Fresh from his successful Bank of Ireland sale, the US billionaire’s firm has struck a joint venture agreement with Irish investment house Cardinal Capital that aims to raise €400m for property investments.
The new fund will be open to new investors as well as those who backed Wilbur Ross, pictured, previously on deals including his successful Bank of Ireland play. The fund-raising is expected to be finalised by September.
The Department of Finance countered that it is confident Ireland has not broken EU state aid rules. A spokesman said the State’s position would be vigorously defended after EU competition commissioner Joaquin Almunia announced the much-expected in-depth investigation yesterday.
Apple again said yesterday that it had received no special consideration from Irish officials and said it was subject to the same tax laws as scores of other companies in Ireland.
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The disclosure, which comes as a major embarrassment to the public service, was made this afternoon.
Revenue said the Houses of the Oireachtas Service was among 131 individual taxpayers, companies or bodies which had made substantial settlements – totalling €23.25m – in the first three months of the year.
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The steady drip-feed of global stimulus also kept world shares inching towards an all-time high as another record close for Wall Street and a three-year high for Asia left them heading for a fifth day of back-to-back gains.
European stocks were happy to take a breather in early trading after gaining almost 10 percent in the last few months, leaving the momentum from last week’s ECB cut in interest rates to continue elsewhere.
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Individual mortgages would not be affected if the accounts – which were bundled together by the bank to be used to borrow on the markets – were taken over by bondholders acting through trustee Deutsche Bank.
But homeowners would get a letter telling them of the change.
Ulster Bank borrowed against the Irish mortgages during the boom through a process called securitisation.
Anglo lent Clarendon – co-owned by McKillen and Tony Leonard – around $135m to buy the building in 2006.
The purchase price was around $170m.
Most of McKillen’s loans to Anglo were bought out by US private equity group Colony Capital as part of the sale of the Project Pebble portfolio last year. “Everything is paid off and gone and out of Anglo. This is the end of it,” according to one source.
Irish consumers and visitors are helping to spur activity in the services sector, with a gauge of activity pointing to a “blistering” pace of expansion.
The Investec Services Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) touched 61.7 in May, with any reading above 50 indicating expansion of activity and any figure below 50 showing contraction.
The gauge covers hotels and restaurants, transport and storage, post and telecommunications, financial intermediation, renting and business activities.
The European Central Bank (ECB) will charge banks in the eurozone for keeping cash on deposit in an unprecedented bid to get money flowing and tackle the threat of deflation.
ECB President Mario Draghi slashed the official interest rate – what banks pay to borrow – to 0.15pc yesterday. More radically it introduced a “negative interest rate” on overnight deposits from banks.
That means euro-area lenders, including banks here, will be punished for keeping cash on deposit with the central bank instead of lending it out.
NAMA has paid a further €1.15bn to the Central Bank to settle debts originally owed by the bust former Anglo Irish Bank.
Last year the National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) “bought” a €12.93bn charge, or mortgage, over the assets of IBRC – the former Anglo Irish Bank that was previously held by the Central Bank as security for emergency loans to the bank.
The deal was part of the wider scheme to scrap the notorious Anglo Irish Bank “promissory note”, with the sale following the appointment of a special liquidator to IBRC, the renamed Anglo.
Management and technology consultancy BearingPoint says big organisations should ‘be nicer’ to small and medium sized suppliers.
BearingPoint also warns that overly rigid procurement policies threaten the survival of SMEs.
A report by BearingPoint recommends that big companies and public sector organisations should partner more with SME suppliers rather than continually squeezing them on cost.
