LOTTERY OPERATOR COULD GET €50m - The Government is considering offering the next operator of the National Lottery an extended licence of between 20 and 30 years and a significantly enhanced annual operator's fee of up to €50m to run the business. The Irish Times says that under the existing seven-year licence, An Post operates the State's lottery for an annual management fee of just under €3m. Minister for Public Expenditure Brendan Howlin is expected to bring proposals for the sale of the licence to Cabinet early next month. He hopes a longer licence and a greater share of the revenue generated from ticket and scratch card sales will attract international bidders and secure a large upfront payment for the exchequer, thought to be in region of €400-€600m. The Government has already earmarked €200m from the proceeds for the proposed children's hospital on the Mater campus in Dublin. A team of officials in Mr Howlin's department, with the aid of Davy stockbrokers, has been examining several strategic options to boost the asset's saleability, and are due to deliver an interim report to the Minister today. As well as the extended licence, prospective buyers would be enticed by an annual operator's fee of about 6% of revenue. At the moment the fee is about 0.5%.
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AIB PUTS FOCUS ON CUSTOMERS 'FOR SURVIVAL' - AIB's head of business banking, John Webb, yesterday admitted that the "very essence of the bank's survival" depends on "reconnecting" with customers it has let down. The Irish Independent says that Mr Webb made the comments at a conference, four months after AIB's director of personal and business banking, Bernard Byrne, stunned an October conference by revealing starkly negative comments from a customer survey. Yesterday, Mr Webb admitted that engagement with customers was "still not where it should be" and said there was "more to do" to make it easier for businesses to access credit and advice. Mr Webb also acknowledged that AIB would need "more information to evaluate" loan applications than it had in the past, and said this could be "an issue" for smaller businesses and could lead to "longer turn-around times" for approvals. But he stressed that the bank was "determined to repay" the taxpayers' investment in AIB by "doing all we can to support the recovery of existing business and providing finance and advice to the next generation of entrepreneurs".
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AVIATION COMPANY FLYING HIGH AS PRE-TAX PROFITS RISE 16% - Pre-tax profits at Dublin-based aviation firm, Parc Aviation last year increased by 16% to €3.92m. The Irish Examiner says that accounts just filed with the Companies Registration Office show that revenues at Parc Aviation Ltd rose by 14% from €83.5m to €95.4m in the 12 months to the end of April 2011. The company - which also has offices in Shannon, Beijing and Tokyo - made a €10m dividend payout during the year. Parc Aviation is a global leader in providing aviation personnel on lease to airlines and aviation support organisations and is currently providing more than 800 personnel contracted to 60 clients in 20 different counties. According to the director's report, the company "succeeded in increasing substantially the volume of the business in its core airline pilot market". "The company plans to expand further through a mixture of organic and acquisition-based growth, with the objective of consolidating its position as the leading supplier of specialist staff and services to the aviation sector."
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APPLE FACES ITS 'NIKE MOMENT' OVER WORKING CONDITIONS IN CHINESE FACTORIES - Apple is facing a "Nike moment" which hit the shoe company in the 1990s when its use of cheap labour in the far east was revealed, one of the inspectors of Apple's Chinese suppliers has said. Speaking to ABC News' Nightline programme, Ines Kaempfer of the US Fair Labour Association (FLA), which is inspecting the Foxconn assembly plants used by Apple in China, said: "There was a moment for Nike in the '90s, when they got a lot of publicity, negative publicity. And they weren't the worst. It's probably like Apple. They're not necessarily the worst, it's just that the publicity is starting to build up. We call it the 'Nike moment' in the industry." Foxconn, which is one of Apple's main contractors, said on Monday it had raised wages by up to 25% after a spate of suicides last year and reports of long hours for the hundreds of thousands of staff, writes today's Guardian. It is the second significant salary increase in less than two years at the world's largest electronics contract manufacturer, where workers' conditions have come under intense scrutiny. The FLA inspection came at the prompting of Apple, the first technology company to join it. The FLA aims to end sweatshop conditions in factories.
