PM Group, a Dublin based specialist in project management, plans to take on up to 500 graduates over the next five years to support its expansion plans. The company provides construction, engineering and management expertise to help deliver projects such as pharmaceutical plants and hi-tech factories. It has benefited from the influx of foreign direct investment into Ireland and the consequent flow of large scale projects. PM Group has also just published accounts showing a 21% jump in operating profit to €10.9m for the year to the end of December 2015.
PM Group's chief executive Dave Murphy said the company has a good pipeline of new projects over the coming year and it is confident of ongoing investment in the sectors in which it is strong, including pharmaceuticals, food, medtech and the whole data area as well as technology. Mr Murphy said the company is seeing a lot of investment, not just in Ireland but in Europe, the US - where the company now has a footprint - and Asia.
On Brext, Mr Murphy said that is is still early days in the whole process. One school of though is that Brexit will be positive for Ireland as some companies may be inclined to invest in Ireland rather than the UK, the CEO said. PM Group has about 350 employees in the UK and while the company is seeing a bit of slowness in decision making, some of its key clients there - including the likes of GlaxosmithKline and AstraZeneca - have come out quite bullish in terms of their statements about ongoing investment in the UK where they have huge manufacturing infrastructure, he added.
The company is recruiting across a broad range of disciplines, including architects, quantity surveyors, environmental engineers, processors engineers, schedulers, project managers and construction managers. Mr Murphy said that competition for graduates is quite intense as the construction sector continues to recover from the downturn but he added that PM Group gets out early to grab the graduates and the firm has hired over 100 graduates already this year, with over 50 of these in Ireland.
PM Group is 100% employee-owned and Mr Murphy said it is very much part of the company's mission to remain that way. The way the company is set up is very attractive for both staff and clients and is key to why workers want to stay with the firm over the long term. The CEO said it is also very attractive for clients as they are not just dealing with employees of a firm, but with its owners and people act and behave in that way in terms of delivering a service.
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MORNING BRIEFS - AIB's subsidiary EBS is the first Irish financial institution to disclose plans to issue what are known as "bail-in bonds". Under EU rules formulated in response to the financial crisis, banks will be required to hold debt securities whose holders would be wiped out before the bank's depositors are hit if the institution gets into difficulty. During the crisis in Ireland, as elsewhere, state funds were used to rescue banks. That happened in part because of the reluctance to impose losses upon, or burn, senior bondholders as that may have meant sacrificing depositors too. Bail-in bonds could allow banks in difficulty to impose losses on bondholders, protect depositors and prevent taxpayers being on the hook.
In a new bond prospectus EBS has acknowledged both it and parent AIB may have to sell a "significant" amount of such bonds between now and 2020 as the new rules are phased in.
*** West Cork based timber producer GP Wood is embarking on a €14m investment programme to upgrade its plant at Enniskeane. The company said the investment will lead to greater capacity and a wider product range. It said the investment will also result in 27 new jobs between the plant itself and the forestry operations which supply it.
*** Financial newswire Bloomberg reports social network Twitter may lay off up to 300 staff around 8% of its workforce. The report says the layoffs may be announced before the end of this week. Twitter cut its workforce by a similar number last year.
***Apple reports its quarterly results later this evening. Investors will be looking closely at the sales performance of the new iPhone 7 particularly in the light of the problems at rival Samsung.
