If Sean Dunne is able to hire a new lawyer to plead his case for a retrial, he is not indigent enough to avoid paying a court sanction of $9,330, a US judge has ruled. Christopher Hoffman writes that it is now a case of 'no pay, no day in court' for the bankrupt former Baron of Ballsbridge.
Back home, tech giants Google, Stripe and Facebook all have results out for their Irish businesses. Thesearch giant reported record results and a corporation tax bill of more than €270 million while the payments business founded by the Collison brothers reported revenue growth of 78 per cent. Mean salaries among Facebook's 1,300 directly employed staff rose to €160,000 last year.
Staying in the corporate world, shares in CRH soared to an all-time high as the building materials giant forecast 23 per cent full-year earnings growth on the back of a robust set of interim figures and confidence that the worst has passed in the UK. Joe Brennan has the details.
Sandwich king Patrick Coveney says packaging used by his Greencore business will be 100 per cent sustainable by 2025 , with a focus on reusable, recyclable or compostable materials. Eoin Burke-Kennedy reports.
Sticking with the green agenda, a researcher at Queen's University has developed a low-cost technique of converting the by-products of brewing into renewable fuel. Freya McClements reports that, with breweries in the EU throwing out around 3.4 million tons of unspent grain every year, that's a lot of renewables raw material.
Losses at Luas operator Transdev increased fourfold last year despite record numbers of passengers using the service. Gordon Deegan notes that the company is blaming the costs of bidding for a new contract to run the business and a Labour Court pay award for staff for the losses.
Online shopping may be undermining footfall but Grafton Street remains the 13th most expensive street in the world for retailers to rent space – and the seventh most expensive in Europe – according to a new global ranking. Ronald Quinlan has the details.
And, also in commercial property, Ireland remains attractive to foreign investors with French property group, Covivio, paying around €45 million to acquire the four-star Hilton Dublin-Kilmainham hotelfrom Tifco.
Finally, in his column, Ciarán Hancock backs the clarion call of bankers' leader Brian Hayes that bankers should be allowed speak on issue of regulatory or economic policy if Irish society is to avoid repeating mistakes of the past. However, he'd be more impressed if they managed to say sorry for their reckless mishandling of lending and for the serious of scandals that have undermined confidence in lenders ...and sound like they mean it.
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