Ireland

The possible collapse of Liam Carroll’s €2.3 billion property empire will not derail the establishment of the National Asset Management Agency (Nama), according to the Department of Finance, the Irish Times reported. However, banking sources said the opposite. They warn that any significant insolvency will jeopardise the valuation model on which Nama is based.

Ireland's high cost economy has priced itself out of the market in key business areas, and workers will have to take wage cuts of up to 15 per cent to regain competitiveness, according to the head of the country’s foreign investment promotion board, the Financial Times reported. Barry O’Leary, chief executive of the Industrial Development Authority, said Ireland would have to cut costs to win back investments in areas such as call centres, which are labour intensive but low paid.

Prices are falling faster in Ireland than anywhere else in the developed world. Now, beleaguered retailers face an even bigger strain as more shoppers head north, out of the country, for bargains. For years, shoppers have hopped the border between the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland. But recently, a deepening recession, complaints about a "rip-off republic," a weaker British pound and a wide gap in tax rates have dramatically increased the appeal of stores in Northern Ireland. To try to keep people like Ms.

Strains in pensions systems, in both private and public provision, threaten to turn the financial crisis of the past two years into a social crisis lasting for decades, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development warned on Tuesday. In its annual analysis of the health of pensions systems globally, the Paris-based organisation found private pension plans lost 23 per cent of their value last year, while higher unemployment “leaves little room for more generous public pensions”, the Financial Times reported.

Ireland’s Minister for Finance, Brian Lenihan TD, today announced the Government’s agreement to the establishment of a single fully integrated regulatory institution, the Central Bank of Ireland Commission, Finfacts reported. This new structure will replace the current board structure of the Central Bank and the Financial Services Regulatory Authority to achieve the highest performance standards for the new organisation. Substantial additional staff has been promised.

The ESRI (Economic and Social Research Institute) says today that the Irish Economy will shrink 9.2 per cent in 2009, which will be the sharpest fall in economic growth experienced by an industrialised country since the Great Depression, Finfacts Ireland reported. The ESRI says employment in 2009 will be 187,300 lower than in 2008, on an annual average basis. The ESRI says the implications of the downturn for employment are highly negative. It expects employment in 2009 to be 187,300 lower than in 2008, on an annual average basis.

One of Australia's most extraordinary business stories of the past few decades is the spectacular rise and equally spectacular fall of the ABC Learning Group, analysis by The New Zealand Herald found. ABC began with one centre in Brisbane in 1988. By 2007 it had used hundreds of millions of dollars from taxpayers, shareholders and banks to grow into the world's second-biggest childcare operator with more than 2300 centres in Australia, the United States, Britain, and New Zealand. In 2007, it reported profits of more than $150 million.

The bank has installed a receiver over Thedforde Trading in an effort to secure about €20 million it lent to the firm, The Sunday Business Post reported. Thedforde Trading is controlled by Simon Kelly, the son of Dublin property developer Paddy Kelly. Thedforde Trading has been trying to redevelop the premises into shops and a hotel, and had lodged a number of planning applications. It recently received planning permission for a part of the proposed development. Thedforde is the latest in a series of companies controlled by the Kelly family to be seized by banks.

Ireland will take commercial-property assets off the books of six of its biggest lenders and house them in a new state agency, a plan it hopes will restore international confidence in the nation's financial system, The Wall Street Journal reported. If necessary, the state will take majority stakes in Ireland's two main banks. Irish Finance Minister Brian Lenihan said Wednesday that all land and development loans of Ireland's major banks will be housed in the new National Asset Management Agency.

Ireland’s government, reeling from the loss of its top credit rating by Standard & Poor’s, may increase taxes and cut spending in an emergency budget today aimed at stemming the biggest deficit among euro-area nations, Bloomberg reported. Finance Minister Brian Lenihan, who is making his second budget speech in six months, says the country faces a “very grave national crisis” as the deficit heads for 13 percent of gross domestic product, four times the European Union limit. He may also announce plans to remove toxic property loans from the nation’s biggest banks.