Irish Times Inside Business

What exactly does the British Prime Minister want? That’s the question Irish Times columnist Chris Johns asks in the latest podcast. He joins Business Editor Cliff Taylor and Markets Correspondent Joe Brennan to discuss the fallout from Theresa May’s surprise announcement of a snap UK election yesterday, how it might affect the Brexit negotiations and what impact will be felt here in Ireland. Late...

With conflicting messages coming from the Minister for Finance and the Department of Finance on exactly how much scope there will be for expenditure and tax cuts in the 2018 budget, the only thing that is certain is that there won't be a whole lot to spare. Irish Times Business Editor Cliff Taylor joins Ciarán Hancock to crunch the numbers, while  Barry O'Halloran has the latest on Norwegian Air's...

Another sharp rise in house prices in the first quarter of 2017 has left some wondering if the market is not once again overheating to a dangerous degree. Is the bubble back? What exactly is driving the rise, and can we expect acceleration to slow as more housing is supplied? We ask architect Mel Reynolds and economist Marian Finnegan of Sherry Fitzgerald. After that we're on to commercial propert...

Fianna Fáil’s spokesperson on jobs and enterprise, Niall Collins, has criticised the government for allowing a two tier economic recovery take hold across the country. Speaking to Wednesday’s Inside Business podcast, the Limerick TD said the idea that Dublin’s cup must overflow in order for the recovery trickle down to the rest of the country has to change. However, president of the National Colle...

"Even in the colourful history book of corporate Ireland and its standards of governance, this could yet turn out to be a particularly psychedelic chapter", wrote Mark Paul, breaking the news that INM CEO Robert Pitt made a protected disclosure to the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement about the value his company's board put on its acquisition target, Newstalk. Mark is here to talk us...

Sinn Féin TD David Cullinane explains how he and his colleagues on the Public Accounts Committee were not equipped to deal with all of the allegations of wrongdoing in relation to the circumstances surrounding the sale of NAMA's Project Eagle loan book and why there needs to be a commission of investigation to take a deeper look at it. He was joined in studio by our political correspondent Harry M...

A "cause of concern" is how Ed Sibley of the Central Bank has described its research on diversity in Ireland's financial institutions. The bank's Director of Credit Institutions Supervision, told this week's Inside Business Podcast that the study is the first of its kind and its results reflect a poor picture of diversity in the sector. This research is a step towards tackling the problems that le...

President Trump heralded a “new chapter in American greatness” in his address to Congress last night. A pretty picture, says senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, Caroline Freund, but not the likely outcome. The former World Bank economist predicted that the next four years are going to look very like Reagan’s presidency while the US economy experiences a short boom...

It has been all change in the Irish agri-food sector these past weeks. Poor results at bakery giant Aryzta led to the departure of CEO Owen Killian and his team, while this week saw Kerry and Glanbia posting expectation-beating profits and revealing news about their future plans. To analyse the news we talk to Joe Gill of Goodbody Stockbrokers and our own Joe Brennan who has been covering the stor...

KBC Bank had a decision to make: stay in Ireland and grow its mainly mortgage-based business here, or fold up the tent and go back to Belgium. Following an internal review, it was announced last week that KBC would remain. CEO of KBC Ireland Wim Verbraeken is here to tell us why they're staying, what it means for Irish banking and how KBC will face the challenges ahead. In the second half of the s...

President Trump’s plan to overhaul the US tax system and how that might affect Ireland, is the focus of this week's Inside Business podcast. On the panel, tax partner with Grant Thornton, Peter Vale, who said there is still a lot of uncertainty about what will actually happen, and while there has been no sign of US companies deciding to move out of Ireland yet, some investments are certainly being...

At the height of the property boom in 2005, Jurys Doyle sold Jurys Ballsbridge to property developer Sean Dunne. “I was sitting in Ulster Bank in Dame Street when we opened the bids,” recalls Pat McCann, then Jurys Doyle CEO and now head of Dalata, Ireland's biggest hotel group. What popped out of the envelopes that day changed everything for McCann, who tells Ciaran Hancock about his career in th...

On this week's podcast: Ian Hunter of Investec and our markets correspondent Joe Brennan analyse the problems facing Swiss-Irish baking behemoth Aryzta, and its CEO Owen Killian, as its share price tumbled yesterday following the latest in a series of profit warnings. Where has it all gone wrong? Michael Noonan and EU taxation commissioner Pierre Moscovici were singing from different hymn sheets a...

