Hamilton Beach Brands, a US seller of home appliances from air fryers to clothes irons, is set to buy Irish medical technology company HealthBeacon for €6.9 million in a rescue deal that will see senior creditors made whole and unsecured creditors recover more than had been expected. Joe Brennan has more on the plan, which comes in the wake of an examiner being appointed to HealthBeacon last October.
Minister for Public Expenditure Paschal Donohoe has stopped short of ruling out an increased Government pay offer to public servants, while insisting the current €2.9 billion proposal is ahead of the rate of inflation forecast for the Irish economy and represents a “fair” deal. He made the comments, as reported by Eoin Burke-Kennedy, while attending the World Economic Forum,
Eoin also steps back to reflect on his week in the snowy Swiss resort in this week’s long read Agenda, finding that the shadow of Donald Trump fell over much of the high-flying event, where what happens behind the scenes is more important than showpiece speeches. The latter point, he notes, is understood particularly well by Irish delegates such as Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and Minister for Finance Michael McGrath, as well as Mr Donohoe, who use the gathering to promote the State as an investment destination.
Back home, Barry O’Halloran reports that Danish group Ørsted is likely to invest €90 million in a new wind farm it plans to develop in Co Tipperary. The project will have the capacity to supply elecriticty to about 25,000 average homes when it is up and running.
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Our Business Interview features Sue Duke, the new boss of LinkedIn Ireland, who tells Ciara O’Brien about the networking platform’s success in avoiding the toxicity that besets other social media offerings and why it scaled back its planned Irish office footprint. On hybrid working, she says the business has “really left it up to individual teams to figure out what’s going to work best for them”.
John FitzGerald takes on housing in his Economics column, arguing that the State’s crisis in this area will not be solved without first fixing our skills shortages.
In our Work section, Olive Keogh looks at how differences between generations play out at work, with technological advances and an increasingly broken social contract arguably exacerbating problems. It might be time to reintroduce some soft skills, one expert argues.
And still in Work, have you ever felt a bit down about how your career is progressing? If so, it might be time to create a ‘Smile File’ where you store all the professional compliments that come your way so they can be easily found when you need a bit of a lift. It’s worth a try.
Barry Napier, chief executive and founder of Cubic Telecom, has been chosen as The Irish Times Business Person of the Month for December, an award run in association with Bank of Ireland. Just before Christmas, the Co Wicklow resident signed a deal to sell a controlling stake in Cubic to Japanese lender Softbank for €473 million, netting Mr Napier and his fellow shareholders a multimillion euro payout in the process.
And as the 2024 Irish Times Business Awards approach, we have details of four leading businesses shortlisted for the Irish Times Local Business Award.
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