| Authority finds its teeth as it prohibits a proposed merger for the first time |
Issue: 05 / 2005 |
| 2004 was a remarkable year for the Competition Authority, as it marked the first time that the Authority prohibited a merger – the proposed merger of the business recovery services of IBM and Schlumberger. The Authority also processed some 70 per cent more merger notifications than in 2003, writes Gerald Fitzgerald, with some 81 mergers notified to the Authority in 2004. |
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| Bank of Ireland readies second covered bond issue |
Issue: 05 / 2005 |
| Bank of Ireland Mortgage Bank has mandated Barclays Capital, Dresdner Bank, IXIS CIB and Davy to lead manage its second Asset Covered Security (ACS) issue. Subject to board approvals, documentation and market conditions, the launch will follow investor meetings, which are intended to take place in early June 2005.
BoI launched its first deal in September of last year, a €2 billion issue that was over three times over-subscribed. The deal was the first tranche of a planned €10 billion programme. |
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| Book review: The Automatic Millionaire – or how to get rich without trying |
Issue: 05 / 2005 |
| With the ‘get rich quick’ phenomenon currently taking hold in Ireland, something which is evident by the number of investment clubs and property seminars springing up all over the country, books by American self-help gurus such as the ‘Rich Dad, Poor Dad’ books by Richard T. Kiyosaki, have become increasingly popular. New kid on the block is David Bach, whose new book ‘The Automatic Millionaire’ has just been published in Europe. Bach offers some very good pointers on how to get your money working for you, and how becoming a millionaire is realistic for everyone – provided you think long-term. |
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| CESR gives advice on MiFID |
Issue: 05 / 2005 |
| The Committee of European Securities Regulators (CESR) has submitted its second technical advice to the European Commission under the Directive on Markets in Financial Instruments (MiFID). MiFID forms one of the cornerstones of the EU’s securities regulatory regime. |
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| Commission’s investigation will have serious implications |
Issue: 05 / 2005 |
| The EU’s Competition Commissioner, Neelie Kroes, is due to start investigating the financial services sector to identify obstacles to competition, be they ‘regulation, State aid or private barriers’. Tom Carney says that this is an opportunity for the Irish financial services industry to shape future regulation of competition in financial services. |
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| Corporate finance update: strong level of growth in market, with deals worth €4bn transacted |
Issue: 05 / 2005 |
| The mergers and acquisitions climate in Ireland remains buoyant with a number of high profile transactions already successfully concluded in 2005. Recent data indicates €4 billion of disclosed transactions for the first three months of the year, writes Mon O’Driscoll in this review of the sector. |
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| Deal directory 2005 |
Issue: 05 / 2005 |
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| Deal of the Year 2005: C&C’s €726 million IPO leads the deals in this year’s deal directory |
Issue: 05 / 2005 |
| The IPO of food and drinks company C&C on the Dublin and London stock exchanges last May is the largest deal nominated in this year’s FINANCE Deal of the Year survey. Other top deals of the past 12 months as selected by Ireland’s leading corporate financiers for inclusion in the survey, include the Grafton Group’s €353 million takeover of the Heiton Group, and the €117 million acquisition of the Gresham Hotels Group by a group of investors, David Coleman, Bryan Cullen and John Joe Murphy. |
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| First Asian financing for IL&P |
Issue: 05 / 2005 |
| Irish Life & Permanent plc raised $600 million in the group’s first major fund raising exercise in an Asian targeted issue. The funds raised will be used to support permanent tsb’s mortgage lending in the Irish market. |
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| First company lists on Ireland’s IEE |
Issue: 05 / 2005 |
| Lapp Plats has become the first company to list on the Irish Enterprise Exchange (IEX). |
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| Hedge funds come into the open |
Issue: 05 / 2005 |
| Despite their insignificance in terms of assets under management (approximately $1 trillion), compared with the long-only funds industry (approximately $83 trillion), hedge funds have become the topic ‘de jour’. Open any paper or financial magazine, and you will find pages dedicated to developments in the industry, (including this issue – see pages 2 and 10) with a particular focus on the sector’s recent woes. It seems it will only be a matter of time before Eileen Dunne is discussing the relative merits of convertible arbitrage strategies as opposed to the global macro approach on Six-One. |
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| Irish pension funds shouldn’t be looking to diversify away from Irish equities - just yet |
Issue: 05 / 2005 |
| Despite the excellent performance of the Irish equity market over the past number of years, with allocation to Irish equities by managed funds standing at around 20 per cent, many funds have started to move out of Irish equities in order to lower the perceived risk profile. While in FINANCE February, Grainne Alexander of Mercer believed that this was a welcome development, this month Pramit Ghose takes a differing view, arguing that a holding now in Irish equities of around 21 per cent for a typical Irish pension fund is correct. He says the key principle to remember is that you cannot divorce market conditions from investment decisions and simply look at investment models in isolation and ignore the investment outlook for different ‘stock markets’. |
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| Irish registered PCAOB firms |
Issue: 05 / 2005 |
| Last month we reported on Irish accounting firms that are registered with the US Accounting Standards Board, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB). |
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| Issuers need to use Sarb-Ox deadline extension wisely |
Issue: 05 / 2005 |
| The SEC has recently announced an extension in the deadline for compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley for US listed Foreign Private Issuers (FPIs). But if Irish FPIs are to navigate the pitfalls in terms of time, effort, and euro that their US counterparts have endured, they will need to use the extension wisely. Dealing with resource issues early will be the key to achieving success and avoiding some of the potential issues, writes Paul Regnard. |
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| IT drives investment up 35p.c. in Q1 2005 |
Issue: 05 / 2005 |
| Ireland outperforms European average as deals worth €42 million are transacted in Q1 2005. |
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