Glen Dimplex sells Morphy Richards, earlier State bailout repayments and Sheryl Sandberg’s legacy

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Glen Dimplex is selling its Morphy Richards appliance brand.

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Glen Dimplex, the electrical company owned by the Louth-based Naughton family, has agreed to sell its Morphy Richards home appliances brand in a deal believed to be worth between €175 million and €200 million. The deal is expected to close by the end of the year, writes Mark Paul.

The Government is set to next year start paying back the €40 billion-plus EU part of its international bailout, four years earlier than had been expected when it was granted an extension on repayments at the height of the euro zone debt crisis. Joe Brennan has the story.

As the summer travel season heats up, Ryanair could be facing strike threats after the failure of talks with Spanish unions. Barry O’Halloran reports, while Cantillon considers efforts by the airline’s main Irish rival to drum up business. Separately, Barry writes that Dublin Airport has partly shut its VIP security line.

Karlin Lillington reflects on the legacy of Facebook top executive Sheryl Sandberg, who has announced she is stepping down from her day-to-day role. Specifically, she considers Ms Sandberg’s role in shaping the social network’s surveillance income model.

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As the popularity of electric vehicles (EVs) grows, so do questions about where this new fleet might be charged. Neil Briscoe looks at what’s on offer so far, including Ohme, an EV charging business founded by Cork native, David Watson.

Agriculture might not be the first place you’d expect to see drones deployed, but Dr Shaun Passley tells Ciara O’Brien he wants to change that with his company, ZenaDrone. The idea is that farmers could hand over some of the more labour-intensive monitoring of their farmland to algorithms and artificial intelligence, with the business targeting up to 60 customers by the end of this year.

Olive Keogh talks to another innovator, Stephen O’Dwyer, who has translated the love of horseracing he inherited from his grandad into an app called TrojanTrack that captures horses in motion and analyses their movement to detect early signs of gait problems or injury.

And finally, Ciara O’Brien reviews Garmin’s latest watch, a solar-powered device aimed at long- runners that could be yours for €449.

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