A roundup of today's other stories in brief
Property role for FitzGerald at Greencore
Convenience food group Greencore has appointed Maurice FitzGerald as director of its "property development agenda".
Greencore revealed plans earlier this year to develop "surplus property assets" to return value to shareholders and has recruited Mr FitzGerald to oversee several long-term redevelopment projects. Mr FitzGerald has extensive experience managing large-scale property projects for companies such as Intel, Hewlett-Packard and Dell Europe.
Greencore's 900-acre landbank includes the sites of the former sugar processing plants in Carlow and Mallow, Co Cork, and also extends to Britain where it owns a site at Littlehampton near London's Gatwick Airport.
The book value of the company's property portfolio is €40 million. However, independent valuations have placed the value of the Carlow site alone at €150 million.
Under the new EU sugar regime, Greencore is obliged to demolish its decommissioned factories at Carlow and Mallow, and "remediate" these sites, before it can begin any redevelopment. However, it is understood that preliminary discussions have taken place between the company and local authorities in relation to redeveloping the Carlow site.
3 Ireland has 'good performance'
The State's newest mobile network, 3 Ireland, produced a "good operating and financial performance" in the first half of the year despite being at an early stage of growth, its 100 per cent owner Hutchinson Whampoa said yesterday.
The parent company's results for the six months to June 30th, 2006 revealed that revenue in 3's Irish and British operations topped £700 million (€1.04 billion) in the period.
3 began operating in Ireland in July 2005 and moved into the prepaid mobile phone market in May of this year.
UK manufacturing sector strengthens
The UK's manufacturing sector enjoyed its best performance in 20 months, according to the Confederation of British Industry's (CBI) latest survey of the sector.
The CBI's monthly industrial trends indicator showed that a balance of manufacturers reporting "below normal" exports stood at 8 per cent in August.
The reading was the best recorded since December 2004 and compared with a negative reading of 11 per cent in July.
The outlook for manufacturing is set to continue brightening as a balance of 11 per cent of firms in the sector expect output to increase in the coming three months.
"The outlook remains encouraging for UK manufacturers," CBI chief economic advisor Ian McCafferty said yesterday.
Financial jargon baffles consumers
Financial jargon is still leaving consumers in the dark, according to a survey by the National Adult Literacy Agency (NALA) and the EBS Building Society.
Of the 1,000 people surveyed, 17 per cent did not understand the term SSIA, 28 per cent were confused by the term "credit rating", and the meaning of "equity" was a mystery for almost half of all middle-income respondents.
The research also revealed that less than one-third of those surveyed felt prepared financially to deal with unforeseen circumstances such as illness.
Almost one-third of respondents also felt that financial institutions should provide information and brochures that were easily understandable.
NALA advises financial institutions to adopt plain English when drafting literature aimed at customers and to provide awareness training for frontline staff.
