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

IFG issues positive trading update

Financial services group IFG has issued a trading update saying the group has performed well across all its three divisions.

In addition to achieving targeted debt reduction, the group has also restructured its debt with a significant associated decrease in costs, it said in yesterday's statement.

Veolia wins Clareville contract

French environmental services group Veolia has won a contract worth just over €70 million to design, build and operate the upgrading of the Clareville water production plant in Limerick.

Construction work in partnership with Dutch engineer Ascon started last month. The operational contract is for 20 years.

Ifsra survey on current accounts

The Irish Financial Services Regulatory Authority has published a survey comparing the cost of current accounts offered by a number of banks.

Consumer director Mary O'Dea noted that it was now possible to operate an account without paying for the most generally used services. She also said that people who wanted to open new accounts could not be refused on the basis they could not produce particular documentation.

High rate of cybercrime here

Cybercrime is virtually universal in organisations here and is resulting in significant costs and loss of productivity, according to a UCD survey launched yesterday by Tánaiste Michael McDowell.

The ISSA/UCD Irish Cybercrime Survey, the first study of its kind to be conducted in the Republic, found that 98 per cent of all respondent organisations had experienced some form of cybercrime.

"The most common issues affecting Irish organisations are viruses (90 per cent), misuse of systems (88 per cent), asset theft (63 per cent) and 'phishing' (56 per cent)," said Owen O'Connor, one of the authors of the study.

Soft property landing predicted

A soft landing for the property market, strong merger and acquisition activity and a fifth consecutive year of

double- digit growth in equity markets are key investment themes to expect in 2007, according to Hibernian Investment Managers.

West African Diamonds results

West African Diamonds, the mining group spun off from African Diamonds last year and listed on London's AIM last month, has released its maiden half-year results.

It says diamond recovery equipment for the Sierra Leone project was due to arrive in Freetown later this month and that discussions regarding mining the site were at an advanced stage.

Limerick data firm plans to relocate

Two hundred staff at Thompson Scientific in Plassey, Co Limerick, were told yesterday that the company is proposing to relocate to India.

The company, which is regarded as a leader in the data processing sector, said its decision was due to "stiff competition from aggressive competitors keen to grow their market share".

Results encourage African Eagle

African Eagle reports encouraging results from its Mkushi copper mines in Zambia, saying that the feasibility study is progressing well. It also says it is in advanced discussions with potential joint venture partners at its Miyabi gold project in Tanzania.