BEAM SENDS IRISH GRADUATES TO US TO PROMOTE WHISKEY - Late last year US drinks company Beam said it was buying Louth-based businessman John Teeling's Cooley Distillery in a deal worth around €71m. Now the US drinks giant is sending Irish graduates out to various US cities to promote the brand. All five of the graduates are part of an Export Orientation Programme IBEC graduate programme in conjunction with Bord Bia.
One of those graduates, Jennifer Graham, is destined for Francisco. Ms Graham says the IBEC programme assists companies to strengthen their international marketing and export capacity. She says the deal with Beam means that the distribution of Cooley Distillery's brands is now much bigger and the brands are now competing with burbon drinkers. The five graduates are coming to the end of their intensive training course at the Kilbeggan Distillery in Co Westmeath and Jennifer says they will start making contacts with bars in the US to educate the owners - and customers - about the good points of Irish whiskey. She says the graduates have no actual sales targets, and the job is a mixture of marketing and sales. The other gradates are going to Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Chicago.
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MORNING BRIEFS - Etihad Airways has said it would be interested in buying Ryanair's 30% stake in Aer Lingus as the budget airline struggles to take over its rival. This is according to reports on the financial news service Bloomberg today. Etihad, which already owns 3% of Aer Lingus, would be "very happy to have that discussion," chief executive James Hogan said today. "Dublin is a strong, profitable route for us and we're very keen to strengthen our partnership there," he added.
*** Standard Chartered is pursuing a collective settlement with other US authorities after agreeing to pay $340m to New York's financial regulator under mounting pressure from shareholders. The bank said it made a "pragmatic decision" to settle after having seen its share price slump by more than 30% at one stage last week following accusations that it concealed Iran-linked transactions worth a total of $250 billion. It is reported chief executive Peter Sands is now pushing for a comprehensive deal relating to probes by the US Treasury, the Federal Reserve, the Justice Department and New York prosecutors.
*** Sean Quinn's daughter Aoife says she believes her father, once described as Ireland's richest man, will go to jail. Ms Quinn made the remark on the Tonight with Vincent Browne Show on TV3. Her brother Sean Junior has already been jailed for contempt and is serving his sentence in the training unit of Mountjoy Prison.
*** The attorneys general of New York and Connecticut have issued subpoenas to seven banks over the possible manipulation of a global interest rate, reports say. Subpoenas were issued, mostly last month and this month, to Barclays, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan Chase, HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland and UBS, the person said. American and British regulators have already fined Barclays, based in Britain, $453m for submitting false information between 2005 and 2009 to keep the interest rate, known as Libor, low. Libor, short for London interbank offered rate, is used to set the interest rates on trillions of dollars in contracts around the world, including mortgages and credit cards. It is a self-policing system and relies on information that global banks submit to a British banking authority.
