A round-up of today's other news stories in brief
Dividend helps Connacht Tribune group return to profit
A € 2.65 million dividend from the company that operates Galway Bay FM helped the Connacht Tribune media group return to profit last year, writes GORDON DEEGAN.
The group publishes the Galway city-based Connacht and City Tribune newspapers, along with the Connacht Sentinel and also owns Galway Bay FM.
Accounts just filed with the Companies Office show the group recorded a post-tax profit of € 1.54 million in the year to the end of March last year.
Last year’s profit follows The Connacht Tribune Ltd recording a post-tax loss of € 2.4 million in 2009. That loss was mainly due to an exceptional cost of € 2 million linked to outsourcing the printing of its titles and the cessation of its contracting printing business.
The main driver behind the return to profit last year was a € 2.6 million dividend received from the subsidiary company, Western Community Broadcasting Services Ltd (WCBSL) that operates Galway Bay FM. This follows WCBSL providing a €1.2 million dividend in 2009 to The Connacht Tribune Ltd.
Judgment due on McKillen appeal
A seven-judge Supreme Court will give its judgment today on the action by businessman Paddy McKillen aimed at preventing Nama from acquiring some €2.1 billion in loans taken out by his companies.
The court reserved judgment last December on Mr McKillen’s appeal against a decision of a three-judge High Court rejecting the challenge by himself and 15 of his companies to the acquisition of their loans with Bank of Ireland.
The financial institutions involved had argued that the McKillen loans acquisition was necessary because that extent of exposure to the participating institutions in Nama created a “systemic risk” to those institutions.
Bing results 'a copy' of Google's
Google, owner of the world’s most popular search engine, has said Microsoft’s Bing is “copying” its query results. Microsoft denied the accusation and said the data in question comes from customers. Google’s own testing concluded that Bing was using its search results, Google Fellow Amit Singhal said in a statement.
“We look forward to competing with genuinely new search algorithms, not recycled search results copied from a competitor,” Mr Singhal said.
A “small piece of the information Microsoft uses to build search results comes from customers who share their data - and that’s what causes the overlap, said Harry Shum, vice president at Bing. - (Bloomberg)
Court hears Drumm will file deposition
A court in Boston in the US has been told that Anglo Irish Bank and its former chief executive David Drumm have agreed that Mr Drumm will file a deposition on Tuesday, February 8th. The bank had wanted Mr Drumm to file the deposition yesterday and asked the Boston court to compel him to appear. However lawyers for the former chief executive sought to arrange a date later in the month. Anglo was anxious to have the deposition before February 14th, as it was considering filing fresh claims against Mr Drumm.
