BLOOM LOOKING TO BREAK ATTENDANCE RECORDS DESPITE ECONOMIC GLOOM - The country's leading gardening show, the Bloom Festival, opened in Dublin's Phoenix Park yesterday. 2010 marks the fourth year of the event, which is organised by Bord Bia. The display takes up 10 acres in the Phoenix Park and it is nearly twice the size of Britain's Chelsea Show. 60,000 people are expected to attend before the festival ends on Monday.
Bord Bia has been involved in Bloom for four years. Its CEO Aidan Cotter says the festival is looking like it will be more popular with the public this year than ever before. He says organisers were 'overwhelmed' yesterday as records were broken when about 8,000 people visited the festival - a new high for a weekday. He defends the cost of an entry ticket - at €25 - and says the festival offers great value. He also points out that tickets can be bought online for €20.
Horticulturist Matt Lohan, from Woodstock Trees and Shrubs, says his company reached the magical €1m turnover mark at the height of the boom, when everything was 'rosy in the garden'. His company grows and sells wholesale ornamental trees and shrubs and has been in business for 20 years. But with the demise of the Celtic Tiger he says that the business had to slim down and deal with the recession. He says that turnover was down about 50% but says that costs also fell. He adds that Bord Bia is doing a great job at promoting domestic food producers.
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DALY TO CONVINCE ACCOUNTANTS ON MERITS OF NAMA - The Institute of Certified Public Accountants has its annual conference in Co Kildare today. The chairman of NAMA, Frank Daly, will be a talking there on the theme of how NAMA is going to help the Irish economy recover. He says he plans to outline how NAMA will contribute to the recovery of the economy and help to move the country from the difficult circumstances in which we find ourselves. He says he want to convince the accountants that NAMA is a credible part of the country's recovery process and not a gravy train for advisors or a bail-out for developers. He says the agency will go about its business in an informed, objective and commercial way.
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MORNING BRIEFS - A survey has shown that the US service sector, which accounts for 70% of US economic activity, grew for the fifth consecutive month in May. The Institute of Supply Management said its non-manufacturing index stood at 55.4 in May, the same as in March and April. As with all these indexes it is not the fact that the figure is static that is important, it is that it is above 50 because an index reading above 50 means growth.
*** The White House has said the US government would send a $69m bill to BP for spending incurred from its response to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. The news came as the oil giant's chief executive said it had achieved an 'important milestone' by cutting through piping to allow for another effort to cap the leak which has created the largest oil spill in US history. The credit ratings agencies have cut BP's rating. Fitch cut BP from AA+ to AA and placed it on negative watch, citing risks arising from the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster. Moody's has also lowered BP's ratings to Aa1 from Aa2, citing the impact of oil spill.
*** Investment banking giant JP Morgan was fined a record £33m sterling over its failure to ring-fence billions of pounds of client money. The fine - the largest ever imposed by the UK Financial Services Authority (FSA) - was imposed after JP Morgan failed to segregate client cash from its own money during a period that spanned nearly seven years. The FSA said if JP Morgan had become insolvent during this time, substantial amounts of client money could have been lost.
*** On the currency markets, the euro is worth $1.2178 and 83.18 pence sterling.
