News

European Competition chief Margarethe Vestager is set to hit Google with a fine potentially greater than €1bn for alleged market anti-competitive practices in what will be the latest slap-down of a US tech giant by the EU. The European Commission’s decision will come after a seven-year investigation into the search engine triggered by scores of […]

You’d know the General Data Protection Regulation is less than a year off. With Europe’s big regulatory stick getting closer and closer, big companies are really starting to get into gear. Nowhere is this more evident than Facebook, which has become a lightning rod in the EU for data protection issues. The company has already […]

A MAJOR study on the impact of the digitalisation of the manufacturing industry is being commissioned by the Government to examine the opportunities and challenges that it presents the sector. The contribution of the digital economy to the Irish economy was estimated at €12.27bn in 2015. It is estimated that this could rise to €21.4bn […]

The State’s consumer protection body has fired a warning shot across the bows of banks that use cashback deals and loyalty discounts to compete for mortgage customers. However, in a lengthy report into the sector, the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (CCPC), which is chaired is Isolde Goggin, effectively found that banks’ difficulty repossessing homes […]

Property-related loans accounted for 30pc of total new lending to non-financial sector SMEs last year, the Central Bank has said. Lending to non-financial sector small and medium sized businesses jumped by over €1bn – or close to a third – in 2016 compared with the same period in 2015. “The main driver of the increase […]

Rental costs have continued to increase but there are signs that the rises may be moderating. Private sector rents were up 7.37pc in the year for the first three months of the year. But the increase was less than 0.1pc when compared with the three previous months, according to the Residential Tenancies Board, the State […]

House prices are not overvalued here even if they are rising strongly, the Central Bank has said. Prices have risen by about 50pc since they bottomed out in 2013, but are still 31pc below their peak. Prices have climbed more than 10pc in the past year alone, sparking fears of another property bubble. A global […]

The European Union plans to give itself powers to move euro clearing business away from London’s financial sector to the EU after Brexit and to adopt a model closer to that operated by the United States. The draft law would, as a last resort, force euro-denominated clearing business to shift from London to the bloc […]

Until recently Euro clearing was an obscure corner of the financial markets that mattered mostly to the people who worked in it and their clients. Clearing is part of the plumbing that keeps financial markets churning along. Clearing houses stand between the parties to big financial trades and speed up what can be complex transactions. […]

Holidaymakers are taking huge risks by not buying adequate travel insurance, a financial expert has warned. Families are leaving themselves financially exposed by having no travel cover in place or by having inadequate insurance. Many holidaymakers rely on the fact they have health insurance, but this often does not cover them for claims if they […]