UK DEBT MANAGEMENT AGENCY TO OPEN IRISH OFFICE - The UK debt management agency Step Change will launch its services in Ireland by April, the Irish Examiner has learned.
The agency has been in talks with the Central Bank, the Irish Banking Federation, and the domestic banks over the past few months and is now in advanced stages of making an entry in the Irish market. “We are in discussions with the Irish banks about the potential for providing a service for indebted people in Ireland,” said a spokesperson for the company. “However, the discussions are very much ongoing, and therefore we are not yet in a position to discuss possible timings of any scheme that may go ahead.” However, a person familiar with the situation said the agency should be in a position to take on its first cases by the end of March or the beginning of April. Step Change is a registered charity and does not need regulatory approval from the Central Bank to offer its services in the Republic. It provided consultation services to the Central Bank in 2013 on the pilot scheme for consumer multi-debt restructuring. It is believed that, since then, the Central Bank has been keen for Step Change to roll out its services here. The agency is one of the largest debt management firms in the UK with offices in several of the main cities and in the North. It dealt with over half a million distressed borrowers last year.
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FACEBOOK INVESTMENT PLANS SIGNAL MORE GROWTH FOR IRISH OPERATION - Facebook's Irish subsidiary looks set to continue its hiring spree after company founder Mark Zuckerberg said that the social networking giant will increase investment in staff and new technology. The company, which employs over 500 people here and recently signalled plans to increase its office capacity to 1,000, said that it will hire more research and sales staff this year as it bids to increase its mobile advertising growth. Facebook's Irish office focuses largely on sales and marketing across Europe, although it also employs people in financial, technical and legal roles, says the Irish Independent. The company's chief financial officer David Wehner said that the company would increase spending by up to 70% this year and was coming "from a position of strength" on the issue. He said that the company was willing to do this even at the expense of short-term profitability, with Facebook's operating margin falling from 44% to 29% over the last 12 months. The social networking giant revealed that while it now makes $36 per annum per person in the US, it only makes $13.80 each year from European users. The higher-yielding US customers are partially the result of a focus on ad measurement analytics there, said senior company executives. This year, the company is expected to try and boost its European metrics.
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IRISH MORTGAGE DEBT RATIO HIGHEST IN EURO AREA, SAYS CSO - The burden of debt carried by Irish mortgage holders relative to the value of their homes is the highest in the euro area. Dublin also has the lowest rate of home ownership in the State but the second-highest number of households carrying debt. These are just some of the findings contained in the first Household Finance and Consumption Survey compiled by the Central Statistics Office (CSO). The report, which is based on data collected at the end of 2013, provides a snapshot of the financial wellbeing of Irish households after the economic crash, says the Irish Times. It found the median or middle loan-to-value (LTV) ratio for owner-occupier mortgage holders here was 72.9%, nearly twice the euro zone average of 37% and more than 20 percentage points ahead of the next-highest country The Netherlands with 52.5%. In the mideast region, which takes in the Dublin commuter belt counties of Kildare, Meath, Westmeath and Wicklow, the figure rose to 90.7%, the highest in regional terms. For households comprising one adult and children, the median LTV was 102.5%, meaning well over 50% of these households remain in negative equity. For people under 35 the figure was even more stark at 116.8%, compared with an LTV of just 16% for over-65s. The report found just over 70% of Irish households owned their own main residence, while 10.8% own land and 13.8% own other property. Though the rates of home ownership here are high, they are roughly in line with other EU states.
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RUSSIA BUYS RECORD AMOUNTS OF GOLD - Russia accounted for about one-third of central banks’ gold purchases last year as the country spent more on the metal than at any time since the break-up of the Soviet Union amid escalating tensions with the west and a collapse in the value of the rouble. Central banks around the world bought a net 461 tonnes of gold in 2014 - 13% higher than the previous year and the second-highest level since the collapse of the gold standard in 1971 - as they continued to diversify their currency reserves following the financial crisis. They have added 1,800 tonnes to their holdings in the past six years, says the Financial Times. Moscow’s shopping spree of the yellow metal was driven by a desire to shift away from a dependency on the dollar and provide support to the beleaguered rouble. Russia’s currency has lost half its value against the dollar in the past year on the back of the plunging oil price as well as western sanctions. The central bank’s foreign currency reserves, mainly US and European government bonds, have also fallen. “There is no attraction for the Russians to be doing anything which is helpful to the US and Europe,” said Ross Strachan of GFMS, a metals research group at Thomson Reuters, which compiled the figures. “Given the sanctions gold is one asset which it can purchase which doesn’t do that.”
