GREEN REIT TO SWITCH FOCUS TO MANAGEMENT AFTER YEAR BUILDING PORTFOLIO - Property investor Green Reit will limit itself to "opportunistic" acquisitions now it has spent the money raised from the markets since its launch last year. The Dublin-listed real estate investment trust published its first full-year accounts yesterday showing that the values of the properties it bought since its launch in July 2013 rose by 14%. The trust has spent or committed close to €750m on building its portfolio, writes the Irish Times. Executive chairman Stephen Vernon said yesterday that, as it is still well below its target debt-to-equity ratio of 35%, this leaves it with headroom for a further €322 million. "We'll use 50% of that to play out our development programme and the other half will be used for opportunistic acquisitions that could arise," he said. Mr Vernon and his colleagues signalled that the trust's focus will switch focus to management rather than acquisition now that it has completed the bulk of its initial investment work. Pat Gunne, chief executive of Green Property Reit Ventures, the trust's investment manager, said that most of the "heavy lifting" had been done since its launched last year. "We had a view when we started that we would get this to a billion euro reit and we're close to doing that," he said.
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CELEB CHIEF CORRIGAN TO CREATE 70 JOBS IN CAVAN AS LONDON RESTAURANTS ENJOY 'RECORD YEAR' - Celebrity chef Richard Corrigan has announced the creation of 70 jobs at his 17th Century lodge, the Park Hotel in Virginia, Co Cavan. Mr Corrigan announced the jobs for his 100-acre Virginia venture as he confirmed that his London group of restaurants is set for "a record year" in 2014 in terms of revenues and profits, says the Irish Independent. "Business is brilliant at the moment," he said yesterday. "London is on a massive roll and doesn't seem to have the peaks and troughs that Ireland goes through." The Meath man was commenting on new accounts for his Richard Corrigan Restaurants (Holdings) Ltd that show that his business increased revenues by 4% to £9.3m as profits jumped by 27% to £696,316 (€867,496) last year. The chef operates Bentley's Oyster Bar and Grill, Corrigan's Mayfair and Bentley's Sea Grill at Harrods.The restaurant group sells over 15,000 oysters per week from September to the following May every year. The London business now employs 260 and Mr Corrigan announced his intention to have 60 to 70 people employed at his Co Cavan project by next summer. "We have been turning our attentions to Ireland," he said. Mr Corrigan spent £1.2m purchasing the property last year and has since spent another £1.1m on upgrading it since.
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PRE-TAX LOSSES OF €38m AT DRINKS GROUP - Exceptional costs totalling €34.7m contributed to pre-tax losses of €38m at drink group, M&J Gleeson (Investments) Ltd last year. Alcoholic drinks firm C&C Group purchased M&J Gleeson for €12.4m in 2012 and new accounts show the Co Tipperary group recorded the losses in the eight months to the end of February 28 last after enjoying a pre-tax profit of €2.39m in 2012, writes the Irish Examiner. The group's brands include Tipperary Mineral Water, Finches soft drinks and Estrella beers. The accounts show the group's revenues last year declined by 37.5% from €246.97m to €159.76m. However, the main factor behind the steep drop in revenues was last year's accounting period being only eight months and the prior year being 12 months. The hefty losses arose from a write-down of €29.2m in fixed assets; a €4.5m write-down in goodwill; a €3.9m write down in stock, and a bad debt provision of €2.9m. The accounts show the group recorded an operating loss of €3.9m that followed an operating profit of €4.72m in 2012. Numbers employed last year decreased from 655 to 625, with staff costs reducing from €20m to €12m. The group's cost of sales last year totalled €136m while administrative costs amounted to €18.39m with distribution costs totalling €8.6m.
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WALL STREET MIDDLE-AGED BANKERS STUCK IN SQUEEZED MIDDLE - It is Wall Street's "squeezed middle": a large cohort of bankers in their thirties and forties are fretting that promotions to their banks' top tier are becoming harder to secure. Many of them accept that being stuck on a few hundred thousand dollars a year hardly qualifies as hardship for most of the world's workers, but that does not stop the yearning for a diminishing number of managing director jobs, which offer significantly more pay and prestige. At many banks the decline in senior appointments reflects job cuts across the board, says the Financial Times. But one executive at a large investment bank estimates that in the boom years before 2008, up to 16% of Wall Street's bankers were managing directors. Now, that figure has shrunk to 12%. "For a variety of reasons, achieving the MD title has become much more difficult," said Mike Karp, chief executive of Options Group, a recruitment firm, pointing first to the sharp declines in total industry employment since 2010. "We estimate that headcount in sales and trading in the US alone has fallen, on average, 30%. For some desks, headcount has fallen over 50%."
