REO IRISH PROPERTY WORTH €1.37 BILLION - Dublin and London listed Real Estate Opportunities, or REO, which is 57% owned by Dublin based Treasury Holdings and which bought Battersea power station in London last year, has announced results for 2006.
It's reporting an almost 46% increase in net asset values to just over 106 pence. REO owns a substantial commercial property portfolio in Ireland including most of the commercial heart of Stillorgan in South Dublin. It says the value of its Irish properties increased 18% to €1.37 billion.
Chief operating officer, John Bruder, says he sees very little prospect of the feared imminent property crash in the Irish market.
Although he would not say there are no risks, he points out that on balance most of the fundamentals that have been underpinning the property market are still very much in place.
He says in commercial property, Ireland has never had it so good, with 2006 the best ever year in terms of tenant take up, and judging from first quarter performance the trend looks to continue.
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TESCO PROFITS SOAR 13% - Supermarket giant Tesco, met forecasts with a 13% rise in annual underlying profit of £2.55 billion.
The supermarket group, which had previously said it would return £1.5 billion to shareholders, said this morning it planned to free up at least £3 billion from property assets for investors.
Revenue rose by 8.1% to £42.641 billion, driven by growing sales in eastern Europe and Asia, as well as its home market in Britain.
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INDO CONSORTIUM LIFTS APN OFFER - Independent News and Media led consortium to buy Australia's APN News and Media outright has upped its offer to A$6.20 after its earlier bid of A€6.30 was deemed by share holders to be too low.
This is the consortium's fourth bid to buy APN but says this latest offer price is final.
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CURRENCIES - The euro continues to trade higher against other currencies. Yesterday it reached an all time high against the yen - that would be 162.4 yen to the euro, and a two year high against the dollar.
The euro is being buoyed by expectations of another interest rate hike from the European Central Bank. The bank said yesterday that monetary conditions still supported economic growth and that the price of oil represented an inflationary risk.
This morning the euro is worth $1.354 and £0.68 sterling and the Nikkei index of Japanese shares closed down 100 points at 17,527
