Ulster Bank aims to ramp up repossessions after legislation is passed to close a loophole preventing lenders from foreclosing on certain properties, the Sunday Business Post reports.

Ulster Bank’s chief executive Jim Brown told the newspaper the bank intended to increase the number of properties repossessed to more than 1,000 per year.

While most customers in arrears couldn’t pay their debts, some wouldn’t pay he said.

The bank reported an operating loss in Ireland of just over €1 billion last year, as impairments relating to mortgage lending continued to weigh on business.

The Sunday Times reports two investors have lost the majority of their life savings as a result of the Government’s decision to liquidate the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation (IBRC).

The savers – a pensioner and a widow – have no hope of recovering their money, even though senior bondholders have been repaid in full at the insistence of the European Central Bank.

The pensioner lost at least €350,000 from his pension, while the widow has lost €100,000.

Their savings were invested in products at the former Anglo Irish Bank.

Irish cinemas lost almost a million paying customers last year, a decline six times worse than the European average, according to the Sunday Times.

The latest figures, which show 15.43 million cinema tickets were sold in the Republic last year, reveal that audiences are at a 12-year low. Fewer tickets were sold in 2012 than in 2001.

The paper also reports that the screen adaptation of Miss Julie, which has a budget of $5.5 million (€4.2 million) will be filmed entirely at Castle Coole in Enniskillen.

Denis O’Brien’s radio group Communicorp is understood to have sold its seven Estonian stations.

The Sunday Business Post reports the stations were sold to local investor Trio LSL Radio Group.

The sale brings to four the number of countries the Today FM owner has exited in the last 18 months.

An Arab consortium is set to launch the biggest ever takeover bid for a football club in the coming weeks, according to the Sunday Telegraph.

The group is reportedly going to bid £1.5 billion for Arsenal, buying out American billionaire Stan Kroenke, who currently controls a majority of shares.

The bid by the consortium, said to be backed by funds from Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, dwarfs the £700 million the Glazer brothers paid for Manchester United.