8am - Good morning from the Business Post newsroom. Daniel McConnell here with your weekly Saturday morning spin through the stories making the headlines across the Irish and international media.
Night-time limit on flights at Dublin Airport will hit critical supplies, warns freight transport group
Proposed limits on night flights at Dublin Airport threaten to ground the transport of €19 billion worth of goods in and out of the country, an industry group has warned.
The Irish Times reports that An Bord Pleanála recently issued a draft decision limiting night flights at the country’s biggest airport to 13,000 a year, two-thirds less than the 36,000 total reached in 2023.
The move prompted warnings from State airports company DAA, and airlines, that it would seriously hinder operations at Dublin.
Industry body Freight Transport Ireland (FTA) warned that the proposal threatened to grind the economy to a halt if planners decide to impose the condition following consultations.
Bank of Ireland investors fear UK car finance cost will dwarf tracker scandal
Bank of Ireland has shrunk its retail UK loan book by almost a third to €16 billion since the onset of the pandemic four years ago, as it pursues a “value over volume” strategy in a cut-throat market, the Irish Times reports.
This saw the group back out of the mass-mortgage market in favour of a higher-margin “bespoke” offering, such as larger-value and equity-release loans, and getting out of unsecured personal finance. It has ripped up a 20-year financial services partnership with the UK Post Office in the process to reduce it to offering savings products.
The retrenchment continued this year when the bank put its €2 billion-plus British corporate and commercial loan book into winddown.
One business line never in danger was Northridge Finance, the bank’s UK car finance unit, which has a €3 billion loan book against more than 12 million vehicles – accounting for 2 per cent of that market.
Foot Locker’s insurance costs soared in year of Dublin riots
The insurance bill for the Irish arm of Foot Locker – one of the well-known global retail brands that suffered looting from rioters in the November 2023 Dublin riots – increased almost five fold to €216,563, the Irish Independent reports.
The US-headquartered Foot Locker operates seven stores here including its Lower O’Connell Street outlet where footage was broadcast of looters entering the store on the night of the riots.
New accounts show that despite the 369pc increase in insurance costs in 2023, Foot Locker Retail Ireland Ltd reduced its pre-tax losses by 46pc to €62,000.
The operator of the seven stores here, Foot Locker Retail Ireland Ltd, reduced its pre-tax losses as revenues increased by 14pc from €11.54m to €13.17m.
Wall Street frets over Big Tech’s $200bn AI spending splurge
Big Tech’s capital spending is on track to surpass $200bn this year and rise even further in 2025, as anxiety grows on Wall Street about the returns on soaring investment in artificial intelligence, the Financial Times reports.
The four biggest US internet groups — Microsoft, Meta, Amazon and Google’s parent Alphabet — this week offered investors brief glimpses into the benefits they are seeing from their headlong rush into generative AI, arguing that it was boosting the performance of core services and helping to hold down operating costs. But the stock market suffered a spasm on Thursday as investors looked past the imprecise benefits to focus instead on another big — and very measurable — jump in spending on chips and data centre infrastructure, as the AI race accelerates.
Trump's victory threatens Swedish double devaluation
A sharp weakening of the Swedish Krona in the wake of the US election may cause the Riksbank to become more cautious and only lower the interest rate by 25 basis points next week, Dagens Industri reports.
Mainstream books further €134m charge on Chile amid talk of sale
Mainstream Renewable Power, the Dublin-based green energy group, wrote down the value of its problem Chilean assets by a further €134 million in the third quarter of the year, amid reports it is planning to sell its operations in the South American country.
The Irish Times reports that the company’s chief executive, Mary Quaney, also said on a call with analysts on Friday it plans a “material reduction” in its head office running expenses as part of an ongoing cost-cutting programme. A spokesman said redundancies are likely. Mainstream currently employs 74 in Dublin and 370 globally.
The latest Chilean impairment charge pushed the business, which is owned by Norway’s Aker Horizons, into a net loss of €176 million for the period, Oslo-listed Aker Horizons said as it reported its latest financial results.