Accenture job cuts, save €6,000 by shopping around for better mortgage rate, and manufacturing slows again

Accenture is planning to make 890 employees redundant at its Irish operation, having only recently laid off 400 staff here. Barry O’Halloran, Dominic Coyle, Cormac McQuinn, and Hugh Dooley round up the news and reaction on a dramatic day for the multinational consultancy and outsourcing group.

On the same topic, Cantillon ponders why Accenture, a consultancy firm that prides itself on spotting global industry trends, is now planning so many redundancies at its Irish operation having only recently axed 400 roles here. And why is the hit at its Irish base so much higher relative to cuts taking place in other parts of its global operation?

Money, working hours, meal breaks, and tax – it pays for young workers to know what a summer job entails, writes Joanne Hunt in our weekly personal finance feature. If you’d like to read more about the issues that affect your finances try signing up to On the Money, the weekly newsletter from our personal finance team, which will be issued every Friday to Irish Times subscribers.

Some homeowners may be paying over €6,000 more than they need to each year in mortgage repayments by not shopping around, according to a switching index published by online brokers Doddl.ie. Conor Pope reports on the findings.

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The manufacturing sector last month suffered its sharpest slowdown outside of the Covid-19 crisis and since the financial crash almost 15 years ago, new data from AIB shows. Colin Gleeson has the details.

In her weekly media and marketing column, Laura Slattery says a culture voucher from the Government for 18-year-olds is a European idea we should copy here.

In our personal finance Q&A, a reader wonders what happened to Tony O’Reilly’s Arcon resource company, having purchased in the company in 1997. Dominic Coyle fills them in on the company’s chequered history over the past 18 years.

Irish banks sailed through the latest ECB stress tests and are now eyeing ways to return excess capital to shareholders, writes Cantillon.

In Me & My Money, Luke Saunders cofounder of Studyclix, now Ireland’s largest study and teaching website, explains why spending half a day pricing up a lawnmower at three different shops in order to save €30 is no longer something he is interested in doing. He spoke with Tony Clayton-Lea.

In Stocktake, we look at the fallout for NatWest shareholders from the decision of its Coutts subsidiary to close Nigel Farage’s bank account, which sent its shares tumbling last week after chief executive Alison Rose was forced to resign.

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