A round-up of today's other business stories in brief...
Premium subscribers to Setanta soar
Setanta Sports now has more than one million premium subscribers in Ireland and Britain, according to figures published by the broadcaster yesterday.
This represents a five-fold increase in customer numbers in the space of 12 months, reflecting its acquisition of live rights to broadcast English Premier League soccer and US golf tournaments from this year.
When its partnerships with cable operators NTL/Chorus in Ireland and Virgin Media in the UK are included, Setanta is carried in more than three million homes.
Packaging firm buys Spanish group
Irish packaging company Clondalkin Group has completed its fourth acquisition of the year, spending €10-15 million on a Spanish pharmaceutical packaging company.
John Fitzgerald, chief executive of the group's specialist packaging division, said it acquired Barcelona-based Cartonplex because of the large cluster of pharmaceutical companies with manufacturing and research facilities in Spain.
Republic 17th in EU for broadband
The Republic still lags behind the rest of Europe for using broadband services despite a significant improvement over the past 12 months. Just under a third of Irish homes (31 per cent) are using high-speed internet services, up from 17 per cent in 2006, according to a new survey published by Eurostat.
This ranks the Republic 17th for broadband access in the 27-member EU, behind Latvia (32 per cent), Slovenia (44 per cent) and Estonia (48 per cent). The highest-ranked states are the Netherlands (74 per cent) and Denmark (70 per cent).
Norkom to spend €11.4m on R&D
Dublin-based financial software group Norkom is to spend €11.4 million on expanding its research and development (R&D) activities, a move that will create 111 new jobs in Ireland over the next three years.
Enterprise Ireland has agreed to provide €4 million in grants, which will be drawn down between 2008 and 2010.
Iaws 'confident' on driving growth
Food group Iaws said yesterday it was experiencing "strong underlying growth" in its lifestyle food business after an "excellent" quarter ending on July 31st.
The company, which held its annual general meeting in Dublin yesterday, also said it was "confident" about driving growth amid mounting fears over food inflation.
"While it is too soon to predict trends, the early indications are positive in relation to customer understanding of the changed pricing environment," it said.
Meanwhile, Origin, the agribusiness company spun out from IAWS, said buoyant markets resulted in an improved performance in its agriculture division.
Losses drop at African Diamonds
The John Teeling-led explorer, African Diamonds, said post-tax losses at the company dropped to €364,325 this year from €385,637 in 2006.
The company has spent €7 million acquiring a 28.38 per cent share in a diamond mine in Botswana that is expected to produce towards the end of 2009.
IN&M applies to issue new shares
Independent News & Media has applied to the stock exchange to issue 52.29 million new shares in respect of New Zealand convertible securities issued in 2003 which matured last Friday. It said its buyback of 40.6 million shares reduces to some 1.5 per cent the dilution on all shareholders as a result of the conversion of the securities.
