ULSTER BANK TO JOIN CREDIT REVIEW OFFICE - Ulster Bank will join the Credit Review Office, providing the possibility of an external appeal to the owners of small and medium-sized firms who have been refused a loan from the institution.
Ulster Bank, which says it is the first lender to voluntarily open its credit decisions to scrutiny by the CRO, will join the office on a non-statutory basis next month, writes the Irish Times. The bank said it increased business lending in 2014 and had seen an increase in loan applications from the commercial sector. Chief executive Jim Brown said Ulster Bank was making €1.9 billion available in business lending this year . “We are working hard to ensure that viable businesses of all sizes can access the necessary finance to enable them to invest and grow, and we see today’s announcement as an important addition for our customers,” Mr Brown said. The CRO provides an appeal process for SME and farm clients of participating banks which have had a loan application for up to €3 million refused, reduced or withdrawn where they argue their proposition is viable.
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BANKING INQUIRY SPENDS €1.1m IN Q1, INCLUDING €900 ON TEA AND COFFEE - The Oireachtas Banking Inquiry has spent over €900 on tea and coffee for the first three months of this year. The €908.20 spent on refreshments for the inquiry's public hearings is part of a spend of €390,308 on miscellaneous items under the heading of non-payroll expenditure for the first quarter of this year. The inquiry spent a total of €1.1m in the first three months of the year which includes €710,200 in payroll costs, reports the Irish Independent. The figures released following a Freedom of Information request show that a panel of legal advisers were paid €98,061 for the first quarter of 2015 while consultants, FTI Consulting Ireland Ltd received €103,626 for expert advice for the inquiry's "context phase". A further €47,355 was paid to recruitment firm, Hays Specialist Recruitment (Ireland) Ltd, for the recruitment of investigators. The investigators were paid €359,564 between January and March of this year with a further €47,919 paid to banking inquiry members' parliamentary assistants. The figures show that pay for staff at the inquiry totalled €302,717 for the first quarter. Along with the €908.20 tea and coffee bill, an additional €200 was spent on refreshments for an "inquiry support team briefing". It was revealed earlier this year that lawyers providing expert advice to the inquiry were charging €264 per hour during the probe's preparatory phase.
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IRISH AVIATION AUTHORITY PROFITS TAKE OFF TO €30m - The Irish Aviation Authority (IAA) says that, last year, it recorded a very strong financial performance with operating profits increasing by 15.5% to €29.7m. The authority’s newly published 2014 annual report also shows a 2% increase in revenue to €177.4m. Chief executive Eamonn Brennan said in the report that the financial performance was very strong. The jump in profits was on the back of the number of flights in Irish airspace last year increasing by 2.7% to 937,537, with the largest proportion being flights between Europe and north America, says the Irish Examiner. Some 90% of transatlantic air traffic passes through Irish-controlled airspace. The IAA recorded pre-tax profits of €129m last year after the authority booked an exceptional pension gain of €102m. Chairwoman Anne Nolan said the IAA has taken corrective action to its pension situation “which will see no pension increases for the foreseeable future”. Mr Brennan said “difficult decisions have needed to be made in order to protect the solvency of the [pension] schemes”. However, he said, the IAA’s pension deficit rose from €113.8m at the end of 2013 to €132.4m at the end of last year.
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CHINA'S 'MIGRANT MIRACLE' NEARS AN END AS CHEAP LABOUR DWINDLES - China’s labour force is shrinking and the “migrant miracle” that powered its industrial rise is mostly exhausted, removing the factors that propelled the country’s meteoric development, according to leading economists. The transformation will lead to slower growth, reduced investment and a loss of export competitiveness, they warn, increasing the urgency of implementing ambitious economic reforms aimed at finding new sources of expansion. The Financial Times today begins a series of articles on the end of the migrant miracle - the three decades of breakneck economic growth fuelled by the unprecedented migration of labour from the unproductive farm sector to work in factories and on construction sites. Broad consensus has emerged that China has reached its “Lewis Turning Point” - the point at which the once-inexhaustible pool of surplus rural labour dries up and wages rise rapidly. Nobel-prize winning economist Arthur Lewis argued in the 1950s that a developing country with surplus agricultural labour could develop its industrial sector for years without wage inflation as it absorbed that surplus.
