Ireland

Ulster Bank said on Wednesday that it has formally begun writing to groups of current and deposit account customers in Ireland to give them six months’ notice to move their business to another provider and close their accounts, the Irish Times reported. The bank said it is sending out letters and emails on a phased basis to different groups of customers “to help to facilitate orderly account switching and new account opening across the industry and to avoid a single closure date for customers and the industry”.

Annual inflation in Ireland neared an almost 40-year high of 6.7% in March, a jump from 5.6% a month earlier on the back of soaring energy prices, data from the Central Statistics Office showed on Thursday, Reuters reported. Diesel and petrol rocketed by 46% and 35% respectively year-on-year while food prices rose by 3.1%. Prices overall were 1.9% higher than February, the fastest month-on-month rise since monthly figures were first collected in 1997.

A High Court application seeking approval of a financial arrangement that would write off the bulk of restaurateur Jay Bourke’s €13.7 million debts has been withdrawn, the Irish Times reported. The withdrawal came following an objection from Pepper Finance, which is owed €12.2 million from a contingent liability arising from Mr Bourke’s loans on Co Meath hotel Bellinter House, which he co-owned. Pepper would be paid less than 1 per cent of its debt under his proposed insolvency arrangement. Mr.

Russian airlines could be frozen out of the aircraft leasing market well beyond the Ukraine conflict, one of the industry's biggest players warned on Tuesday, blaming what executives have described as a default involving hundreds of Western jets, Reuters reported. Global leasing companies had until Monday to sever ties with Russian carriers under Western sanctions imposed over Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, but executives say only a fraction of the more than 400 jets directly involved have been returned.

All Irish lessors terminated their Russian airline leases by Monday's European Union sanctions deadline and have so far had limited success in recovering their aircraft, the representative body for the sector in Ireland said, Reuters reported. Aircraft Leasing Ireland (ALI), members of which include SMBC Aviation Capital, Avolon, Aircastle and AerCap Holdings , which is the world's biggest aircraft leasing company, said that all of its members have complied fully with the sanctions.

Irish retail sales rose in February as Covid-19 restrictions were lifted and consumers spent more in bars, and on hardware and electrical goods, the Irish Times reported. Central Statistics Office (CSO) figures show retail volumes were up 0.9 per cent month on month. The sectors with the largest monthly increases were bars (13.9 per cent); hardware, paints and glass (7 per cent); and electrical goods (4.8 per cent). Sales volumes, however, in department stores declined by 5.4 per cent.

Gayle Killilea, former wife of bankrupt property baron Sean Dunne, this week appealed a 2019 U.S. jury verdict ordering her to pay nearly €20 million to the trustee of his US bankruptcy, the Irish Times reported. Killilea’s lawyer Patrick Fahey filed the appeal on Thursday with the US court of appeals for the second circuit in New York. She joined her ex-husband Mr Dunne who flied a separate appeal with the same court last year. Thomas Curran, a lawyer for the bankruptcy trustee, said on Friday he is confident the court will uphold the verdict.

Covid-adjusted unemployment in the Republic fell to 7 per cent in February on the back of the lifting of pandemic restrictions in late January. This was down from 7.8 per cent for the previous month and 27 per cent a year ago, the Irish Times reported. The headline rate includes people in receipt of the Government’s pandemic unemployment payment (PUP). The Central Statistics Office (CSO) estimated there was as many as 180,745 people classified as being either out of work or in receipt of the PUP last month.

It’s “unrealistic” that the European Central Bank will raise interest rates in June, Governing Council member Gabriel Makhlouf told the Financial Times, Bloomberg News reported. The central bank may stop net bond purchases in June or a few months later, after which it would raise rates, he told the newspaper, adding that there’s “a bit of difference” between its schedule and the one market participants are anticipating.