DOYLE'S PROFITS WIPED OUT BY EXCEPTIONAL COSTS OF €36.3m - Doyle Hotels, which owns properties including the Westbury and Croke Park Hotel in Dublin, posted an operating profit of €10.6m last year but made a loss of €29.2m after €36.3m of exceptional costs were incurred, writes the Irish Independent. The group, previously known as the Jurys Doyle group before it agreed to sell its Jurys Inns business to Quinlan Private in 2007 for €1.2 billion including debt, said in accounts just filed for the business that turnover topped €98.1m in 2008. The company, which owns 11 hotels in Ireland, the UK and the United States, and is controlled by directors including Bernadette Gallagher and Walter Beatty, has spent a significant amount of money refurbishing its premises. It said it forked out €48m in 2008 on refurbishment and financial investment. The company has previously indicated that it would be spending about €115m revamping its hotels. A further €12.1m was spent last year on redundancy costs, rebranding, purchase of tenant leases and associated hotel closure costs. The group temporarily closed two hotels in the US while they were refurbished and the redundancy costs relate to those closures.
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BOI RAISES €1.5 BILLION UNPROTECTED BY STATE GUARANTEE - Bank of Ireland has raised €1.5 billiono selling a five-year bond backed by the bank's mortgages in the first issuance of debt that partially falls outside the protection of the Government bank guarantee, says the Irish Times. The bank said the bond sale represented "a first step" in the reopening of the wholesale funding market to unguaranteed debt issued by any Irish lender. The bank said this was "highly significant" given that investors would not be guaranteed by the Government. It was the bank's first public benchmark covered bond issue and its first public covered bond issue since 2006. The bond was just over 2.5 times over-subscribed and more than 150 investors from 24 countries participated in the transaction. Some 96 per cent of the investors were from outside Ireland. The issue was priced at 190 basis points (1.9%) over the swaps rate, the benchmark for pricing bonds in the market.
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FOOTSIE PUSHES ABOVE 5,000 - Hopes for a flurry of company takeovers and growing belief in the strength of economic recovery on Wednesday propelled the FTSE 100 index through the 5,000 level for the first time in almost a year, reports the Financial Times. An impressive rebound in stock markets around the world, which began in March, has drawn fresh momentum from a potential £10.2bn bid for Cadbury, the UK confectionery group, by US food giant Kraft. Investors on both sides of the Atlantic are betting that the takeover move, a sign of growing corporate confidence, could herald a pick-up in M&A across the globe. In New York, the S&P 500 index was heading for an 11-month high, while Europe's leading shares rose for a fifth day in succession. The gains took London's blue-chip index to a close of 5,004.3, a gain of 1.15% on the day, and 42.5% above its low of six months ago. The last time the FTSE 100 closed above 5,000 was September 2008, when financial markets were in the grip of a steep sell-off following the collapse of US investment bank Lehman Brothers.
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GOLDMAN BOSS TELLS BANKS TO END CULTURE OF 'OUTSIZED COMPENSATION' - The chief executive of Goldman Sachs admitted yesterday that anger over bankers' stratospheric pay was largely "understandable and appropriate" and called on rivals to dump controversial multi-year guaranteed bonuses, says The Times. Lloyd Blankfein, who is also chairman of the Wall Street bank, said that there was "little justification for the payment of outsized discretionary compensation" by loss-making banks. Speaking at a conference in Frankfurt yesterday, the Goldman Sachs chief called on the banking sector to agree basic standards on compensation. Mr Blankfein also said that some investment banking practices were "socially useless" and that several highly complex products dreamt up by investment bankers "outstrip their economic and social utility". His comments echo those made by Lord Turner of Ecchinswell, the chairman of the Financial Services Authority, whose controversial view that the City has grown too big and should be shrunk has stirred up a heated debate in the financial community.
