APPLE SEEKS GREEN ENERGY PROJECTS TO POWER €850m GALWAY DATA CENTRE - Apple is considering directly funding at least six Irish renewable energy projects, which could result in total new investment of more than €400 million.
The facilities will power its planned €850 million new data centre in Galway. The company has this week sought partnership proposals from developers for a number of new green energy projects, each of up to 50 megawatts capacity, writes the Irish Times. Its data centre in Athenry will require capacity estimated at more than 300MW for services such as iTunes, Maps and Siri. Apple did not specify the type of renewable energy, although onshore wind, currently popular with funders, would appear a likely contender. A 2014 report by the energy consultants Pyory estimated the investment per MW of new wind capacity at about €1.5 million, suggesting total investment of up to €450 million if Apple powered the entire facility with windfarms. In a tender on Ariba.com, Apple said it is "most interested" in agreements with developers to purchase electricity. It also indicated, however, it "would consider purchasing in their entirety such assets" once they come onstream.
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DALATA'S McCANN FANCIES ROLE IN JURYS AND BERKELEY COURT - Hotel operator Dalata is eyeing a role in the redevelopment of the former Berkeley Court and Jurys Hotels in Dublin, as the firm said it expected the "real value" in the hotel market to be gone by the end of this year. The site holding the two hotels went on the market last week and is expected to fetch between €120m and €150m. It has planning permission for a new hotel and hundreds of apartments. While Dalata is considered unlikely to buy the site outright, company chief executive Pat McCann, made clear that he sees Dalata playing a part in the hotels in the future. Dalata already leases the Clyde Court and Ballsbridge Hotels, as the two properties are known, says the Irish Independent. "Absolutely [we would be interested in the hotels]," said Mr McCann. "There is reasonably good planning on site at present. It definitely has an opportunity for a hotel on the site, and probably larger than the original planning permission but it depends on who ends up buying the property. "We would be love to be part of it the end - it's a fantastic location," he added. Mr McCann has an intimate knowledge of the two hotels. In 2005, as chief executive Jurys Doyle Hotel Group, he was instrumental in the sale of both hotels to developer Sean Dunne for nearly €400m.
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CATASTROPHE DEALS THREATEN REINSURANCE SECTOR 'COLLAPSE' - The $575 billion industry that protects insurers from earthquakes, hurricanes and other disasters risks a banking-style meltdown if it continues making “dangerous” changes to how it is structured, new research has found. After a three-year study of the reinsurance sector, a team of business school academics has found that some companies are now packaging together catastrophe risks in a similar way to the carving up of subprime mortgages by big banks before the financial crisis. As a result, the victims of a costly catastrophe - such as an earthquake or storm that destroys large areas - could run into problems having their insurance claims paid, reports the Financial Times. Professor Paula Jarzabkowski of Cass Business School, one of the researchers, said mainstream insurers were potentially spreading risks to parties that did not fully understand them. Many have been increasingly turning to pension funds and other capital markets investors - by issuing securities such as catastrophe bonds - as an alterative to traditional reinsurance. But Professor Jarzabkowski warned that these insurance companies were in danger of not being covered as well as they believed if an especially costly disaster, such as an earthquake hitting California, were to strike. “If these instruments work as insurers hope, they can alleviate a lot of hardship and suffering,” she said. “If they don’t, societies are exposed to having less capacity to rebuild in the wake of a disaster.”
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DIAMOND LOOKS TO BUILD BIGGEST BANK NETWORK IN RWANDA - Bob Diamond, the former chief executive of Barclays who quit over the Libor scandal, took another significant step yesterday in building his African banking venture, Atlas Mara. Mr Diamond has teamed up with Ashish Thakkar, an African entrepreneur who made his first entry into the Sunday Times Rich List this weekend, in 270th place, with a fortune reckoned to be £500m. They floated Atlas Mara on the London stock market at the end of in 2013 and raised $325m (£215m) to make acquisitions across Africa in the financial services sector, says the London Independent. When at Barclays, Mr Diamond had been a big fan of the rapid growth of banking services, particularly mobile banking, among Africa’s fast-growing middle class.
