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A Round up of the Main Financial Stories of Interest from the Weekend Papers. 9Th December 2019

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A Round up of the Main Financial Stories of Interest from the Weekend Papers. 9Th December 2019 @CantorIreland Cantor Fitzgerald Ireland 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 Taoiseach Leo Varadkar 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 Fine Gael 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. CANTOR FITZGERALD IRELAND Page 2 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 China. 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.
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