A round-up of today's other stories in brief...
Tullow Oil to generate power by 2009
Tullow Oil will start generating 57 megawatts of thermal power in Uganda late next year.
The Irish exploration company will generate the electricity using heavy fuels from a refinery it plans to build at Hoima in northwestern Uganda, it announced yesterday.
It did not say how much the project would cost.
The company will use seven megawatts of power and sell the remainder to the national grid.
Tullow is part of a consortium exploring for oil in the east African country.
Tullow's refinery will produce diesel, kerosene and heavy fuels for the Ugandan market, while processing 4,000 barrels of oil a day. - ( Bloomberg)
Galway beauty firm wins Brazil deal
Galway health and beauty products firm Lifes2Good has won a €5 million contract in Brazil. The deal will see Lifes2Good expand an existing marketing agreement with Brazilian firm Import Medic for the distribution of the Irish firm's thinning hair supplements.
The supplements are already available in Brazil but the new arrangement will see a larger range of Lifes2Good products being distributed to 10,000 Brazilian pharmacies.
In a separate announcement yesterday, Galway engineering firm MCS said it had strengthened its relationship with Brazil's national oil company, Petrobras, with a one-year subsea engineering deal.
Both announcements came during an Enterprise Ireland-led trade mission to Brazil and Mexico.
New businesses 'to drop by 6,000'
New business formations will drop by 6,000 this year, according to AIB.
The bank expects 12,000 new businesses to be established in 2008, down from almost 18,000 last year, with the drop reflecting a general deterioration in economic conditions.
AIB predicts that there will be about 270,000 businesses operating in the Republic by the end of the year.
Newcourt 'satisfied' with performance
Irish-based security, recruitment and aviation services group Newcourt told shareholders yesterday that it was "satisfied" with the company's performance this year.
In a statement released before its annual general meeting in Dublin, Newcourt said revenues in 2007 had risen 42 per cent to €165.9 million, while pretax profits grew by 21 per cent to €9.3 million.
Newcourt chief executive Ted O'Neill said the performance was based on strong organic growth across all businesses last year.
Its student accommodation division - Ely Property - was the strongest performer last year and reported a 61 per cent increase in trading profits to €4.8 million.
Pension concerns hit Northern Foods
A deterioration in the strength of Northern Foods' pension financing yesterday prompted a thinly-veiled profits warning from the supplier of prepared meals to British supermarkets.
It came in spite of a bullish assessment of trading prospects, after successful negotiations with retailers to pass on £40 million (€50.4 million) of additional costs to consumers helped the food producer behind Fox's biscuits and Goodfella's pizzas lift annual revenue and profit.
However, analysts downgraded their forecasts by as much as 15 per cent for the coming year after the group warned its pensions financing credit would decline by about £6.5 million. - ( Financial Times service)
