for weeks.
Read more here.
Oliver Blume, the chief executive of Volkswagen.
Photo by
ODD ANDERSEN
08.17 – FTSE 100 opens with similar slip to Iseq
Across the Irish sea, the FTSE 100 saw a similar slip of 0.10 per cent to 8,274.56.
In Frankfurt, the Dax recorded a more substantial drop, falling 0.76 per cent to 18,852.35 minutes after opening.
The Iseq fell further in early trading, down 0.28 per cent since open to 9,930.28.
08.02 – Iseq All Share slips upon opening
The Iseq All Share slipped upon opening on Wednesday morning, down 0.12 per cent from Tuesday’s close to 9,957.78.
Our online reporter Emma Hanrahan cast an eye over Tuesday’s close of business for us.
07.49 – Stormont considering water upgrade levies for housebuilders
Housing developers in the north could be asked to pay to upgrade water treatment works to help tackle the region’s ongoing housebuilding crisis.
John O’Dowd, the Stormont infrastructure minister, said that his officials were examining whether new legislation would be required to allow for developer contributions.
Housebuilding in the North fell to a 60-year low in 2023, in part due to restrictions on new connections to deficiencies in the water system, with an estimated 19,000 homes held up due to the restrictions.
Read more on the BBC here.
07.34 – Storyful receives fresh €3m injection from Rupert Murdoch-owned parent company
Storyful, the Irish-founded social media agency, has received fresh investment of €3 million from its Rupert Murdoch-owned parent company, new filings show.
According to documents lodged with the Companies Registration Office (CRO), News Corp, led by Murdoch, were sold 3000 ordinary shares in Storyful at €1000 each last week.
The social media firm, founded in 2010 by ex-RTÉ journalist Mark Little, has posted a litany of losses since its acquisition by News Corp for €18 million in 2013.
Read the full story here.
07.30 – Overseas investors snapping up defective apartments that banks won’t lend on
Prospective home buyers are losing out to overseas investors on apartments with defects because banks will not risk lending on them, according to reports.
An investigation by The Irish Times has found that those with mortgage approval are unable to buy second-hand apartments requiring remediation works – some as simple as replacing out-of-date fire alarms – as banks are unwilling to lend on them due to uncertainty around a government scheme to fix them.
Photo by
Krisztian Bocsi
07.15 – Chinese markets continue on the up after stimulus package
Most main Asian markets continued on their upward trajectory overnight, with Chinese indexes maintaining their lead following additional stimulus measures from Beijing.
In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng rose 1.26 per cent to 19,240.08, just edged by the Shanghai Composite which climbed 1.29 per cent to 2,900.03.
For the second day in a row, the CSI was on the way to outperforming both, growing 1.65 per cent to 3,407.18.
In Tokyo, however the Nikkei has registered a slight slip of 0.06 per cent, while South Korea’s KOSPI saw a more substantial 0.82 per cent fall.
07.00 – Good Morning
Good Morning from the Business Post.
Eoin O’Hare here with you for the day to keep you up-to-date with the all the latest news.
We are leading the site this morning with an interesting interview Donal MacNamee has done with Aaron Roderick, Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, on why he left and joined rival Bluesky. You can read the full piece here.
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Publish date : 2024-09-25 05:11:00
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