Inside the world of business
Unexpected IDA choice of speaker for tech event
IDA IRELAND has an enviable international reputation for attracting large multinationals to these shores, particularly the big technology players, but the technology landscape has changed utterly in the last five years.
It is increasingly smaller privately held companies that are led by developers which are driving innovation and creating jobs, rather than Nasdaq-quoted firms with professional management teams.
If you want confirmation of the trend, just look at Facebook’s acquisition this month of the tiny San Francisco app-maker Instagram for a cool $1 billion.
Despite some initial criticisms that the IDA was failing to engage with the new generation of hoodie-wearing chief executives of Silicon Valley, the agency seems to be adapting to the new realities.
Next week it is hosting an event in Berlin in association with the Dublin Web Summit to showcase Ireland as a location for “emerging high-growth companies”.
Eyes though have been raised in the local technology scene with the inclusion of one of the speakers at the event – Mike Butcher, the European face of the industry news site TechCrunch.
While Butcher is a regular enough visitor to Dublin and was even a columnist with this newspaper for a number of years, he seems a curious choice to sell the benefits of Ireland as a tech hub.
When not writing for TechCrunch, Butcher is a founder of Coadec, a lobby group for Britain’s digital economy firms, has served on the mayor of London’s Digital Advisory Board, and is involved with TechHub, a start-up space near London’s “Silicon Roundabout”.
With London and Dublin competing so fiercely for investments from the likes of Facebook, Twitter and Zynga, the IDA seems to have chosen a strange bedfellow for its latest sales effort.
Embassies given the NTMA nod ahead of return to bond markets
HELLO LUSAKA, this is the Treasury Building, Dublin, calling.
The Irish Embassy in the Zambian capital was one of 36 embassies briefed on a conference call on Tuesday hosted by the National Treasury Management Agency about the Irish economic situation.
Chief economist at the NTMA Rossa White updated ambassadors and diplomats in locations as far away as Abu Dhabi, Tel Aviv, Hanoi and Sydney, as well as the usual Irish outposts in Washington, London, Paris and Berlin.
White’s call lasted over an hour and is well worth what must be a sizeable phone bill to the State.
Explaining the Irish story in detail to embassies is a no-brainer and a sensible strategy as the NTMA steps up activity before dipping its toe in the markets again.
It is hard to think of a better way to influence the investment world than having a word in their ear at an embassy cocktail party, given the influence of embassies on overseas attitudes towards Ireland.
The NTMA and the Department of Finance have been making detail presentations to potential investors ahead of the planned return to international bond markets.
The NTMA is primed to sell sovereign annuities, Government bonds stretching out 25 to 35 years, to domestic pension funds and this may happen before international investors are approached.
The likelihood is that it won’t be until June or July before the NTMA starts selling treasury bills to international investors to extend existing debt maturities out from weeks to months. This will precipitate bigger debt issuances by the State later this year.
All this, of course, depends on a Yes vote in the fiscal compact referendum at the end of next month.
It is difficult to see why investors would buy Irish debt without a safety net that the State could tap the EU bailout fund, if required, and the vote will determine this.
There is also the latest elephant in the room – Spain and concerns about its financial position.
If only that could be fixed with a call to an embassy in Madrid.
Fallon close to schools deadline
Schoolbook publisher CJ Fallon, which is set to be put on the block shortly, will be more or less the last of the meaningful Boundary Capital assets to go.
If a deal is to be done, presumably the buyer will want to move quickly. We are getting close to the end of the school year, the point at which primary pupils get their book lists for next September.
The bulk of its sales, to both the national and secondary school markets, will be through late summer and early autumn. Its new owner will surely want to benefit from the revenue generated.
It will be interesting to see how proceeds are divvied up. Fleming – formerly Boundary – Capital, owns two-thirds. Niall McFadden, Boundary’s founder, has a stake, as does his former colleague, Declan Cassidy.
Ulster Bank is owed over €20 million by Fallon. It will presumably have first call. Fleming owes the State-owned Irish Banking Resolution Corporation €85 million, so the company will have to get something from the deal to pass on to this creditor.
A deal is really going to boil down to what the banks will accept. The talks between them are likely to be an education in themselves.
Today
FLAC (Free Legal Advice Centres) is hosting a conference to analyse and debate the imminent reform of personal insolvency law in Ireland.
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