Britain will not strike a deal with the EU on the basis of Theresa May’s Brexit speech yesterday, according IBEC CEO Danny McCoy on today's podcast. He says the British Prime Minister knows it’s going to be a no deal and she offered up a “fairly appalling vista for Irish business” in her speech.“I think she knows it’s a no deal,” he says. McCoy was joined by economist Jim Power, who said the Irish...

T.K. Whitaker, who died this week aged 100, made a huge impact on the thing we discuss, one way or another, on this podcast every week - the health of Ireland's commercial and economic life. To look back on his life and career we talked to John Fitzgerald, formerly of the ERSI which Whitaker founded, Anne Chambers, his biographer, and columnist Fintan O'Toole. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privac...

Regulation is one way tackle so-called vulture funds, says Sinn Féin finance spokesperson Pearse Doherty, but it is not clear whether there is a will at government level to introduce it. The Donegal TD told this week’s Inside Business podcast that he believes the government still wants to use these funds to “clean up the carcasses” of the commercial property sector. Deputy Doherty was speaking aft...

In 2016 the number of Irish jobs in IDA-supported companies exceeded 200,000, more even than during the Celtic Tiger period. The figures prove how critically important foreign direct investment has become to the Irish economy today, and how seriously we should take threats to our attractiveness as a location for foreign investors. The threats are there, from potential Brexit shocks to the Trump ad...

Increasing the price of a stamp to between 90c and €1 still represents “fantastic value” for the customer, according to An Post CEO, David McRedmond. On the Inside Business podcast today, he joined Sherry Fitzgerald Chief Economist, Marian Finnegan, and Teeling Whiskey co-founder, Stephen Teeling, to look ahead to 2017 and discuss the potential impacts of Brexit, Trump and political uncertainty ac...

It was an extraordinary and at times confounding year in business and the economy, even as the Irish position remained broadly positive. On Inside Business today we look at the biggest stories of the year in the company of Irish Times business team stalwarts Cliff Taylor, Joe Brennan, Laura Slattery, Mark Paul, and Barry O'Halloran. Cliff Taylor discusses how the political events here and abroad i...

If you've shopped online and you're Irish you may be familiar with the feeling that you are being ripped off by international retailers. Geo-blocking (when you can't access a site aimed at consumers in another country) and excessive price differences are the most frequent complaints, and we Irish make more such complaints than most others, according to a report today from the European Consumer Cen...

The imposing acronym CCCTB could spell serious trouble for the Irish economy according to the Economic and Social Research Institute. Bottom line: the proposed European Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base could wipe 1.5 per cent off economic output. On today's Inside Business podcast, Mark Paul goes into the details of the ERSI's report. Economist Jim Power says it is time we accepted the inevi...

The Irish Times broke the story about a "schism" within the Independent News & Media board that led its CEO Robert Pitt to consider his position. For more on the story this week's host Cliff Taylor talks to business affairs correspondent Mark Paul and media reporter Laura Slattery. Then Ciara O'Brien pops in with an array of gadgets you may be tempted to splash out on, either for yourself or a lov...

The Central Bank announced today that it is easing the mortgage lending rules. What will this mean for first time buyers and will supply meet increasing demand for new units? To discuss the permutations of this latest decision, Ciarán Hancock is joined in studio by Housing Studies lecturer in DIT Lorcan Sirr and Markets Correspondent Joe Brennan. Black Friday promises deep discounts for bargain hu...

"Transformational" is how Greencore CEO Patrick Coveney described the company's proposed $747.5 million acquisition of Illinois-based Peacock Foods. Patrick joins Ciarán Hancock to talk about the deal. Why is this deal the right one for Greencore now, and how will they avoid a repeat of their ill-fated purchase of Imperial Holly in the 1990s? In part two, Irish Times business team Cliff Taylor, La...

The election of Donald Trump has taken everyone by surprise, not least the Republican Party who seemingly have no transitional arrangement in place. How will President Trump impact free trade? Will we see an exodus of US companies from our shores? Will President Trump retreat from some of the rhetoric that defined his election campaign? To answer these questions and more, Ciarán Hancock is joined...