Irish ex-pats working in Britain, the US, Canada and Australia are among the beneficiaries of the European Central Bank’s quantitative easing programme.
How so? Well the euro weakness which results from euro zone central banks buying up government debt and pumping €60bn a month into the single currency zone means anyone with foreign currency to send home is, literally, quids in at present.
Brian Monaghan, CFO with the Irish company Currency Fair, said the shifting exchange rate had seen his company record a surge in activity amongst those converting their money into euro.
“It’s roughly double what we’ve been seeing at the start of December,” he said.
“There’s probably two main reasons as to why we’re seeing this – firstly our customers are quite exchange rate savvy, they’re looking at the markets, they see the rates, they see that the euro has fallen a lot and they’re good rates on the back of that,” Mr Monaghan said.
“The second reason is that a lot of customers are looking for specific rates at key levels,” he said. “On our service you can ask for a particular rate and the euro has fallen through a lot of those key rates in recent weeks.”
Mr Monaghan said the majority of the money is coming from Australia, the United States and Canada with Irish ex-pats sending money back home while the rate is favourable for them.
“For other companies it might be different but that’s where a lot of our customers are,” he said.
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US private equity fund Lone Star has paid £680m (€910m) to buy the Jurys Inns hotels chain from a consortium including Ulster Bank and the Oman Investment Fund.
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Aer Lingus has confirmed it has received an improved offer from British Airways owner IAG. In a brief statement to the stock exchange the airline said its board was considering the proposal.
The new offer comes in at €2.55 per share including a cash dividend of 5 cent per share to shareholders. IAG has already had two bids at €2.30 and €2.40 per share rejected by Aer Lingus.
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The French airline Europe Airpost is set to announce a new route between Dublin and Halifax, Nova Scotia later this morning.
It's understood Europe Airpost, a subsidiary of Irish-headquartered ASL Aviation, will begin serving the Canadian city from Dublin in July.
It will be one of 15 new services from Dublin Airport in 2015 and the fourth new trans-Atlantic service to be launched this year.
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The MBA programme at University College Dublin's Smurfit School is the only Irish representative in the Financial Times annual list of the top 100.
The Smurfit School's MBA ranking is up 18 places to 73rd on the global list, published this morning, and up three places to 22nd on the European list.
