Inside the world of business
What's in a name? About €38,000
THE ANGLO Irish Bank signs were taken down from above the doors of Ireland’s most toxic bank with much fanfare last April and the bank got a new name in October, the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation or IBRC for short.
In response to a parliamentary question, Minister for Finance Michael Noonan said the cost of changing the name from Anglo to IBRC came to about €38,000.
The design and manufacturing of internal designs for IBRC cost €30,000 and a new website, merging the old websites of Anglo and Irish Nationwide Building Society – the two worst delinquents in Irish banking – cost €7,000.
Most of the costs of the renaming and rebranding were borne internally by the bank using internal resources, the bank said.
Mr Noonan told Fianna Fáil finance spokesman Michael McGrath, who tabled the question, that IBRC had to redesign 200 pieces of printed paper.
The bank also coincided the timing of the name change in October with the appointment of a new board member, Oliver Ellingham, to minimise the replacement cost of printed paper.
The rebranding costs won’t end there, however.
The Minister said that IBRC will be spending a further €60,000 developing its website to integrate Anglo and Irish Nationwide better so that “it will be suitable for the combined entity’s approved long-term business objectives” – whatever that means.
“One of the key objectives of this project is to save IBRC considerable site update and maintenance costs in the future,” said the Minister.
Most of the €34.7 billion being injected into the carcass of Anglo and Irish Nationwide will be buried with them, but any savings, however small, must be welcome.
Noonan talks tough but markets aren't buying it
IF IT comes to pass that Ireland must hold a referendum to put in place the measures agreed at the EU summit last week, Minister for Finance Michael Noonan is determined there will be no room for misunderstanding
Speaking yesterday ahead of a meeting with his British counterpart George Osborne, he made it quite clear that any referendum would effectively be a vote on Ireland’s continued membership of the euro.
Over the past decade, voters have on two occasions initially rejected EU treaty change. Mr Noonan clearly believes this was, in part, due to a belief that rejection of further integration would not harm Ireland’s existing position. This time around, if a vote proves necessary, he wants to ensure the electorate is disabused of any such notion.
“It really comes down on this occasion to a very simple issue; do you want to continue in the euro or not?” the Minister said. “Faced with that question, I think the Irish people will pass such a referendum.”
His comments came as markets continue to give a distinctly chilly reception to the extraordinary outcome of last week’s summit.
The euro yesterday dipped below $1.30, hitting the lowest point since the start of the year as concerns mount about the euro zone debt crisis.
There will have been little succour either in yesterday’s European Commission assessment of Ireland after the fourth troika bailout review.
While praising the State’s budgetary performance to date, the commission lowered its growth forecast for next year to 1 per cent.
That’s substantially below the previous commission projection of 1.9 per cent and also undershoots the 1.3 per cent on which the Government has based its budgetary arithmetic.
Not surprising then that both the commission and Mr Noonan spoke yesterday of Ireland testing the bond markets sooner rather than later.
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