Current Account: Bank of Ireland chief executive Brian Goggin was at pains yesterday to talk up the virtues of the comapny's new "hybrid" pension plan.
As the company announced, a 28 per cent rise in underlying pretax profit to €852 million, Mr Goggin took to the airwaves to criticise union opposition to the arrangement as "irresponsible"
He maintained that, while the hybrid pension on offer to new entrants to the bank would not be as good as the defined benefit pension scheme afforded to existing staff, it was "materially and significantly better" than the basic defined contribution arrangements being imposed in many workplaces.
Missing the point of union opposition - which is that a highly profitable bank has no need to water down existing pension arrangements - Mr Goggin told RTÉ's Morning Ireland the new scheme was "progressive" and "competitively attractive".
It will be itneresting then to see if the bank's newly appointed head of human resource Andy Chalmers, is signing up to the new scheme.
Mr Chalmers, who joins the bank at the start of December from Barclays, where he was chief operating officer of group human resources, will after all be charged, among other things, with settling the current spat with the unions over the pensions issue.
One assumes he will be leading by example.
It never rains but it pours for Amicus
Sticking with Bank of Ireland, it was difficult this week not to feel a twinge of sympathy for the bank's Amicus staff members.
The union, which represents very much a minority of staff, had made a point of taking a lead role in the campaign against the new pension arrangements.
While the Irish bank Officials Association argued its case before the Labour Court, Amicus announced it would take strike action.
Last-minute talks failed to deter the union and so its members were picketing head office and other premises last Wednesday - on what has to have been one of the wettest days of the year.
All smiles at Meteor
With average customer revenues on the decline, these are hardly vintage days for the dominant mobile operators Vodafone and O2. However, the third player, Meteor, had a red letter day this week when it declared a grand total of 750,000 subscribers.
After years on the back foot, Meteor's recent expansion has been impressive. The company had 500,000 subscribers only a year ago, when Eircom forked out €420 million to buy the franchise from Western Wireless.
What is more, the most recent figures show that the number of contract customers has grown to 10 per cent from 2 per cent in 2005.
The company's onward march is set to continue with more retail outlets on the way and new a national roaming agreement.
If the all-powerful Vodafone-O2 axis is not quite on its knees, the rate of customer acquisition at both firms is way behind Meteor. This is good news indeed for all who cherish competition.
It's good news too for up 20 top managers in Meteor. Eircom took a €3 million charge for payments to them on a long-term incentive plan in respect of Meteor's performance in the first nine months of the year.
Eircom chief Rex Comb said he was happy to honour a scheme that dates to the Western Wireless era.
With Meteor's market share at 16 per cent, you bet he is
Made to look cheap
The history of business is littered with examples of naive shareholders who sell their companies on the cheap at the wrong time.
Some deals on the other hand are a unique combination of naiviety and stupidity. In that context consider an American company called Intermix Media. Describing itself as a "leading internet marketing company", Intermix made the somewhat baffling decision in July 2005 to sell myspace.com, the social networking site for $580 million to Rupert Murdoch.
The $580 million was certainly a hefty price, but many would argue it was on the low side considering the nature of the business and the growing fashion for networking sites.
Speaking this week in Sydney Mr Murdoch said he believed the site could now be worth..wait for it... $6 billion.
