A round-up of today's other stories in brief

Treasury predicts recovery

TREASURY HOLDINGS is predicting a recovery in the Dublin office market following a significant increase in activity in its property portfolio since the start of this year.

The company, which has had some of its loans transferred to Nama, has completed commercial and residential deals covering 5,574sq m (600,000sq ft) of real estate since 2011.

John Bruder of Treasury says that with office vacancy rates in general reported by Jones Lang LaSalle to be down to 15.8 per cent in the city centre, prime space in larger buildings would run out by 2013 if the current level of take-up continues. “This is a very real issue because the non-availability of suitable office space could curtail new projects coming to the city and may mean Dublin loses out to competing locations for foreign direct investment.”

Iceland opens new stores

ICELAND IS continuing to roll out new stores in the Republic. The AIM Group, which holds the franchise of Iceland supermarkets in Ireland, began trading last week from a new 743sq m (8,000sq ft) store at Greencastle Parade in Coolock, Dublin 17. Approximately 40 new jobs are being created by the opening.

Iceland is also to open further outlets in key locations across the country. Tomorrow, another shop will begin trading at the Showgrounds shopping centre in Clonmel, while on November 17th the company will launch a store at Ashbourne Town Centre in Co Meath. The fourth store, due to open on November 24th, will be at Tullow Road in Carlow. AIM also has stores in the Ilac centre in Dublin city centre as well as in Finglas, Ballyfermot and Navan Road.

Egan and Mahon on the move

TWO DIRECTORS of estate agents HWBC, Brendan Egan and Joe Mahon, are to join BNP Paribas Real Estate in their property management department. They will join David Browne, divisional director, and increase to 10 the number of property managers and accounts administrators. Last month, BNP also recruited Eoin Feeney and Mervyn Ellis from HWBC to their retail division.

Patrick Curran, managing director of BNP, said the two most recent appointments were in keeping with their objective of growing their property management business which already accounted for a network of more than 30 million square metres.