Telecom group Eir paid €300 million to backers — French billionaire Xavier Niel and US hedge funds Davidson Kempner and Anchorage — in April, according to the Sunday Times.
Mr Niel, who reportedly paid a member of Qatar’s royal family €200 million for a Paris mansion, scooped €190 million of the total handed out by the Irish telecom and broadband group, according to the newspaper.
Eir shareholders have taken €1.23 billion from the company since Mr Neil took over as its biggest backer in 2018. Another cheque is due later this year once the company sells 49.9 per cent of its fibre network to Infravia for at least €350 million.
Credit rating agency Moody’s predicted that the most likely use of the sale’s proceeds would be a shareholder distribution.
Mr Neil and the hedge funds got the dividend despite a 10 per cent fall in profits to €312 million, notes The Sunday Times.
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Tynagh Energy paid €15 million dividends to shareholders, Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky and Irish businessman Brian Keogh, the Sunday Times also reports. The Galway electricity business earned profits last year of €35 million, against a €1.4 million pretax loss in 2020.
Mr Kretinsky owns 27 per cent of the English Premier League football team West Ham and co-owns Czech side Sparta Prague.
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Sheen Falls Lodge owners Stanley Quek and Peng Loh have bought the nearby Ring of Kerry Golf Club for less than €5 million, reports the Sunday Independent.
Dr Quek told the newspaper the deal to buy the golf club was a “no-brainer” as it was less than 12km from the Kenmare hotel. The club’s owners offered it to the hoteliers and did not put it on the open market. Dr Quek and Mr Loh own Dublin’s Trinity Townhouse Hotel and Library Street restaurant, and the Castlemartyr Resort in Co Cork.
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China’s social media behemoth Tik Tok warned the Government that its data centre policy endangered the company’s investment in the Republic, according to the Business Post. The Chinese group told the Government that its plans hinged on a policy document allowing co-located data centres, which rent space to third parties.
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A subsequent policy document did not distinguish between these and owner-operated centres, despite the Chinese giant’s warning. The news comes as rows continue over the demands that data centres will impose on the Republic’s strained electricity system.
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Plans by the British state to build enough floating wind farms in the Celtic Sea to power four million homes threaten Cornwall’s fishing industry, notes the Observer.
The UK paper reports that fishing industry figures describe the plans, intended to earn cash for the crown and British exchequer, as “scary”. Britain’s crown estate plans the wind farms for an area in UK waters southeast of the Irish coast, west of Cornwall and Wales.
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The Business Post also reports that Government and the Revenue Commissioners are somewhat mystified by a dramatic decline in taxes paid by large investment property funds in Ireland. Revenue is carrying out a review into the tax slump at Irish real estate funds but it will not be completed until late next year, the paper reports.
