Compiled by CAROLINE MADDEN
Blessed among women
COFFEE ENTREPRENEUR Bobby Kerr must be feeling rather privileged at this moment. Going by the promotional bumph for today’s Women Mean Business conference and awards in the Shelbourne Hotel, the Insomnia chairman is the only man deemed worthy to be admitted to the ranks of the event’s line-up of speakers and panellists. Kerr will join Mary Rose Burke, Senator Ivana Bacik and Joan Freeman on the “viewpoint panel” for the conference’s afternoon discussion session.
US seminars to talk up Irish tax perks
YOU HAVE to hand it to accounting firm Grant Thornton – the timing of its event in California later this week is either genius or folly. The firm is running two seminars in LA and Palo Alto to highlight the tax advantages that Ireland has to offer for technology and media businesses that set up operations here.
These seminars come not two weeks after a US Senate slammed technology giants including Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard for allegedly using Ireland as a tax haven in order to avoid US taxes.
While this isn’t exactly the image that Ireland is hoping to project, reports that Microsoft saved at least €5 billion in US taxes through transactions with subsidiaries in Ireland and other low-tax jurisdictions no doubt made many a US chief executive sit up and pay attention.
And while the big techie players are coming under fire now because of their aggressive tax strategies, described by the Senate as “tax gimmickry”, it is perfectly legitimate to establish an Irish base in order to avail of its attractive corporate tax regime. However, it will be interesting to see whether the uncomplimentary “tax haven” publicity being provided courtesy of the Senate will attract US firms to our shores, or deter them.
'Olympics for lawyers' boom
THIS WEEK, an eloquence of lawyers will descend upon Dublin for the world’s largest yearly gathering of legal eagles.
More than 5,000 delegates are due in town for the International Bar Association’s annual conference, which was launched yesterday by the Taoiseach and runs until Friday, and which has been described as “the Olympics for lawyers”.
Although cynics might argue that the collective noun for such a large group of legal professionals should be something a trifle less flattering, such as a “surfeit”, the conference is providing no small boost to the Dublin economy.
Good luck getting a table in your favourite restaurant this week, or a hotel room inside the M50 – practically everywhere is booked up by well-heeled international lawyers.
We hear rates at the capital’s exclusive Merrion Hotel have soared, such is the demand this week for a taste of its Georgian grandeur.
It may be five-star all the way for many international guests, but spare a thought for our own local lawyers, quite a lot of whom are feeling the pinch in these straitened times.
Fortunately the IBA has made an exception for Irish solicitors and barristers so that they can avail of a special day rate on the last three days of the conference, rather than having to pay the full weekly rate.
