Chinese whispers, sterling’s slide and Bank of Ireland offloads problem loans

Business Today: the best news, analysis and comment from The Irish Times business desk

Huawei mobile services allow users to access the company’s  smartphone apps and to store personal information, including payment details, in the cloud. Photograph: Reuters
Huawei mobile services allow users to access the company’s smartphone apps and to store personal information, including payment details, in the cloud. Photograph: Reuters

Huawei says Ireland will become increasingly important to Chinese companies after Brexit. The company's chairman was speaking to Charlie Taylor as the telecoms giant announced it had transferred its mobile software services business to an Irish subsidiary.

Sterling watchers are looking on anxiously as the currency markets struggle to get a fix on just what will happen next in the increasingly fractious debate in Britain on Brexit. Yesterday's parliamentary crisis saw the British currency lose 1 per cent of its value against both the euro and the dollar at one point.

Sticking with Brexit, acting Central Bank governor Sharon Donnery warns again that a no-deal Brexit will have an immediate and severe impact on almost all sectors of the economy.

Her alert comes as new figures from the Central Statistics Office show that wages in Ireland are rising at their fastest level in a decade. Eoin Burke-Kennedy has the details.

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Wages may be rising but that is scant use to more than 300 Apple contractors in Cork who were let go yesterday as the company apologised for failing to live up to its own ideals on privacy after it emerged it had its staff listen to recordings of intimate conversations through its Siri app to improve the "digital assistant's" voice recognition.

The parent of popular southside Dublin restaurant Ouzos has entered examinership as it struggles to overcome cash-flow problems and disputes between directors. Aodhan O Faolain and Ray Managh have the details.

Bank of Ireland has sold a portfolio of non-performing buy-to-let loans to a US fund. Mark Paul reports that Cerberus has secured a 40 per cent discount on the face value of the impaired borrowings.

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Dominic Coyle

Dominic Coyle

Dominic Coyle is Deputy Business Editor of The Irish Times