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A round up of the main financial stories of interest from the weekend papers. 9th December 2019

Pages 2 - 4: Press Summary Page 5: Links to Our research publications and market insights https://cantorfitzgerald.ie/

Cantor Fitzgerald Ireland Ltd (Cantor) is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. Cantor Fitzgerald Ireland Ltd is a member firm of the Irish Stock Exchange and the London Stock Exchange

Weekend Press Summary

Saturday 7th of December 2019 Sunday 8th of December 2019

The Saturday Irish Times Sunday Business Post

Following Providence Resources’ CEO, Tony O’Reilly Jr., Varadkar won’t support FF-led minority government if FG gets announcement that he was to step down from his position, Peter more seats Hamilton looks at the history of the company which traces its roots has privately warned that he will not to 1981. The board has initiated a process to identify a new chief support a Fianna Fáil-led minority government if wins the executive and O’Reilly will work with the board until January 2020. most seats in the upcoming general election. It comes amid growing speculation in Leinster House about an early A group of European Union countries is calling for a wider net general election in the spring if the current Brexit logjam is resolved to be cast when listing tax havens and to consider imposing stricter by the outcome of the British general election this Thursday. sanctions for those countries that facilitate tax avoidance. In September the IMF included Ireland and the Netherlands in a list of More Maximum Media podcast hits were inflated if world leading tax havens. Listenership figures on a number of Maximum Media podcast episodes were falsely inflated, the Business Post has learned. Profits at Housebuilder Abbey fell almost 10 percent in the six The Joe.ie publisher and media reports have previously referred to months to the end of October. The company’s house building unit a single incident of a click farm being used on an episode of the saw sales of 293 units in Ireland, the UK and the Czech Republic. 2017 AIB-sponsored “Capital B” podcast. However, it has emerged this weekend that up to 13 podcast episodes were boosted following In Business Week, Peter Hamilton notes the Irish Fiscal payments to a click farm in the week after each one was released. Advisory Council’s warning to the government of using ‘windfall Maximum Media executive chairman Justin Cullen did not reveal the taxes’to fund public services. Elsewhere Google is said to be figure when contacted, but confirmed yesterday that “several closing in on purchasing the Treasury Building in Dublin for about episodes across the series were affected”. €120 million. Keegan’s love of kayaking ‘not relevant’ to whitewater rafting proposal, says DCC The Saturday Independent Dublin City Council chief Owen Keegan has said his personal interest in canoeing has no bearing on the local authority‘s pursuit of a €23 million whitewater rafting facility in George’s Dock. UK must not try to undercut the EU via Brexit - Hogan Keegan has been a keen kayaker for 50 years and has completed The UK will not get a good long-term trade deal with the EU if it tries the Liffey Descent 25 times. to "undercut" Europe in world markets with lower labour and Councillor Mannix Flynn told the Business Post that he believed this environmental standards, new EU trade commissioner Phil Hogan was part of the reason why the controversial development was has warned. being put forward despite there being little interest in the sport in the city. Supermac's plazas drive record profits That is according to MD of Supermac's, Pat McDonagh, who was Rival airlines ‘would kill for’ facts about Irish carrier commenting yesterday on new accounts showing that pre-tax profits Peter Bellew was at Dublin Airport when he got a call from his boss. at Supermac's (Holdings) Ltd last year increased by 8pc to €23.7m, Michael O’Leary wanted to know why his chief operations officer after a surge in revenues. was flying to Brussels for dinner when his performance had been, in O’Leary’s opinion, “unacceptable and sloppy” at their weekly Terra Solar wins approval for Cork energy plan morning meeting. ESB-backed Terra Solar has been given the go-ahead by An Bord An unprecedented memo followed this November 2018 phone call Pleanála for the development of another large solar farm in Co where O’Leary reprimanded Bellew for what he believed was his Cork. poor performance, and set out the areas he wanted him to improve upon. German industrial output dips as exports slow down Such a review was something, O’Leary told the High Court, he had Germany's industrial output unexpectedly dropped in October, never had to do before. reviving worries about its economic growth outlook as its manufacturing backbone takes a blow from global trade conflicts O’Reilly jr’s exit marks the end of a fascinating era and disruptions in the auto sector. Providence Resources may be a minnow in Irish corporate life – a near irrelevance – but the resignation of Tony O’Reilly jr as its chief executive on Friday morning brought to an end one of the most compelling and controversial stories in Irish business history, one that ran for nearly 40 years. O’Reilly inherited his father Tony’s burning desire to find oil in Irish waters, extract it and make huge money from selling it. Unfortunately, like his father, he ran out of money from others to achieve that aim – although he wasn’t helped either by the failure to ever discover sufficient reserves of commercially extractable oil or gas in the Irish waters they searched to make either father or son’s dream realisable.

