A round-up of today's other business news, in brief ...

Government advised on private equity

The Government was advised last month to consider the participation of private equity firms and investors in an effort to clear the banking system of impaired loans under its bad bank proposals.

US financial advisers FTI Consulting told the Government during their meeting in Dublin – before the creation of the National Asset Management Agency (Nama) last week to buy up to €90 billion in bad property loans – that the involvement of private equity should be examined as part of the bad bank solution.

Under proposals announced last week, the Government said that “in order to achieve the optimal return”, some property loans sold to Nama will be capable of being transferred into special-purpose vehicles “which will be capable of being worked out and disposed of in an orderly manner with private equity partners”.

AIB passes on ECB quarter point rate cut

Allied Irish Banks has passed on this month’s quarter-point interest rate cut from the European Central Bank (ECB) on tracker rate products, as required, and on its standard variable rate for owner-occupier mortgages, but not for buy-to-let borrowers.

The bank, which is being recapitalised with €3.5 billion of taxpayers’ funding, has reduced its overdraft rates for personal customers by 1.25 percentage points since October and for business customers by two points in that time.

Circle Oil back on schedule in Morocco

Oil and gas exploration group Circle Oil says its Sebou and Oulad N’Zala projects in Morocco’s Rharb Basin are back on schedule after flooding caused delays.

Circle, which also operates in Tunisia and Egypt, said its DRJ-6 well at Sebou had been drilled in the “past few days”. The ONZ-6 gas discovery at Oulad N’Zala has also been connected to a local pipeline as it moves to continuous production.

Artio increases its stake in CRH

US mutual fund Artio Global Management has boosted its shareholding in Dublin-listed building materials giant CRH.

According to information provided to the markets yesterday, Artio bought 18.4 million shares in the Irish company, increasing its stake to 22 million shares, giving it a holding of over 3.2 per cent.

Artio Global Management is part of the Julius Baer group.

Fiat chief looking across at Chrysler

Fiat’s chief executive officer signalled for the first time yesterday that he would be willing to run Chrysler, the troubled US carmaker.

Sergio Marchionne however also said he was prepared to scrap a partnership on which Chrysler’s survival depended if the US carmaker failed to win needed cost cuts from its unions. Asked by Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper if he might be willing to serve as Chrysler’s chief executive officer, Mr Marchionne said: “Fundamentally that’s possible, but the title isn’t important.” – Copyright The Financial Times 2009