News

Loans from Linked Finance to Irish small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have passed the €50m mark. The milestone coincides with the peer-to-peer lending platform celebrating five years in business. Launched by Peter O’Mahony in 2013, with the aim of using technology to connect SMEs looking for finance with lenders keen to back Irish businesses while […]

The Central Bank here is to launch simulated cyberattacks on banks, to stress test the resilience of the sector to sophisticated hacking. The attacks will conform to an ECB framework for controlled and bespoke tests against cyberattacks in the financial market based on earlier models developed in the UK and the Netherlands. It is not […]

The fDi Top 25 ‘European Cities and Regions of the Future’ for 2018 have been revealed, and despite concerns around Brexit, London has taken the top spot. Meanwhile Dublin has climbed to 2nd place, the 13th issue of the Dublin Economic Monitor reveals. Dublin’s improved performance knocks Paris into third. This, along with other key […]

Eurozone economic growth slowed as expected at the start of 2018, although economists said temporary factors were partly behind the weakness and that the economy should continue to expand strongly this year. The growth rate pushed the eurozone behind the United States, but still ahead of Britain – which registered its weakest growth since 2012. […]

Skills shortages have leapfrogged access to finance as the major concern of construction sector surveyors, according to a major new report. Just over eight in 10 surveyors in Ireland say the building sector is now experiencing a skills shortage, an increase of 7 percentage points in the last six months, according to the joint report […]

The UK government agreed yesterday to order its overseas territories such as the Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands to make secretive company ownership information public by the end of 2020 to try to tackle corruption and tax avoidance. The move was hailed as a major victory by campaigners in the fight against tax […]

Irish brands such as Fruitfield, Kerrygold, Barry’s Tea, Jameson and Cheesestrings could find themselves caught in a barrage of price cuts amid intensifying concentration among UK grocery chains. With Sainbury’s, the UK’s second-largest grocery chain, having agreed this week to buy Walmart-owned Asda, the UK’s third-biggest, retail analysts are predicting a renewed wave of grocery […]

Tens of thousands of Ulster Bank customers got a nasty shock last week when their money vanished from their accounts. This was the latest in a string of IT glitches that have hit all the major Irish and UK banks in recent years. Last Monday startled Ulster Bank customers found that money that had previously […]

The Government must create a level playing field between Irish SMEs and multinationals by rebalancing enterprise policy towards protecting indigenous Irish business, the new President of the Institute of Certified Public Accountants (CPA Ireland) has said. Cormac Mohan, managing partner at FM Accountants & Business Advisors, said it was “a strategic imperative” to create an […]

Many marriages founder on infidelity. Finding your partner has been cheating on you can often sound the death knell on a relationship. But what if the affair isn’t with a buxom 20-year-old workmate, but your bank account? Financial infidelity is a real problem and can cause just as much upset and ruin for a couple […]