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Weekend Press Summary

Horizon8 to create 50 tech jobs in Cork ‘Scrooge’ compensation fund seeks to claw back Custom Horizon8, the multinational tech consultancy, is creating 50 jobs House Capital payouts. over the next five years at its new Irish office on Lapps Quay in A state compensation fund will ask the High Court this week for Cork. The business, previously known as HengTian, provides a permission to claw back some of the €20m owed to former clients broad range of consultancy services and builds tech solutions for of Custom House Capital (CHC), after the misappropriation of their clients. It was formed as a joint venture between State Street and pensions and investments, more than a decade ago. Insigma Technology from . The move by the Investor Compensation Company, which can pay up to €20,000 to victims of investment collapses, is likely to be Boots plans more Irish stores with eye on sustainability strongly opposed by CHC investors. The pharmacy chain Boots plans to open more stores in Ireland next year on the back of growing customer demand for beauty and Pay-as-you-go energy firm Pinergy slammed by net losses. wellness products and services. Losses at energy supplier Pinergy almost doubled last year, from Last month it opened a 220 square metre store on Dawson Street in €6.62m to €12.9m, writes Conor McMahon. New Measured Power, Dublin city centre with a significantly different look to its other Irish the company behind the provider of pay-as-you-go electricity, branches. According to Bernadette Lavery, managing director of recorded sales of €31.6m in 2018, an increase of 22% on the Boots Ireland, it is modelled on a branch in Covent Garden in previous 12 months. London that the company has dubbed its “store of the future”. Troubled Ted Baker seeks replacement for chairman David Dublin’s first co-living complex gets green light Bernstein. Ted Baker has hired headhunters to find a new The first large-scale co-living complex in central Dublin has been chairman, paving the way for a shake-up of its top ranks after a given the go-ahead, with the future operators SQRE Living now catastrophic year that has plunged the fashion retailer into crisis. actively seeking more sites for similar schemes. Dublin City Council planners have refused all co-living proposals to Standard Life Aberdeen is monitoring its £1.3bn UK property date. They blocked applications from Bartra Capital and raised fund closely after a wave of redemptions caused by fears over retail concerns about the standard of accommodation that shared living prompted rival M&G to gate its fund. provides. Investors pulled money from property funds at the fastest rate so far However, Hill Street Limited Partnership’s proposal to build a 129- this year last week, with £57m flowing out on Thursday alone, bed complex on Hill Street near Mountjoy Square has just been according to analysis firm Calastone. approved. The developers originally applied to build 132 units on the site, but this was revised downwards by planners. Markets have priced in a Tory majority in this week’s election, leading analysts to predict that the reaction to a Boris Johnson win, Children’s Hospital buys potentially illegal face-recognition for the pound and the stock market, will be modest. technology But they warn that if the Tories fall short and there is a hung Facial recognition technology, which may prove illegal to use under parliament, which could allow in a Labour minority government, GDPR, has been purchased for the planned New Children‘s there will be a big sell-off. Hospital. The CCTV, purchased from a controversial Chinese surveillance Airbnb’s European sales soar before float. technology company, Hikvision, is estimated to have cost five to ten Sales at Airbnb’s UK and European operations soared by 35% to times what a conventional Hikvision camera would cost.. $2.4bn (£1.83bn) last year, accounts in Dublin show. The home-rental service has appointed Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to advise on a Wall Street float next year, with private deals putting a value of $31bn on the Californian tech giant.

