Eir’s €100m redundancy bill, a new forecourt brand and Russian money in Ireland

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

Staff who choose to leave Eir will be offered  five weeks’ pay per year of service to leave. Photograph: Alan Betson
Staff who choose to leave Eir will be offered five weeks’ pay per year of service to leave. Photograph: Alan Betson

Eir's plans to cut 750 jobs from its 3,225-strong workforce could cost the company more than €100 million, with departing staff to be offered five weeks' pay per year of service to leave, writes Joe Brennan this morning.

Joe also reports on a new private-equity player on the Irish property block which has together with local partner, Richard Barrett's Bartra Capital, already spent nearly €15 million here.

The High Court threw a huge curveball at Facebook and many other technolody-to-media companies yesterday when it asked the European Court of Justice to answer a raft of questions on EU-US data transfers. Karlin Lillington has parsed the ruling and concluded it spells much worry for executives in Facebook and many other companies.

The cloudy horizons created by the run-up to Brexit are likely to get darker, according to a new analysis from PricewaterhouseCoopers, which warns that a hard Brexit is still the most likely outcome of the UK leaving the EU. Peter Hamilton has the details on the prediction, which comes a day after the Central Bank warned that Brexit could cost the Republic 40,000 jobs. Colin Gleeson has that story.

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Mark Paul reports on the latest fuel forecourt name to come our way, with Canadian group Circle K set to install its own brand at all Topaz service stations, as well as withdrawing most Re:Store food branding.

In his Caveat column, Mark turns his attention to John Henry, a former Irish army member who became a private security consultant and whose name appears in the Director of Corporate Enforcement Ian Drennan's application to the High Court to appoint inspectors to INM. In that application, Mr Drennan asserts that Mr Henry effectively ran the secret "interrogation" of INM's email system in 2014 and 2015 that is at the centre of the saga.

Dominic Coyle reports today on a potentially significant breast cancer treatment breakthrough discovered by an Irish company that is due to be presented to the American Association for Cancer Research annual meeting on Monday. Investors in the business include Michael Smurfit.

This week's Business Interview features Kevin Donnelly, who heads up Britvic just as the company faces into the dual challenges of Brexit and a sugar tax. He tells Ciarán Hancock he's ready for whatever comes the company's way.

John FitzGerald has taken a look at the National Planning Framework for his economics column this week, concluding that he quite likes the look of it, at least compared to its previous incarnations.

Looking East in today's Agenda feature, Colm Keena tries to unravel an extremely tangled web of financial dealings that flowed from one of the most extraordinary crimes of Putin's Russia and appear to have drawn in accounts in Irish banks.

And still in foreign climes, our Wild Goose this week is Carina Devlin, an entrepreneur in United Arab Emirates who realises that life there will always be that of an expat, not an emigrant.

Finally, do you suffer from imposter syndrome at work, where you live in fear of everybody finding out that you're not really up to the job? If so, Olive Keogh has some advice for you.

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Úna McCaffrey

Úna McCaffrey

Úna McCaffrey is Digital Features Editor at The Irish Times.