The Sunday Times Is Jeff Bezos’s Amazon now the ‘evil face of capitalism’? The retail giant is coming under fire over the amount of tax its pays and staff safety. Bank warning on ultra-low interest rates. Amazon had the busiest 24 hours of its 25-year history last Monday, Irish banks are among the most exposed in Europe to a prolonged shifting “hundreds of millions” of packages. For many, it was not a period of ultra-low interest rates, regulators have warned. cause for celebration — it was further evidence of the threat posed AIB, Bank of Ireland and Permanent TSB are hampered by their by the $863bn behemoth. high costs and small scale, in international terms, the Central Bank On that same “Cyber Monday”, warehouse workers in San of Ireland warned, in a financial stability review issued last week. It Bernardino, California, where serious injuries run at four times the also highlighted that Irish banks relied more on interest income for rate of the national average, picketed for better conditions. In profitability than banks elsewhere, where customers tended to pay Brussels, regulators from the European Commission joined higher fees and charges. politicians for a first-of-its-kind “Amazon symposium”, where union leaders called for its break-up. In Rugeley, Staffordshire, Labour MP Investors sweat on unregulated German property scheme Jack Dromey demanded the Seattle giant stop acting like “a 19th- Dolphin Trust century mill owner”. Troubled promotor will miss interest payment to pensioners on Tuesday. A property promoter that has borrowed more than €100m from 1,800 Irish investors to renovate apartments in Germany will miss an interest payment due this week, according to the Irish administrator of the unregulated investment. Dolphin Trust, renamed German Property Group (GPG) last April, promised annual returns of up to 15% to investors who loaned it a minimum of €15,000 each for three or five years to redevelop listed buildings into luxury apartments. The company has been beset by problems in the UK, however, where investors have complained for some time about delayed payments after their investments matured.

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Weekend Press Summary

The Sunday Independent Jeff Bezos warns US military it risks losing tech supremacy Amazon chief suggests China’s attempt to gain an edge represents a new kind of danger BioMarin sizes up latest pharma plant in Ireland BioMarin, a US drug group that focuses on treating patients with Plans for new global football competitions branded ‘insane’ rare genetic disorders, has said it could develop another facility in Chiefs of European game push back against CVC talks with Ireland. Real Madrid and Fifa

Energia buys Meath solar farm projects in green push The Big Read -Europe First: taking on the dominance of the US Irish energy provider and infrastructure investor Energia Group has dollar acquired solar energy developer Solar Farmers Ltd which has two EU leaders believe the euro needs to play a larger role in order solar projects in Meath. to compete against the US and China

Siteserv inquiry to face further delay as costs hit €6.7m Opinion - Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn are set to Fears have emerged of yet further delays to the Siteserv inquiry as disappoint their supporters costs continue to mount. Both leaders would have to let down their grassroots if they make it to Downing Street UK's PremFina applies for money lending licence as it eyes Irish market Facebook co-founder eyes direct listing for Asana PremFina, a UK-based insurance premium finance company, is set Business software company led by Dustin Moskovitz hires to expand into the Irish market after it applied for a money lending bankers for 2020 flotation licence from the Central Bank.

. Amigo doubles Irish loan book to €4.8m

Amigo Holdings, a UK-based guarantor loan provider, has more than doubled the size of its Irish loan book and added 1,000 customers here since the end of June.

Siptu faces staff row over Christmas bonus

Siptu is facing a demand for the retrospective payment of up to 10 years worth of Christmas bonuses in a row that has "shattered" trust and confidence between managers and a group of part-time staff.

The Weekend FT

Uber and Airbnb praised for headway on customer safety 3 In-app help buttons added 3 Crackdown on ‘party houses’ 3 Critics want more

Vodafone warns charge puts India unit at risk Vodafone’s Indian joint venture will have to “shut shop” if New Delhi does not intervene to stop a multibilliondollar charge, the owner of the UK telecoms group’s local partner has warned.

Under the hood Europe’s banks slash 60,000 jobs as outlook turns negative

Punitive rates, slowing economic growth, Brexit and regulation take toll, while potential wave of consolidation brings threat of more pain

TikTok takes on Facebook with push for US advertisers Chinese-owned viral video app vows more spending and reveals ecommerce plans

Year-end repo rates surge despite Fed attempts to ease the funding strain The cost of borrowing cash overnight on the last day of the year has surged despite the US Federal Reserve’s injection of billions of dollars into markets in an attempt to ease the strain, raising concerns that investors may be in for a volatile final few weeks of 2019.

Big-name investors target battered energy sector Warren Buffett, Carl Icahn, Jerry Jones and Sam Zell are just a few of the bargain-hunters flocking to the energy industry — the worst- performing sector of 2019.

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Weekend Press Summary

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